Every spectrum to be successful in life comes with alternate dimensions and one of them is called adaptability. At times, we start off as something and then life presents us with another path which we do have to tread in order for the survival of our dreams, let’s say for instance, from being spinners to wrecking balls of pace.
We are going to look at one such story today where these cricketers started off their career as renowned spinners but then transformed into something a lot more menacing. The transformation is indeed noteworthy because the art of spinning the ball aptly is a rare art and once you have mastered it, the divorce between the same and yourself is a sour one and yet you do it because you have to protect your dreams at all costs.
Sreesanth
A tragic hero, who dismantled Australia by bits and pieces in the 2007 T20 World Cup semi-final, castling the likes of a marauding Gilchrist and an on-fire Hayden, was also the same one who flailed his bat frenetically answering a taunt by South African legend, Andre Nel. Haplessly, he fell into tainted ranks and that cost him his cricketing career.
However, the story that we will hear in this piece was quoted by Stars Unfolded where it was stated that he started his career as a leggie. Mastering the art of spin is difficult but when it comes to leg-spin, it becomes more elusive. Not all who start, achieve success and Sreesanth was one of the latter categories. Idolizing Anil Kumble, he failed to revive himself as a leggie but discovered pace in the process. He used his pace to emerge as one of the top-pacers in the Indian echelons only to be brought down by a sequence of events that were unfortunate and unwanted.
Shoaib Malik
This is definitely not a surprise to anyone as Shoaib Malik still continues to be a renowned all-rounder. In an extremely tragic road-accident, today morning, he is in critical shape at the moment. However, before he manifested as the legend that he is at the moment, he started his career as an off-spinner.
He used to come out at number 7 or 8 to support his team in the tail and that upholstering at the end eventually turned into one of the best batting bulwarks for Pakistan. He carried on with his off-spin too and that was what got him his breakthrough in international cricket.
Steve Smith
In a recent confab with Virat Kohli, Steven Smith asserted that he was a part of the Australian team because of his blonde hair that made him look closely like Shane Warne and because he was a leg-spinner too. He was compared with Warne as one of the potent spinners in his early stages.
Eventually torn between batting and bowling, he chose to let go of the latter and focused on the willow-wielding art. Thanks to some stringent supervision from his preceptors, Smith chose the right career, and he is now a part of the batting trifecta that includes Kohli and Kane Williamson as the three top batsmen of the world.
Nasser Hussain
The famous English captain, Nasser Hussain who made himself a household emblem of reliability in the English middle-order started his cricketing career as a talented leg-spinner. However, batting seemed a lot more intimate to him, and he opted for the blade.
People who witnessed him spinning the ball are black swans and yet when he did it, he ensured the fact that he did it with vim and vigour.
Kevin Pietersen
We are all aware of the fact that Kev was very well adept at the art of spinning his way through the middle overs, wringing out three to four crucial overs.
He started his career as a right-arm off-spinner and the switch wasn’t evident for him in this forte because it was for a very few days that he continued with the art of spin before boggled down with specialist spinners.
