Garry Sobers was batting on 364, the then world record, when the occasional off-spinner bowling to him, the batsman Hanif Mohammad, switched to left-arm spin. It was the third ball of the over. “Hanif, not a bowler of note,” Sobers is quoted as saying in Osman Samiuddin’s The Unquiet Ones, “asked the umpire if he could bowl left-handed as I needed just one run for the record. I said it was all right and he could bowl with both hands if he wished.”
Sobers pushed to cover and ran the single for the highest individual score in a Test innings — a record that stood for 36 years before Brian Lara broke it.
Bowlers, usually spinners, have bowled off either arm in the final hour of matches heading for dull draws to provide light relief. Graham Gooch has done it, Hashan Tillakaratne did it in a World Cup game. In a first-class match in 1982, Sussex opening batsman Charles Rowe bowled Geoff Arnold with off-spin, then switched to left-arm spin next ball and dismissed the No. 11 off a rank long hop.
Still, the genuinely ambidextrous bowler has been a freak in cricket. Brian Close played golf with equal ease standing on either side of the club. Baseball hero Micky Mantle, a switch hitter of rare talent could strike from both sides of the plate. But neither sport calls for footwork in the manner cricket does, both while batting and bowling.
Many bowlers, especially spinners, at school level or even later, are capable of bowling either left-arm or right, but two things happen and as they grow older they either lose the ability or push it aside. The great Bhagwat Chandrasekhar occasionally bowled left-arm spin for his college (he also kept wickets and was a leading batsman, but that’s another story!) before he became a match-winning leg-spinner for India.
As bowlers with this dual ability developed, they would discover what they were better at and simply ignore the other skill; more often, coaches told them to focus on one style of bowling. I remember the Karnataka coach Keki Tarapore responding thus to a schoolboy’s question long ago, “It takes years to hone your skill as an off-spinner or as a left-arm spinner. It makes no sense to attempt both; it is better to be a good offie than a mediocre left-armer who also bowls mediocre off-spin.”
It says something for the evolution of coaching that a 23-year-old off-spinner from Vidarbha is also being encouraged to bowl left-arm spin. Akshay Karnewar’s first coach, noticing that he did everything left-handed (except bowl), suggested he bowl left-arm spin too. His Vidarbha coach, Paras Mhambrey is more cautious, asking him to focus on off-spin in first-class cricket. Either Karnewar will have to make a choice soon, or he might develop into a serious dual-competence bowler. His age might be against him, but his ability throws light on what is possible.
Next big thing
Cricket is always getting ready for the next big thing. At the turn of the century John Buchanan, coach of the Australian team, said the next big thing would be the bowler who could deliver off either hand. He predicted that the 2007 World Cup would see such a bowler. Eight years and two more World Cups later, we haven’t spotted such a superman yet. But that’s only at the international level.
In India alone Kerala’s Mohammed Sanuth, and Gujarat’s Pradip Champawat have been known to bowl in two different styles. Most right-thinking coaches would advise such bowlers to focus on the style they are more comfortable with. There are too many adjustments that a bowler has to make — from getting his feet, his trunk, head, eyes in alignment — to suddenly be able to do all that with the other side of the body. Most people have a stronger eye, a stronger shoulder and a stronger side; bowling at the highest level off either hand will require both sides of the body to be of equal strength.
But with cricket — especially the shorter variety — constantly searching for the all-rounder (in various senses of the term), might not a combination of nature and nurture work in favour of the ‘freak’? The thought is exciting. After all, who believed that the reverse swing or the doosra were possible till someone actually bowled these deliveries?
Sobers was an all-rounder in most senses of the term. He bowled left-arm as fast as anybody, then could switch to spin and was one of the great fielders. It was said that the only thing he could not do was to keep wickets to his own bowling. He could not bowl right-arm off-spin either. Ian Chappell has said somewhere that that alone means it can’t be done!
Published – January 20, 2016 03:55 am IST
