The sports depth can be measured in terms of varied tricks that are involved in its play. Some tricks are easily mastered while others require an immense amount of hard work, passion, and skill. In the context of cricket leg-spin is possibly one of the most difficult and beautiful Art. The leg break, leg-spin or leggie is a ball that will break its trajectory from leg to off for a right-handed batsman that’s why its called leg break. Some refer to this as wist spin as revolution is generated by wist, not fingers. This depends on two factors wrist position and drift in air compounded by surface. The leg break requires precise movement of the ball in both horizontal and vertical directions before pitching knows as drift and dip respectively. This is even difficult to bowl if you analyze movement off the pitch and in the air.
What makes it beautiful is its diversity. The four major forms conventional leg break, topspin, flipper, and googly all independent and effective delivery. The armory of leg-spin is an ever-evolving field making it difficult fo batsman to read.
A googly, or “wrong’un”, is a major weapon in armor, delivery that appears like a normal leg-break but actually turns like an off-break, rather than away from the batsman in opposite direction.
There was a time post-70s when this was in a closet, particularly after the Chandra there was no leg spinner. Then came the maestro from Pakistan who not only revived this dying art but inspired a whole lot of new generation. Sri Lanka in spite of being an Asian country failed to have quality leg-break bowlers.
How have leggie performed against other style of spin bowling. The through out the analysis we have selected bowlers who have scalped at least 100 test wickets.
Why has England failed to produce genuine leg spinner? Although there was one from Kent Doug Wright who scalped 108 wickets but he was a mixture of Right-arm medium and Legbreak. England did had large chunks of left-arm slow bowlers.
India remains the only country to have equal distribution of leg break,off-break, and left-arm spinners.
Pakistan on contrary never had a bowler with an off-break before the arrival of Saqlain Mushtaq. After that, they had Saeed Ajmal for some time before he was banned because of suspect bowling action.
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