Thanks for the feedback Moritz! Glad you enjoyed. Going to take a look into that question and see if I can spot anything interesting — will get back to you.
So have had a quick look and I think the 1989-1994 stretch (where the rolling average for spinners spikes from 35.5 to 45.8 — at the start of 1993 — and then falls back down to 35.2) is the interesting one.
Over this period, Australia were the only team which took wickets with spin at a better average (30.2) than their average over the entire post-war period (32.7) — and that's largely driven by Shane Warne after he debuted in Jan 1992. (He took 154 wickets at 22.6 in 31 tests over his first three years — a significantly better average than the 25.4 he ended his career at.)
India (35.3) were the only other team whose spinners averaged less than 40 over this period — even Sri Lanka were poor at 42.2, despite Muttiah Muralitharan debuting in mid-1992. (In contrast to Warne, the start of his career that falls in this period was worse than the rest of his career: a 1992-1994 average of 33.0, compared to a career average of 22.7.)
In short, it looks like there really was a historic dearth of spin bowling talent from the late 1980s into the early 1990s — causing the spike in the first chart — before it was rapidly pulled downwards again by the emergence of Warne in particular, with a more talented crop of bowlers (led by Warne, Muralitharan and also India's 1990 debutant Anil Kumble: the three spinners with the most wickets in test history, by a long way) driving much better returns through to the early 2000s.
There's some further discussion of this piece in the Comments section on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-wylie-journalism_pace-setters-activity-6893902512660058112-aJur
Thanks for the feedback Moritz! Glad you enjoyed. Going to take a look into that question and see if I can spot anything interesting — will get back to you.
So have had a quick look and I think the 1989-1994 stretch (where the rolling average for spinners spikes from 35.5 to 45.8 — at the start of 1993 — and then falls back down to 35.2) is the interesting one.
Over this period, Australia were the only team which took wickets with spin at a better average (30.2) than their average over the entire post-war period (32.7) — and that's largely driven by Shane Warne after he debuted in Jan 1992. (He took 154 wickets at 22.6 in 31 tests over his first three years — a significantly better average than the 25.4 he ended his career at.)
India (35.3) were the only other team whose spinners averaged less than 40 over this period — even Sri Lanka were poor at 42.2, despite Muttiah Muralitharan debuting in mid-1992. (In contrast to Warne, the start of his career that falls in this period was worse than the rest of his career: a 1992-1994 average of 33.0, compared to a career average of 22.7.)
In short, it looks like there really was a historic dearth of spin bowling talent from the late 1980s into the early 1990s — causing the spike in the first chart — before it was rapidly pulled downwards again by the emergence of Warne in particular, with a more talented crop of bowlers (led by Warne, Muralitharan and also India's 1990 debutant Anil Kumble: the three spinners with the most wickets in test history, by a long way) driving much better returns through to the early 2000s.
Hope that's helpful!