Pakistan's problems versus spin and the lack of quality spinners due to absence of spinning tracks in our domestic cricket?

[Savak]

India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan have very superior spinners in comparison to Pakistan. The last time Pakistan had a threatening spin duo in almost all conditions were when they had the services of a pre-15 degree Ajmal, Hafeez and a Prime Afridi and these 3 bowlers would provide you with a guaranteed 30 overs of economical stranglehold bowling with some wickets between them.

The only reasonable explanation i can think off is that in the last 10-12 years, Pakistani domestic wickets due to the abscence of international cricket back home, were badly under prepared and the rainy, winter, monsoon season in Punjab where the vast majority of Pakistani Domestic Cricket was played in assisted seam, swing bowlers which is why you had many dibbly dobbly medium pacers who were around 120-125 km/hr topping domestic charts i.e. Asad Ali, Hammad Azam e.t.c.

The move towards the Kookaburra ball in our domestic cricket didn't help as the Kookaburra ball is not known to be helpful for spinners and is more suited towards Australian, South African conditions.

Can you really blame our batsmen for being so terrible against quality spin when they don't get to face quality spin bowlers in Pakistan's domestic circuit and where the wickets in general don't aid spin. Not a single Pakistani curator in our home season was able to prepare spinning tracks to aid Pakistani bowlers against Australia, England and New Zealand.

Something to ponder about

 

[Rana]

India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan have very superior spinners in comparison to Pakistan. The last time Pakistan had a threatening spin duo in almost all conditions were when they had the services of a pre-15 degree Ajmal, Hafeez and a Prime Afridi and these 3 bowlers would provide you with a guaranteed 30 overs of economical stranglehold bowling with some wickets between them.

The only reasonable explanation i can think off is that in the last 10-12 years, Pakistani domestic wickets due to the abscence of international cricket back home, were badly under prepared and the rainy, winter, monsoon season in Punjab where the vast majority of Pakistani Domestic Cricket was played in assisted seam, swing bowlers which is why you had many dibbly dobbly medium pacers who were around 120-125 km/hr topping domestic charts i.e. Asad Ali, Hammad Azam e.t.c.

The move towards the Kookaburra ball in our domestic cricket didn't help as the Kookaburra ball is not known to be helpful for spinners and is more suited towards Australian, South African conditions.

Can you really blame our batsmen for being so terrible against quality spin when they don't get to face quality spin bowlers in Pakistan's domestic circuit and where the wickets in general don't aid spin. Not a single Pakistani curator in our home season was able to prepare spinning tracks to aid Pakistani bowlers against Australia, England and New Zealand.

Something to ponder about

Babar’s average of 60 in ODI is more important to maintain, how will that happen if you make Bunsen burners at home?

 

[hassan918]

In order to win matches consistently we must have good spinners in the team. No team can just rely on their fast bowlers and expect to win game after game. At the moment our spin bowling department don't look good enough to take wickets consistently in the middle overs or get a hold on the run flow that is very important in white ball cricket.

 

[Markhor]

Good post from @Savak.

I mentioned in another thread there's two problems.

1) Lack of FC exposure.

Shadab has played 17 FC matches (6 Tests) but 259 T20s !

2) Our FC pitches - they don't really deteriorate like in India or Sri Lanka so the spinners don't come into the game as they traditionally should on Day 3 and 4.

Our curators only produce two types of surfaces - dead flat or grassy with the lowest bounce in the world. This hardly encourages the development of spinners.

In contrast, India have their famed red soil pitches. From my limited reading - the red soil absorbs less moisture and the pitches crumble more. We should try importing this and have a couple of venues that really turn.

That'll in turn get our batsmen to improve their techniques vs spin.

 

[TheSultan]

People may not like this but we as a cricket nation have become dheeley.

There is no willingness to go that extra mile in the pursuit of greatness.

We’ve pioneered in so many areasz

Believe it or not, Javed Miandad and Asif Iqbal were way ahead of their time in running between wickets - they used to run the opposition ragged.

Javed was a master of improvisation with reverse sweeps, paddles. A lot of the modern shots are extensions of this. Javed was an expert in mental disintegration of the opposition too.

Abdul Qadir and 3 variations of a googly, not only that he would play with the opposition and that goatee he had briefly was to give the air of a mysterious magician

Reverse swing - nuff said

Doosra - nuff said

Wobble seam - Asif

The point is we had players who wanted to go above and beyond, challenge themselves, look to innovate. And that comes from a hunger of success.

Our current crop are just homogenous seedhey sadhey guys with no ambition. Just carry on autopilot.

All batsmen will follow the same script - accumulate, play anchor

Fast bowlers (post 2003). “Pace not everything, line and length important, right areas, tight lines blah blah crap.

Spinners are just sleeping - no ambition, all good.

And this comes from all this envy that’s creeped in to our cricket.

Before 2003 we were a proud cricketing nation and said “we are”, “this is us”. We may fight, we may be ill disciplined etc. After that, there was this envy of mcgrath that killed our fast bowling and all sorts of other nonsense.

 

[Cricket Warrior]

How are we producing fast bowlers from these types of pitches? Do they support pace bowling in any way?

It's not actually the fault of the pitches in Pakistan, everyone wants to be a fast bowler which has resulted in a lack of interest in spin bowling and subsequently a shortage of quality spinners.

 

[Bilal7]

Saeed Ajmal was a great spinner who could have easily played up until the 2019 WC in LO cricket if the PCB had backed him like SLCB backed Murali.

Raza Hasan was another who had high potential but couldn't do well for whatever reason, was given no help.

Shadab also has tons of potential but beyond him, it's a wasteland.

 

[Officer Barbrady]

Karachi was always known for spinning tracks and also always produced better players of spin so I think there’s something to this. Even today many of our best players of spin have come from Karachi - shafiq, Sarfraz, YK, Fawad and now Saud.

I think the issue extends beyond just the first class games and applies to pitches used for club cricket as well particularly in Punjab

 

[Officer Barbrady]

On the flipside I don’t think the solution to finding more spinners is to just create rank turners.

I think the target should be to have bounce in tracks that aids pacers willing to bend their backs in first class cricket and where spinners come into play on day 3 and 4.

 

[Savak]

Fair question to ask. The decision by the team management to stick with Shadab and Nawaz has badly backfired.

Its a pity that the pipeline for spinners is empty in our domestic circuit.

 

[Omer2002]

Exactly we have no fast bowlers now if our back up is hasan ali...and spinners i mean it is a disgrace

 

[7sins]

Exactly we have no fast bowlers now if our back up is hasan ali...and spinners i mean it is a disgrace

Unfortunately we have lots of injured fast bowlers naseem shah, ihsanulalh, hasnain, and not giving chances to top bowlers like abbas afridi and arshad iqbal. Plus not even considering Mohammad Amir

 

[7sins]

Fair question to ask. The decision by the team management to stick with Shadab and Nawaz has badly backfired.

Its a pity that the pipeline for spinners is empty in our domestic circuit.

Bit surely abrar, Usama won't do worse than these it's babar persistent backing of his average buddies that's costing pakistan team big time. Surely imad wasim would be a better option than out of form Nawaz right?

 

[shamaan]

Bit surely abrar, Usama won't do worse than these it's babar persistent backing of his average buddies that's costing pakistan team big time. Surely imad wasim would be a better option than out of form Nawaz right?

Mir will definitely be picked for the next game Shadab will be dropped.

 

[Major]

Saeed Ajmal was a great spinner who could have easily played up until the 2019 WC in LO cricket if the PCB had backed him like SLCB backed Murali.

Raza Hasan was another who had high potential but couldn't do well for whatever reason, was given no help.

Shadab also has tons of potential but beyond him, it's a wasteland.

oh bhai, Saeed Ajmal was a chucker. PCB cannot back a chucker, ICC was not gonna have it.

Why was Raza Hasan suppose to be helped? Raza Hasan was snorting cocaine and doing hashish. He should be thankful that PCB allowed him back to domestic cricket. No way that guy would had played Pakistan after that drug problem.

 

[Kianig89]

Shahab takes himself as Cr7 of Pakistan, cricket is not his priority anymore its yaari dosti which is keeping him in. We've failed to groom our players Abrar should have been tested in Wups and Asia Cup

 

[DandyFellow]

Our domestic tracks are extremely flat. Teams are scoring 600-700. Even bowler and low order batters are scoring centuries. Quality of cricket has really gone down at domestic level. We really need to improve our domestic pitches and prepare batters as well bowlers for international level pitches.

 

[Major]

Misbah, Younis, Azhar Ali and Hafeez were very good player of spins because they played alot of first class cricket in Pakistan plus the type of pitches we had were similar to the ones in UAE where the wicket would had spin by the end of Day 3.

What happened was Pakistani politics. When Imran Khan came into power, the focus was not on the qualitative aspect of bringing Kokubura bowls, fixing grounds and pitches, but the focus was on the quantitative aspect of reducing the number of domestic teams.

They reduced the teams and gave each other a pat on the back that we will get quality cricketers. What happened was alot of spinners lost their spots in the team.

Misbah was having the discussion on the Pavilion that first they made pitches that had grass on it where medium pacers getting wickets. Now they have made pitches that are completely flat. On these flat pitches there is no life on the wicket even on Day 3 or Day 4. Misbah also said that the right cricket ball is not being used aswell. If you want to use a Dukes or a Kokubura than you also need to have that kind of pitch.

Moin Khan kept defending the pitches because his brother was the director of domestic cricket.

 

[Asad T]

Misbah ul Haqi and Moin Khan on why we can't play left-arm wrist spinners well (via A sports):

Misbah-ul-Haq:
I think that if you are deficient in one thing, then you have to practice to overcome that deficiency. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, in the last 10 to 12 years, we have not had [left-arm Chinamen bowlers]. Recently, we have had two bowlers; one of them is under 16 and his name is Faisal Akram. He is not getting any consistent chances, and he is not bowling enough against the Pakistani batters. We called him for the practice matches against the Pakistani team, and even then everybody was having problems trying to read him in the nets. And the other one is Sufiyan Muqeem, who is playing for the Pakistan Shaheens. So the thing is, if you are not used to playing such bowlers, then you will always have difficulty picking them. The other thing is that our batters are not playing the wrist spinners that often, and they are not reading the ball off the hand. The thing is that you have to watch the bowler closely; you have to watch the videos of the hands of these bowlers.

Moin khan:
The other problem that I have seen is that our batters play with a very hard grip against the spinners. You can play with a hard grip against the pace bowlers, but you cannot do that against the spinner, especially on a pitch where the ball is turning.

 

[Nikhil_cric]

Pakistan haven't had spinning pitches since 1999 in your domestic.

Hassan Cheema had an excellent article on Cricinfo which highlighted that.

 

[BouncerGuy]

Not only Pakistan is having difficulty facing the spinners, They also lack a quality spin attack in this world cup. These stats are getting worse and worse.

 

[Savak]

Moin was actually defending flat batting pitches in our domestic cricket ie there should be no freebies for the bowlers, this is the only way the bowlers will actually get tough, be forced to learn new skills, get more creative when it comes to trying to get the batsman out.

 

[Asad T]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1719296689692156140

 

[Savak]

The quality of spin bowling in our domestic circuit as we are witnessing in our National T20 cup is very depressing. All the spinners on display are mostly very average and are just net bowlers who roll their arm up every once in a while. This is a grass roots problem where bowlers are discouraged from bowling spin and are content with darting the ball in for 4 overs and thats it.

 

[Cricket Warrior]

its not about spin tracks, questions is that do we have any better spinners playing in domestic circuit?

 

[Fenrir]

How a country like Afghanistan which has no proper infrastructure can produce excellent spinners and Pakistan can’t.Is it pitches,corruption and nepotism,poor coaches or something else?.Why can’t PCB make good pitches like England.I know conditions are different but it is still possible to make sporting pitches if you have good ground staff.I think Dubai pitch used in T20 World Cup had bounce and swing.Was very good for pacers.Dubai is in a desert!

 

[kron]

Unfortunately we have lots of injured fast bowlers naseem shah, ihsanulalh, hasnain, and not giving chances to top bowlers like abbas afridi and arshad iqbal. Plus not even considering Mohammad Amir

And sameen gul.

 

[BouncerGuy]

When we examine domestic cricket, we find a lack of exceptional-quality spinners. When the likes of Iftikhar and Shoaib are still doing damage with the bowl then we can see the quality of our spinners.