IPL's Twenty20 Spin Buzz

With the fast bowlers’ pace aiding the batsmen in their follow through to hit the ball clean across the boundary, the spinners and slow bowlers with their variations provide the ideal breaks...

- Sreelata S. Yellamrazu

Not even a week into the eleventh edition of the Indian Premier League, already making waves is the talk about how spinners have been the unlikely heroes of the IPL’s Twenty20 story and why teams without spinners may go bust sooner rather than later in this edition of the IPL.

If one were to recall the early days of Twenty20, leave alone the days leading up the inaugural Indian Premier League edition in 2008, the talk revolved not only around how the fast bowlers would feel an even more unfair deal with the advent of the cricket’s shortest format yet but also, of how the spinners were potentially easy pickings for the batsmen not afraid to clobber every ball from the word go. There was fair skepticism when the first players auctions took place and it stemmed as much from the experienced spinners as it did from team strategists still coming to terms with the bombastic model of the game. The license for the batsmen to throw caution to the wind seemed to spell doom for the bowlers and more importantly, the slower bowlers including the spinners.