Best spin bowlers in cricket history

Cricket is often termed a battle of willow (bat) and leather (ball). To defeat the willow, pace bowlers rely on sheer pace, seam or swing. The spinner is slower and more crafty, relying on a combination of flight, bounce and turn to deceive batsmen.

Before the advent of great spinners, fast bowlers topped the wicket lists in Test match bowling. Spinners were typically thought as bowlers to use on turning tracks or to give fast bowlers a break.

It is easy to pick out the great spin bowlers by assessing cricket statistics. Spin is such a difficult art to master, that few bowlers really put themselves in the category of great. Still, to pick the best, it is important to sift through relevant criteria, which include:

Variations: Generally, great spinners are mystery bowlers, with so many variations that batsmen find it hard to pick them.

Minimum qualification: At least 50 Tests or 300 Test wickets (not necessarily both)

Test bowling strike rate: Spin bowlers do not have fantastic strike rates that fast bowlers do, but the best still manage to take a wicket every 70 balls or less.

There were many good spinners who would not qualify as the greatest of all time because of these stipulations. Danish Kaneria, Abdul Qadir, Bishen Singh Bedi, Lance Gibbs, Clarrie Grimmett and Richhie Benaud are notable ommissions. The four who make this list are three leg break bowlers and one offspinner.

Muttiah Muralitharan has the most international wickets by any bowler (1334). The wily Sri Lankan off-spinner holds the world record for the highest number of wickets in both Tests (800) and ODIs (534). The soft-spoken, affable spinner's action was unique in a number of ways - for the natural bend in his elbow to the hyper-rotating wrist. This allowed Muttiah to impart prodigious turn on the ball; he could turn the ball almost square on many pitches.

Murali used bounce, turn, flight and, of course, spin to deceive batsmen who were unable to play him. Brian Lara, the double world record holder, scored heavily against the off-spinner, but even he admitted that he was never really able to pick Murali in the first 45 minutes of facing him. Murali's action was controversial and many cricket observers (particularly in Australia) still think he was more of a javelin thrower. Despite his critics, Murali went about his task winning matches for Sri Lanka and setting records.

The chubby Victorian is the best leg-spinner to have played the game. Some would rank the Australian as the best spinner ever. Warne could turn a ball prodigiously and could keep batsmen guessing. He was not the most mysterious spinner at times, but he would work batsmen out with his arsenal of variations, which included the googly, flipper and top-spinner.

Brian Lara summed up Shane's modus operandi by stating that Warne grew more confident the more he bowled to a batsman. Before Muttiah Muralitharan surpassed his record, the leg-spinner was the world record holder for a brief period. However, he had the distinction of being the first bowler in Test cricket's history to take 600 and then 700 wickets, Warne and Muralitharan are the only bowlers to have taken more than 700 Test wickets.

India has produced many world-class spinners in the past decades. Anil Kumble was the best of them all; the irony was that he was not a big spinner of the ball. Kumble could turn the ball on a helpful track, but he relied on variations in flight, speed and bounce to outfox batsmen.

That strategy proved successful as he scalped over 600 Test wickets - one of only three bowlers to do so. However, his variations in flight and turn helped him to scalp over 600 Test wickets in his career. Kumble's biggest moment came against Pakistan in 1999 when he became the second bowler to take all ten wickets in a Test innings.

When Anil Kumble was a youngster, Chandrasekhar was already troubling batsmen on the international scene. The Indian leg-spinner was India's premier spin bowler before Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.

Chandrasekhar was part of a quartet of Indian spinners who bamboozled batsmen in the 1960s and 1970s. The leg-spinner was not a subcontinental bully either, having a successful record away from home. Those who saw him in action observed that the legspinner was somewhat erratic but managed to bowl many unplayable deliveries.