Amit Mishra - Coming back to life
The beauty of a legspinner’s craft is one of the most clichéd yet true things about the game of cricket. Like left-handers in a world of 95% right handers, leggies are somewhat of an anomaly.
They turn the ball away from the right-handed batsmen with an action which translates to poetry in motion as compared to the jerky workmanlike actions of most of the rest of their brethren. And more often than not, they are pretty effective too – case in point being one Mister Shane Keith Warne.
You would have to search really hard in the annals of Wisden to find a classical legspinner from India who was successful to a significant extent.
I emphasize the words “successful” and “classical” for the two most successful legspinners from India – B.S. Chandrasekhar and Anil Kumble – would have been called freaks in a less politically correct age while, for all their talent, the more classical Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and Narendra Hirwani burned out even before Kurt Cobain could put a shotgun to his forehead.
Amit Mishra
Which brings us to the curious case of Amit Mishra. After the 2003 World Cup, a young team, on the lines of the one currently in Zimbabwe, was sent to yet another inconsequential tri-series in Bangladesh. The series was to give India the first glimpse of the future in the likes of Gautam Gambhir and Glenn McGrath clone Aavishkar Salvi. Along with them was a 21-year-old legspinner with more than a shock of hair.
He did not overtly impress with two wickets in three matches. Consequently, he was consigned to the dustbins of cricketing history and would have stayed there but for an injury to Anil Kumble after the first home Test against Australia in 2008. In the interim, India had tried Piyush Chawla without much success. Mishra was called up for the second Test in Mohali on a fast bowler’s pitch.
He responded with figures of 7 for 106 including a fiver on debut as India sauntered to an easy win. Kumble came back for the 3rd Test in Delhi but clearly looked past his prime as Mishra clearly out-bowled him in a rare instance of India playing two “wrong uns” in the same team.
Kumble retired promptly after that game, leaving Mishra with the opportunity to pick another five wickets in the next game at Nagpur and take India to a well-deserved series victory. The doors had finally opened for Amit Mishra.
Or so it seemed.
A stop-start career for Amit Mishra
His last full series as a Test bowler would be the very next series – the stop-start two Test home series against England. He picked up 6 wickets in the two matches, but they came at over 40 runs apiece. Over the next two and a half years, Mishra walked in and out of the Indian team as India trialled their now almost bare cupboard of backup spinners to Harbhajan Singh.