Standing at the Ferozeshah Kotla, surrounded by young spin hopes, Shivlal Yadav remembers all the little details of the 1986-87 Ranji Trophy final, where he and his brother, Rajesh, helped Hyderabad to their second ever Ranji title. He remembers bowling Atul Wassan around his legs, and how he and Rajesh picked up eight wickets to squeeze a narrow first-innings lead running against time. On the sidelines of the DDCA’s spin camp, Yadav said he was aware of the backlash after India’s loss, especially over Harbhajan Singh’s lacklustre performance and Ajantha Mendis’s outstanding debut. “Do not discredit Harbhajan Singh just because he had one bad Test match. He has been a splendid bowler for the country and has won many matches on his own. “At the same time, we must accept that the Indian batsmen have not been able to pick Mendis. They have to attack him if they need to counter him. They need to come down the track, as VVS Laxman did against Australia (in 2001) at Kolkata against Shane Warne. Rahul Dravid at the other end was struggling to play Warne but once Laxman started using his feet, Warne was no longer a threat. You have to hit the spinner against the break in order to unsettle him. You can’t just play someone like Mendis from the crease,” he says. “And the best thing about Mendis is that he has a legitimate action too.”‘There’s talent in India’Yadav feels that while there’s no dearth of spin talent, there are few bowlers with clean actions. “A major concern for us even at the NCA has been the growing number of bowlers with suspect action. That way I am happy with the boys I have here.”Unlike other coaches’ opinion regarding slow bowlers in Twenty20, Yadav feels that a “good spinner can play in any format but at the same time initially youngsters should only play the longer version of the game. “I don’t like junior spinners playing a lot of one-day cricket or Twenty20. It can harm their wicket-taking ability,” he says.
