The West Indies batsmen didn't care much for spin bowling, either. They thought it was there to be savaged, and for the most part it was, even though seven of West Indies' 17 Test defeats during those 15 years of omnipotence were the result of dramatic collapses against spin bowling: some great (Shane Warne, Abdul Qadir), some good (Narendra Hirwani, Phil Tufnell) and some inexplicable (Allan Border, Bob Holland, Murray Bennett).
That was then and this is now. Just as India started to produce a series of fast bowlers in the 1990s, so the DNA of West Indian cricket is changing. A number of West Indies' brightest hopes are slow bowlers. With 2,764 days of the 2010s remaining, West Indian spinners have already taken more Test wickets in this decade than they did in the 1980s: 113 to 100, and in a quarter of the matches (21 to 82). Devendra Bishoo was the ICC Emerging Player of the Year in 2011; in April, Shane Shillingford became the first West Indian spinner to take 10 wickets in a Test since the great Lance Gibbs in 1966; and the mystery spinner Sunil Narine was the player of the season at the recent IPL.
Narine should made his Test debut at Edgbaston. In the best traditions of mystery spin, he has played only a few first-class matches. It might be the most keenly awaited Test debut in this country since Graeme Hick 21 years ago. Hick was terrorised and traumatised by fast men. Not any more. After the fast comes the new Ramadhin. Narine has been compared to the brilliant Sonny Ramadhin, another unorthodox off-spinner from Trinidad who shredded England in tandem with Alf Valentine in 1950.
The first thing that strikes you about Narine – apart from his trademark mohawk – is the numbers. Thirty-four first-class wickets at an average of 11.88, 14 at 20 in one-day internationals (with a 1980s economy rate of 3.79) and 46 at 14.04 in Twenty20 cricket (economy rate: 5.20). There is another number of note. Narine's life changed when he was bought for $700,000 by the Kolkata Knight Riders. It seemed like an almighty gamble on an unknown who was almost an oxymoron: a West Indian slowbowler. In fact it was a masterstroke; Narine was close to unhittable and starred as KKR won their first IPL. In the league stage he bowled Sachin Tendulkar with one of the balls of the tournament.
Narine's IPL business meant he missed the Test series against Australia. Sir Vivian Richards thinks West Indies might have won had he played. He did appear against Australia in the ODIs, consistently befuddling their top order. Sorry to go back to the numbers, but they are outrageous: Narine took 11 wickets at 14.45, with a 1970s economy rate of 3.32. Here's a video of those wickets. Nobody was harassed as much as the wicketkeeper Matthew Wade. He made two runs from 20 balls and was dismissed three times.
Narine's most famous weapon is his knuckle ball, which spits the wrong way off the pitch. He is also harder to read than Ulysses with a hangover, primarily because he often bowls with a scrambled seam. Narine has a lot more in his armoury besides mystery. He complements his wizardry with the accuracy of Merlyn – the bowling machine, that is. He also gets considerable bounce and turn and, according to the KKR bowling coach Wasim Akram, "has the ability to read batsmen's minds and bowl accordingly".
It is the mystery that most engages us, of course. The seductive appeal of such bowlers will never fade. They could be the femmes fatale of cricket, duplicitous and deadly. Ever since Bernard Bosanquet first bowled his googly – "it is not unfair," he said, "only immoral" – the world of unorthodox and mystery spin has captivated cricket fans. It's often little more than smoke and doosras – part of the pre-Ashes ritual in the 1990s involved Shane Warne telling the world he had a new delivery, before shredding England with the same old beastly legbreak – but we are happy to suppress tedious reality in favour of a magical world of googlies, doosras, flippers, knuckle balls, teesras, zooters, blooters and deliveries that tell us the time in Los Angeles.
As they consider facing Narine, some of the England batsmen might not share this enthusiasm. They had a diabolical time against Saeed Ajmal in the winter, none more so than Ian Bell: he made 17 runs and was dismissed four times for an Ajverage of 4.25. The fact England struggled against all spin in the winter – even the modest Rangana Herath – suggested a mental block rather than an intrinsic problem with unorthodox spin, although Bell in particular was unable to pick Ajmal's doosra. Even the best can have problems with mystery spin, however. When Allan Border faced a young Muttiah Muralitharan in 1992, he was originally convinced he was facing a leg-spinner who kept bowling googlies.
Ajmal and Murali prove Gideon Haigh's quote that "mystery is temporary, mastery permanent". In cricket, there is no existence more precarious than that of the mystery spinner. There are plenty of poignant stories of those who, after a stunning start, were demystified and had mediocrity thrust upon them. In his debut Test series in 2008, Mendis skelped India's formidable batting lineup with 26 wickets at 18.38 in three matches. Since then he has taken 36 in 13 Tests at an average of 42.66. His last Test appearance was 13 months ago. The case of the Indian leg-spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan in the 1980s was even more extreme. In his second and third Tests he took three consecutive six-fors against England. He played six more Tests in his career and took seven wickets at 104.14.
There is a sense that West Indies need to strike while Narine's hot, before batsmen work him out. Yet he may have enough mastery to go with his mystery. The consensus is that he is much more accurate than Mendis, and gets significantly more turn and bounce. The other issue is how he adapts to Test cricket; to being the hunter rather than the hunted. Ultimately, when it comes to mystery spin, nobody knows anything. It would not be a huge shock if Narine took six for 40 or one for 140 in his first Test innings. You could not say that of many bowlers, but then mystery spinners have always been a breed unto themselves.
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