It's great to see the West Indies fielding two full-time spinners in the current Test series against Bangladesh. Veerasammy Permaul had a satisfactory debut last week but Sunil Narine, the darling of T20, is struggling a bit despite being a veteran of five matches. Their chances of being a potent partnership are probably quite slim. History is against them, too, as it's fifty years since Ramadhin and Valentine last played together for the Windies.
Apart from those two, only Lance Gibbs (for many years the world record holder with 309 wickets) and Carl Hooper have taken more than 100 scalps in Tests. The latter was really a batsman who bowled a bit, as his woeful average of 49 would indicate. His career (1987-2002) spanned much of the greatest period in Caribbean cricket history, especially in terms of fast bowling. For two decades, spin was used only to give the pace quartet a rest, to fill a gap before lunch or tea, and to increase the over rate to avoid a big fine! With the likes of Holding, Marshall, Bishop, Walsh and Ambrose dominating the attack, innocuous off-spin was mainly supplied, in addition to Hooper, by Roger Harper (46 wickets in 25 Tests)and batsmen like Viv Richards and Jimmy Adams (27 in 54). Chris Gayle has continued the practice into the past decade.
In the past ten years of so, selectors have dabbled with Shillingford, Banks, Hinds, Deonarine and Mohammed with very little success. It seems as soon as someone with Asian heritage starts to show promise in Trinidad or Guyana, they get called up. Narine, of course, first found fame in the 2011 T20 Champions League, and justified his hefty price tag in the IPL. Test cricket is a different beast, of course, but I think he deserved the opportunity to prove himself at the highest level. However, Bangladesh are hardly the creme de la creme, yet the young Trinidadian is so far finding it difficult on Asian pitches. Now into his fifth Test, Narine has claimed fifteen wickets at a dismal 45 apiece so I wonder how he'll fare in, for example, South Africa or Australia.
Darren Sammy doesn't have a Marshall, Garner or Ambrose at his disposal. Edwards, Rampaul, Best and the skipper himself are hardly a frightening seam attack so now is a great time to experiment. I just fear that a poor performance by the team in Bangladesh could herald a switch back to traditional selection policies and a return to T20 specialism for Narine. Permaul actually boasts an impressive first-class aggregate of 156 wickets at under 25 apiece so is arguably a better bet than Narine. Let's hope he gets a decent run in the Test side.
