Overview for The Gentle Executioners: Story of Indian Spinners
The history of cricket is replete with outstanding spin bowlers. Whether orthodox or unusual, left arm or right arm, off spin or leg spin, the cricketing world has seen them all. The list of great spin bowlers from various countries over the last century and a quarter of Test cricket makes for fascinating reading. From England’s Verity, Laker and Lock and Australia’s Grimmett, Benaud and Warne to West Indies’s Ramadhin, Valentine and Gibbs, Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir, Mushtaq and Sri Lanka’s Muralidharan it is a stunning line-up. Over the last century, Indian cricket also has produced an infinite variety of spin bowlers. From the pioneeringBaloo Palwankar in the early years of the 20th century to Harbhajan Singh today it has been an array of stars that dazzled the cricketing world. The feats of Vinoo Mankad, Ghulam Ahmed, Subash Gupte Bapu Nadkarni, Salim Durrani, Bishen Bedi, S. Venkatraghavan, E.A.S. Prasanna, B.S. Chandrasekhar, Dilip Doshi, Maninder Singh, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh have held people spellbound. The Gentre Executioners besides detailing the exploits of the great spinners captures the ethos of the rich Indian spin bowling tradition.
Partab Ramchand (Author)
Partab Ramchand, a sports journalist for 36 years Partab Ramchand has had a rich and varied experience in working in all fields of the profession print journalism, internet journalism and electronic journalism, both television and radio. From 1982 to 1994 he was the Madras correspondent for Sportsworld magazine and also wrote extensively for The Telegraph, Kolkata. In 1994 he rejoined Indian Express as Deputy News Editor (Sports) and headed the department till he resigned in March 1999 he joined Criclinfo the world’s leading cricket website and served as senior editor till August 2001. From September 2001 to February 2003 he was the contributing editor for Criclinfo and his columns appeared on the India pages of the site. He has been freelancing and working simultaneously on a number of books to be brought out over tehe next two years. He has authored five books on Indian cricket since December 1972. He has presented various sports programmes for Doordarshan and has regularly conducted sports quiz, talk shows and interviews for All India Radio. In 2002 he was the Chief consultant for a Bangalore based IT company on its project “Phoenix XI the greatest ever Indian cricket team.â€
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