Not the End of the World for Spinners as Predicted!

Ajantha Mendis: Star performer of World T20

A lot had been spoken about how T20 cricket would signal the end of the bowlers around the world and how spinners will be the ones most affected. The conspiracy theorists had alleged that not too many of the youngsters would ever prefer being bowlers given the way things were shaping and that without the flight, spin or any other kind of assistance, the spinners would be a dying breed.

If the 2009 version of the ICC World T20 was anything to go by, all those theorists would now be chewing on their words and trying to hide their face. The tournament went on to not only show the importance of the bowlers, but had three of the top five bowlers in the most number of wickets list as spinners!

Even without taking statistics into consideration, there was enough evidence in the tournament, that scoring off the spinners was very difficult; most batsmen tried getting their runs in the first six overs as the next six would invariably leave them struggling for the runs. And that, on grounds which usually do not support spinners to extent one would find in the sub-continent.

Quite clearly, the spinners are here to stay, whether it is the most traditional format of the game, or the most recent, wham-bam version!