WHEN John Gleeson arrived in South Africa with Bill Lawry's 1969–70 tourists, he was said to have five variations – two offbreaks, legbreak, topspinner and googly– all delivered with the same visible action. Or, since the ball hid the work of the fingers from the batsman, the same invisible action.

 Gleeson's rise began with his fascination with the technique of Victoria bowler Jack Iverson, alias Wrong-Grip Jake. Though some credit Warwick Armstrong with being the first of the folded-finger spinners, Iverson was acclaimed for it. His unorthodox grip gave the batsman no clue as to which way the ball would spin, a nightmare for those taught to read the spinner's hand. Iverson's moment came in 1950–51, when Freddie Brown's England side was mugged 21 times at little cost in his pea-and-thimble game.

Having learned the secret, Gleeson set his own huge hands to work. He bagan as Conan Doyle's Spedegue had, only with bluegums instead of oaks, extending his distance from the target as his control improved. Hard work brought him success in bush cricket, thence to grade, State, and, at the age of 29, Test cricket.

 Australia had just won a series 3–1 in India. The batsmen had all made runs, but none with consistency. It was the bowlers who had won them the series. Between them spinners Gleeson and Ashley Mallett had picked off 38 scalps. On the slow Indian pitches, Mallett swept up the lion's share. Gleeson preferred pitches with more pace and bounce.

No surprise, then that Gleeson was the bowler the South Africans, traditionally weak against high-class spin, feared more than any other. Only Barry Richards had faced him, and then only once, in England. In the tour opener Gleeson landed a blow on the heart of South African cricket as he dismissed for not many the scourge of Bob Simpson's 1966–67 side, the great Denis Lindsay.

To the Press, this was manna from heaven. Newspapers across the country were flooded with stories of Gleeson the enigma. In the first two matches he picked up 18 wickets as provincial batsmen poked at him down the corridor of their own uncertainty. Soon came the counterblasts of South Africans eager to talk Gleeson down. Richards commented that, from reports, walking on water was one of his lesser accomplishments.

With a due sense of theater and caution, Gleeson was rested against Graeme Pollock's Eastern Province. Thus the stage was set for the First Test at Newlands, probably the slowest of South Africa's Test tracks, but also the most helpful to spinners.

 South Africa emerged from the match victorious by 170 runs. Amidst the acclaim, though, the headline in the JohannesburgSunday Times read:  Gleeson Still A Mystery. None of the batsmen had played him with any assurance. Countless times had he beaten the edge. And if his five wickets in the match cost him nearly 33 runs apiece, this was nothing to what chances missed in the field had cost him.

So the pattern for the series was set. In an attack shorn of its spearhead by the eclipse of Graham McKenzie, Gleeson toiled on. Against a batting line-up studded with greatness as it was with left-handers (against whom, the theory went, he was less effective), Gleeson sent down over after over. At times, only he and the great-hearted Victorian Alan Connolly looked likely to take a wicket. Between them these two sent down 470 of the 900 overs Australia bowled in the series.

It was Gleeson who bore the brunt of that famous, racing hour at Kingsmead when Richards and Pollock, seeking to outdo each other, put on more than a hundred in a calculated assault. When later that day Pollock was dropped on 102 in an otherwise chanceless 274, Gleeson was the anguished bowler. (The culprit that time was NSW colleague Brain Taber, whose claim to be able to read Gleeson was undercut by his displays. But he was not the only man who missed chances.)

 South Africa won all four Tests, the first whitewash of Australia since a two-match series in 1887–88. What's more, each Test was won by a greater margin than the preceding one. Yet as his team's stock fell, Gleeson's rose. In conditions favouring the seamer, and denied by the toss of the opportunity to bowl on a fourth-innings pitch, he nevertheless finished the series with 19 wickets at 38.94, behind Connolly's 20 at 26.10.

The bald figures do not do him credit. The only one of South Africa's top eight batsmen to deny him had been Richards (who in the First Test had taken what proved to be his only Test wicket. The victim? John Gleeson).

As the dust settled South Africa's batsmen, Richards included, paid tribute to Gleeson, admitting that they'd never really mastered him. Procter had tried to read him through the air, with little success: 11 years later, he would still rate Gleeson as the best spinner he'd ever faced. The sure-footed Richards had gone to meet the ball. When beaten in the flight, he'd used the pad, reasoning that if the batsman couldn't tell which way the ball was to turn, how could the umpire? The rest had played him off the pitch, as an offspinner to the right-hander, since the one that left them was often good enough to beat both bat and stumps.

 John Gleeson's Mysterious brand of spin brought him 93 wickets in 29 Tests

It was South Africa's captain Ali Bacher who fingered the factor which more than any other had left Australia's best spinner since Benaud blunted though unbowed. If Gleeson had received the same support in the field as the Springboks gave their bowlers, he said, it would have been much more difficult. In four Tests the Australians had dropped an astonishing 30 catches.

During the series, Gleeson let it be known that he was developing yet another invisible variation (though what spinner on a tour is not?). He returned home one of the tour's few successes, but, as Lawry's side was broken up, found himself sacrificed to younger blood after 29 Tests and 93 wickets. He toured South Africa again in 1973 with Derrick Robins's XI. His success was such that he was contracted the following year to play Currie Cup cricket. The team was Eastern Province, for whom he picked up 24 wickets at 26.50; and Graeme Pollock was his captain.

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