Leg spin will never die but Zampa’s right to air concerns over flick of the wrist magicians vanishing

There was a time more than three decades ago when leg spin was all but dead. 

The rise of one-day cricket meant that accuracy was paramount and with leg spin bowling such an incredibly tough art to master, the wrist-spinners were being given the flick. 

And then along came Shane Warne and the course of cricketing history changed forever. 

Warne possessed the brilliance to be able to spin a leg break at right angles but also put the ball on the spot at least five, usually six, times an over. 

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Sadly he is no longer around to see that leg spin is in another period of uncertainty as cricket teams throughout the world turn to more conventional bowlers in the era of T20’s omnipresence. 

Australia will take just one frontline spinner to the Champions Trophy next month in Adam Zampa and the veteran leggie is concerned that the next generation of young slow bowlers will have no longevity in the game if they use their wrist, rather than their fingers. 

Zampa, speaking on Fox Cricket on the weekend after being omitted from the Test tour to Sri Lanka, was naturally disappointed that his hopes of ever wearing the baggy green cap have been extinguished.

And he fears for the future when it comes to wrist-spinners getting a look-in at the top level.

“I wouldn’t say if you’re a young leg-spinner coming through, you’ll never play Test cricket. But, I think if you are looking to play a lot of Test cricket as a leg-spinner, I don’t see it happening,” the 32-year-old said.

“I love watching wrist spin in Test cricket (but) there’s obviously not a lot of it.”

Zampa has made a career out of being able to bowl accurately in the white-ball arena but because he’s not a big turner of the ball, his effectiveness in first-class cricket has not been enough to put him in serious contention for a Test spot. 

Shane Warne. (Photo by Hamish Blair/Getty Images)

He has taken 297 wickets in 201 appearances in ODI and T20Is but has not been able to add his name to the long list of spinners that Australia have used since Warne called it a day in 2007. 

Australia have tried a few wrist-spinners but none of them have managed to cement a spot – Beau Casson and Bryce McGain got one Test each, Cameron White was strangely selected for the 2008 Indian tour even though he was not Victoria’s main spinner, Steve Smith started out as a leggie for a few games before becoming a specialist batter and Mitchell Swepson has been given four chances in Pakistan and Sri Lanka in recent years.

Nathan Lyon has given Australia reliable service for more than a decade before, during and after fellow finger-spinners Jason Krejza, Xavier Doherty, Michael Beer, Ashton Agar, Jon Holland, Steve O’Keefe, Todd Murphy and Matt Kuhnemann. 

Murphy and Kuhnemann will accompany Lyon to Sri Lanka later this month as part of an Aussie squad containing no wrist spinners. 

It’s not just in Australia where wrist-spinners have fallen out of favour. 

There were just two of them in the top 50 wicket-takers in Tests for 2024 – Indian leftie Kuldeep Yadav, who was 30th with 22 wickets at 23.09 and young English leggie Rehan Ahmed, 42nd overall with 15 at 36.66, who probably only got a run because of the tours to Pakistan and India. 

Wanindu Hasaranga is flying the flag for legging in the ODI arena, snaring 26 victims to be the equal leading wicket-taker in the format for the calendar year and added 38 in T20s. 

Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan and Zampa picked up 15 each in ODIs in what was a sparse 12 months for matches played after the World Cup the previous year. 

Adam Zampa bowls during the Sheffield Shield match between New South Wales and Tasmania at Sydney Cricket Ground. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

So it’s not all bad news for the wrist takers in white-ball cricket but in the Test arena, there’s not much to write home about.

Australia’s chief selector George Bailey, in explaining the rationale behind deciding upon the squad for the Sri Lankan Test tour, said Zampa had been considered “at different times”, along with Swepson, NSW rising star Tanveer Sangha and South Australian leggie Lloyd Pope. 

There is no point hoping for another Warne to come along because, for many reasons, there will never be anyone like him. 

But it’s going to take a special talent to emerge to become the circuit-breaker that’s needed to disrupt the modern trend towards favouring orthodox spin over cricket’s masters of the dark arts who can bamboozle batters like no other bowlers simply with a flick of the wrist. 

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