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Conventional theory has it that the faster bowlers will dominate this World Cup as it is being played in the early weeks of an English summer. So the South Africans have been promoted as worthy favourites despite the absence of Pat Symcox and Paul Adams, their two spinners of recent Test series.

All the other major spin bowlers in the world have stood their ground, which is a huge bonus for spectators, and they may yet hold the key to which captain receives the cup at Lord's on June 20.

In pre-match planning, there will be only a handful of batsmen who fancy going on the attack against the likes of Warne, Kumble, Saqlain and Muralitharan. They tend to be bowled in the middle of the innings, a time for consolidation. But more importantly, they all pose the problem for most batsmen of not knowing which way the ball is going. You can defend against the turning ball by playing late, but trouble awaits if you are looking to pull or cut one that goes the other way.

Three of these can reasonably claim to have taken their art to new heights. Shane Warne, in his early days with prodigious inswing before turning the other way; Saqlain Mushtaq, who genuinely spins the ball from leg to off out of the front of the hand; and Muttiah Muralitharan, who imparts more rotation, again out of the front of the hand, than seems possible.

Thinking back, they come from a long line of pioneers starting possibly with Bernard Bosanquet, who first unveiled the googly at Lord's in 1900.

It took the passage of two world wars before the next 'freak' bowler came along in the form of an Aussie, Jack Iverson, who was supposed to have developed his mystery ball while on service in New Guinea. The ball was spun either way from between his thumb and a bent middle finger and it was a while before batsmen were able to pick up signs as to which was which by the way his thumb pointed having gripped the ball. He took 21 wickets in his five Tests at 15 apiece before a freak injury, treading on the ball, ended his career.

I played against Sonny Ramadhin, who had everyone in a spin for quite a while because every ball he bowled looked like a normal leg-break except that his stock ball definitely went the other way. At Cambridge we were captained by Gamini Goonesena, no mean leg-spinner himself, and he told us to play Ramadhin as an off-spinner and hope to miss the legger. It worked fairly well, but it never changed the look of the thing however long you were lucky enough to survive.

I also played against another odd-actioned bowler in Geoff Griffin, the only fast man in my list, who suffered much the same limitation as Muralitharan with a bowling arm which could not fully straighten after an accident as a schoolboy. He flattened my stumps in the second Test against South Africa at Lord's, the only time I could genuinely claim I never saw the ball at all.

But there was a sad sequel. Having taken the first hat-trick in a Test by a South African bowler, he was then called for throwing by umpires Frank Lee and Sid Buller and his career was virtually ended there and then.

Getting back to the line of deceptive and innovative spinners, another Australian, John Gleeson, made a major impact in the late Sixties using something like the Iverson method, but without use of a bent knuckle. He was a gentle spinner of the ball, but it went either way off the pitch and I was one of his victims at the Oval in my last Test match in 1968.

I note that John Edrich made 164, which rather gives the lie to the Geoffrey Boycott story of playing Gleeson on the 1970-71 tour to Australia. Edrich is said to have told Boycott of a way to pick Gleeson from a change in grip. ``I know that,'' Boycott is supposed to have replied, ``but don't tell the others!''

Of these early inventors and brave experimenters, Gleeson had the most successful career, spanning eight years with 430 first-class wickets, 93 of them in Tests, which will be eclipsed by the four present spinners, who between them will probably be into the thousands before they hang up their boots.

Mention must be made also in this context of the Indian spinner, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, who made a huge impact on the game despite suffering from polio at the age of five which left him with a withered right arm - his bowling arm. He actually threw with his left arm, but used his right like a flail, getting maximum bounce and plenty of spin.

Chandra was one of the main architects of India's first victory over England in England. In a superb Test career, he took 242 wickets in only 58 matches with 1,063 wickets in all at only 24 apiece.

All of these would have been useful, even in a modern-day World Cup, because they all caused uncertainty, which is so often a batsman's downfall.