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Cricket news, analysis and gossip with a South Asian spin by Dileep Premachandran. Subscribe to a feed of this Times Online blog at http://timesonline.typepad.com/the_doosra/rss.xml

Polls

December 21, 2007

Bowling, Shane!

Spinners_poll Just over a fortnight ago, the doosra asked you to pick the greatest spinner of all time. Over 1800 people voted, and the result is pretty conclusive. The two perfect-10 men, Jim Laker and Anil Kumble, got their fair share of votes, but the leaders of the pack are miles ahead. More than one in three plumped for the elastic wrists and guile of Muttiah Muralitharan, but the winner by a distance - with nearly half the votes - is the man who was known as the Sheik of Tweak and Hollywood amongst other things. When we look back on the 1990s and much of the first decade of the new millennium, one of the enduring images will be of an Australian wicketkeeper shouting: "Bowling, Shane" after a legbreak, flipper or zooter had bamboozled the batsman.

Continue reading "Bowling, Shane!" »

Posted at 05:42 PM in Polls | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBack (0)

December 05, 2007

Who is the greatest spinner ever?

It's become commonplace each time the relative merits of Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne are discussed to use the descriptor: the greatest spinner ever. Such sweeping statements though border on the disrespectful and ignore the claims of some of the game's greats. Even if you overlook 19th century titans like Bobby Peel and Johnny Briggs on the grounds that no one even saw grainy newsreel footage of them in action, there are at least a half a dozen others with claims to top-dog status.

Bill O'Reilly, whose battles with Don Bradman illuminated Australian domestic cricket between the wars, would feature in any such discussion, as would a Yorkshireman, Hedley Verity. South Africa's Hugh Tayfield ploughed a lone furrow for years, and many still get misty-eyed about India's legendary spin quartet.

The Doosra offers up nine names - there will, no doubt, be many complaints over the exclusion of Abdul Qadir and Derek Underwood - and invites you to pick your number one. The stats say that Murali and Warne are a class apart. Do you agree?

Voting has now closed, and below are the results:

Spinners_poll_2

Posted at 03:05 PM in Polls | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBack (0)

Dileep Premachandran

  • Dileep Premachandran

    Dileep Premachandran has been writing on Indian cricket for nearly a decade. An associate editor with Cricinfo, he’s also Asian cricket correspondent for the Sunday Times and Inside Sport. He fell in love with the game in the winter of 1982, watching the elegant batsmanship of Greg Chappell. King Viv, though, remains first among equals.

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