“Mystery spinners” are like outstanding batting champions and dizzyingly swift fast bowlers. They come along all-too infrequently, and when they do, the cricket world loves them. Richie Benaud ranked Johnny Gleeson with Bosanquet, Iverson and Warne as a man who changed the way the spinning art was seen forever. You’d have to add Murali to that list. It must be said, though, that Iverson and Gleeson, who died in October aged 78, were not persisted with as spin bowlers must be. They were much more than the “novelty” acts today’s fans might consider them.

In our last issue, Jason Krejza highlighted the lack of persistence, preparation and exposure faced by our spinners, and even before today’s current spin-unfriendly conditions, Australia’s spinners always tended to have a conditional tenure.

In 2013, Inside Sport wrote of Iverson, “His career was all too brief, and it could be argued – in fact it has been, frequently – that the willow-wielders might have worked him out had he remained long enough. In fact, they say that’s why Jack went as quickly as he came. It’s doubtful though. Iverson was no mug, and after all, experience cuts both ways. He had the basic tools and cricketing intelligence, and had unlocked and mastered a secret that most cricketers didn’t even know existed. Batsman might have worked him out to an extent, but his amazingly varied gift would have enabled him to keep them guessing forever, had he played enough.” The same could be said of Johnny Gleeson, who also used Iverson’s ground-breaking three-fingered grip (middle finger bent the way a leg-spinner’s ring finger normally is) and could turn it either way without any discernible change to his action or make it shoot or kick with small movements of his thumb. Batsmen like Boycott and Barry Richards claimed to have worked him out, but had he played top-level cricket enough, Gleeson, a spin-bowling enthusiast as well as exponent, possessed enough variety and cricket smarts to work them out right back!

A few ordinary Tests led selectors to believe batsmen like Richards and Boycott, playing the mind games batsmen do, were correct, and the breakthrough 1972 Ashes series in England was his last series.

Johnny was nicknamed “Cho”, which stood for “cricketing hours only”. Apart from training and playing, no-one ever spotted him. He was an enigmatic figure with a quirky bush sense of humour, a strange, low run-up for a tall man, and a flat trajectory. Though he preferred bowling on greentops than Subcontinental dustbowls, experience might have changed that. Because he was so good in those conditions, he was a great complement to fast bowlers. His accuracy and pace off the wicket meant he was often used in defensive roles. These abilities lead to that paradox many abilities do: they can imprison as well as liberate the exponent.

The old LBW rule, which was unfair in the extreme and a discouragement to many potentially great spin bowlers, meant batsmen could pad Cho’s almost-unreadable googly with impunity. Under today’s conditions, such tactics would have seen a procession of bamboozled batsmen, and his overall figures would have been greatly enhanced.

In many ways, Gleeson was punished in some of his later Tests as he experimented for greater variety. The permutations his bowling action presented were sometimes as much a mystery to him as they were to batsmen, and we always felt that he was dropped while still in the process of discovering himself. Mentoring and experience might have helped. Had he come along 40 years later, Johnny Gleeson might easily have become a legendary “mystery spinner”. As it is, he deservedly keeps some prestigious company.

Vale, Johnny.

Published in Inside Cricket, December, 2016