Date-stamped : 21 Jan97 - 22:16 19 January 1997 Off-spinner Saqlain`s `mystery ball` Ihithis- ham Kamardeen MELBOURNE: Ashley Mallett, Australia`s finest off-spinner of the past 40 years, has admitted his own puzzlement about Saqlain Mushtaq`s "mystery ball". Initially, the 35-Test spinner expressed reservations about the 20-year-old Pakistani right-arm off-spinner`s ability to turn the ball from leg stump to off stump or from right to left as a vir- tual leg-break. Then Mallett recalled the words of former England spin wizard, Jim Laker, who once told him that sometimes he had no idea in which direction the ball would spin when he imparted under-cut with the seam horizontal, the ball skidding off the shiny surface or sometimes snagging and biting off the seam. "Three balls out of six when Jim put under-cut on the ball, he wasn`t sure which way the ball would deviate," Mallett said. "If Jim did not know, the batsman had no hope." Laker had a better idea than most spinners who ever breathed how the ball would react if for no other reason than that he played 18 years of first-class cricket, during which he took 19-90 in the Old Trafford Test against Australia in the golden summer of 1956. Mallett has watched the prodigious Saqlain time and again on television, but even with the refinements of the miraculous slow motion camera, he has not detected the finger or hand movement to suggest, with the limitations of the off-spinner`s art, how Saqlain occasionally turns the ball in the opposite direction. "There are ways to turn the ball from the legside, either by throwing it or by flicking it with the thumb," Mallett said. "I have not watched him closely in the nets. He may be double-joined in the fingers or in the elbow." Mallett suggested the off- spinner`s action was similar to someone reaching overhead to turn a door knob, with the seam vertical or at about 45 degrees for delivery of the stock ball. The off-spinner`s so-called "arm ball" is a simplistic descrip- tion of the pace bowler`s outswinger. Mallett suspected Saqlain was using more than an arm ball or a side-spinner, the delivery bowled with an off-break action and which straightens on pitching =97 "the ball which gets good batsmen out." Each time Mallett returned to the under-cut delivery, declaring: "You can`t pick it. It`s harder to detect than a leg spinner`s wrong un. "But I want to see him in the nets before I`m con- vinced." Some cyni-critics have poh-poohed the authenticity of the mystery ball. Not Pakistan`s captain, the irrepressible Wasim Akram. Three years ago, Akram returned from his county commitments with Lancashire and found himself batting against a new chum of the Pakistani squad, a 17-year-old youth from Lahore. The left-handed Akram fancied himself against off-spinners and danced down to the boy and, to his amazement, found the ball spinning back between bat and pad to bowl him. It happened on sufficient occasions for Akram to realise the boy was unique. After Pakistan`s eight-wicket defeat this week of the West Indies at the Sydney Cricket Ground, where Saqlain took 4-17 from nine overs, Akram said: "I have no idea how he bowls it. I pick it up now and then in the nets. "Saqlain is the best off-spinner in the world, a match-winner, and this "away ball, this mystery ball, is getting better day by day." Saqlain sat quietly beside his captain, reserved and good-natured rather than shy, a captain`s dream - professional, athletic and industrious - the best off-spinner since the mighty Tauseef Ahmed was called out of the crowd into the Karachi nets and bowled so well, then played in the Test the following day and became the best spinner of his era. From Saturday, Saqlain and Akram`s "youth team" meet the West In- dies in the first game of the best-of-three finals at the SCG. They have much to play for. Imran Khan`s side won the World Cup in Melbourne, but in five previous attempts Pakistan have never won the triangular tourna- ment in Australia. Source :: Dawn (http://xiber.com/dawn) Contributed by The Management (help@cricinfo.com)