Kaneria could be Pakistan’s trump card

In fact, it’s the success that Tendulkar has achieved by pitching the ball in the rough outside leg that has probably prompted the Pakistan think-tank to include Kaneria in the playing XI for the Jamshedpur one-dayer. Tendulkar picked up five wickets at Kochi and dried up the runs in Vizag. It eventually led to the run out of skipper Inzamam Ul Haq and cost Pakistan the match.

When Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was asked — repeatedly — about Kaneria’s exclusion he defended the decision by pointing towards the presence of Afridi in the eleven. But the way Shahid Afridi was treated with contempt in the one-dayer at Kochi and Vizag makes it clear that his quickish variety of leg spin will always be easy to handle because the ball comes very easily onto the bat.

Kaneria will vary the pace and use the crease much better than the other Pakistani spinners; he would, in the first two games, have been the wicket-taker that Inzamam has admitted to missing most.

It could, however, make more sense to play two leg-spinners — orthodox and unorthodox — instead of Mohammad Hafeez and Arshad Khan, who bowl off-spin in similar style.

Kaneria — who picked up 19 wickets in the Test series — cites the Pakistan team of the late eighties and early nineties when Abdul Qadir and Mushtaq Ahmed played together. ‘‘We have done that in the past, after all the nature of the game remains the same doesn’t it?’’

Leg-spinners and one-day cricket have had a rocky relationship since the limited-overs game gained in stature in the 1980s. Tell that to Kaneria and he just shrugs his shoulders. ‘‘Leg-spinners are by nature wicket-takers. Anyone like that will always be successful in any form of the game. He will keep taking wickets and that is till today the best way to stop the scoring rate from climbing.’’

In the late 1980s, Abdul Qadir made leg-spin in one-day cricket a fashion and Laxman Sivaramakrishnan romanticized it during the World Series Cup in 1985. But the art enjoyed its best phase in the nineties when the trio of Anil Kumble, Mushtaq Ahmed and Shane Warne became key members of their teams and enjoyed success in the shorter version of the game.

Today, apart from Sri Lanka’s Upul Chandana there is no other leg-spinner currently playing one-day cricket consistently for any international team.

Time for Kaneria to set that right.