Television commentators Sunil Gavaskar and Navjot Singh Sidhu have been quite vocal about the lack of sting in the bowling of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh in alien conditions, though they may differ in their perceptions about the effectiveness of India's slow men abroad over the decades.

In the long term, however, this new trend diluted the strength of the Indian attack. India produced neither match-winning pace bowlers nor slow bowlers who could do the job effectively, with the honourable exceptions of the Kapil Dev-Manoj Prabhakar and, for a brief while, Javagal Srinath-Venkatesh Prasad combinations.

While the Sikh expressed the view that even celebrated spinners of the past were toothless abroad, the Little Master pointed out that they did not always need the help of the dust-bowls at home to weave their spells around opposing batsmen.

What, then, is the way forward at present? Can India ever regain its superiority in slow bowling? Is a formal institution like the Chennai- based MAC Spin Academy the answer?

I feel strongly that a centralized institution like the Spin Academy can at best be a finishing school. A school can never produce spin bowlers, but it can certainly provide the finishing touches to a product that has already gone through the mill at the local and state levels.

To return to the Gavaskar-Sidhu debate, Indian victories in the West Indies, England, New Zealand and even Australia have owed much to the exploits of our spinners. From Bishan Singh Bedi, EAS Prasanna, BS Chandrasekhar, S Venkatraghavan, and Salim Durrani, down to Dilip Doshi and Shivlal Yadav, spin has found success abroad, even though batsmen played stellar roles too, and the medium-pacers led by Kapil Dev also scripted some of these success stories.

Ironically, it was during the captaincy tenures of Venkat (in England) and Sunil Gavaskar (at home and away) that the old combination of three spinners first gave way to one of two spinners supporting Kapil Dev. This was a turning point in the history of Indian cricket, introducing a trend that produced short-term gains like the famous 2-0 victory in England, brought about by excellent seam bowling.

In the long term, however, this new trend diluted the strength of the Indian attack. India produced neither match-winning pace bowlers nor slow bowlers who could do the job effectively, with the honourable exceptions of the Kapil Dev-Manoj Prabhakar and, for a brief while, Javagal Srinath-Venkatesh Prasad combinations.

It took the Ajit Wadekar-Mohammad Azharuddin duo to reintroduce spin trios and win matches at home, a successful ploy that was nevertheless exposed when India toured abroad. Two factors conspired to bring about this decline - the fall in the quality of spin talent available, and a horses-for-courses policy that led selectors to prefer even mediocre medium pacers to slow bowlers with potential.

Sunil Gavaskar got it right when he stressed the superiority of the spinners of the past. Even a cursory look at old scorecards will prove the veracity of his claims. Spinners had a major role to play in India's first series wins abroad - in New Zealand, the West Indies and England - a feat their successors have never been able to repeat.

It is essential to return to the atmosphere of the 60s and 70s, when we placed complete faith in our spinners' ability to bowl out oppositions; when captains brought the slow men on early enough to take advantage of the relative lack of footwork of as-yet-unsettled batsmen as well as the hardness of a newish ball; when spinners bowled a minimum of ten overs in a spell, not expected to do the trick right away; when spinners learnt first to spin the ball, then accuracy, and, much later, variation (an off spinner, for instance, learnt sharp off-spin before he experimented with the 'doosra').

What is imperative is the return of the spin mindset - confident, persevering and calculating. What is inescapable is hours, days and years of toil on the part of spinners to whom line and length become automatic before they graduate to first-class cricket, and who can land six consecutive balls on the spot.

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