The first signs that Indian spin bowling would play a major role internationally came in 1937-38. Playing against Lord Tennyson's team as a 20-year-old discovery of former Sussex professional AF Wensley, Mulvantrai Himatlal Mankad picked up 15 wickets, at an average of just 14.53, with his left arm spinners, while also scoring 376 runs at an average of 62.66 with his aggressive right handed batting. For all his skilled batsmanship, it was Mankad's bowling that really caught the eye.

Mankad's bowling - an art form of the highest aesthetic qualities - was something to be enjoyed on the spot, for the best of his deliveries defied description. He used to have the batsman in two minds ­ and finally, in no frame of mind at all! If the batsman took a step backward, he realized that he should have gone forward. If, to the next ball, he did go forward, he realized he should have played back.

To the naïve spectator, who saw Mankad tossing up slow deliveries, it must have been the simplest thing to come up against. From the safety and comfort of the stands, an impression might have been formed that there was nothing great about this bowling. But only the batsman, suffering the tortures of a thousand deaths out there in the middle, knew fully well that varied intricacies were the hallmark of Mankad's bowling. Vicious turn, impeccable length and direction, alluring flight ­ all left the batsmen dazed. They wished they were anywhere else instead of being caught in this "spider's web".

Mankad's bowling - an art form of the highest aesthetic qualities - was something to be enjoyed on the spot, for the best of his deliveries defied description. He used to have the batsman in two minds ­ and finally, in no frame of mind at all! If the batsman took a step backward, he realized that he should have gone forward. If, to the next ball, he did go forward, he realized he should have played back.

And so it used to go on for a few agonizing minutes ­ which must have seemed like eternity for the hapless batsman ­ till, unable to stand it an any longer, he would charge out and essay an ill-timed swipe. Only to find himself bowled, or perhaps be stumped or caught in the outfield.

However mechanical his bowling might have looked from a distance, no two deliveries by Mankad were alike. He would bowl the orthodox spinner ­ going away from the bat ­ and then, for the next delivery, bowl the arm ball without any apparent change of action. With such deceptiveness, he frequently trapped batsmen leg-before. At other times, he would force the batsman to play the stroke early and offer a return catch. The tempting flight brought him most of his stumped victims. Mankad's long career was marked by legendary feats. He bowled India to victory with match hauls of 12 and 13 wickets and finished with the record Indian tally of 162 wickets from 44 Tests at an average of 32.31 ­ a creditable feat when one recalls that he also scored 2109 runs.

In the late forties, Mankad was joined in the tweaking trade by another world class bowler. Ghulam Ahmed was a tall, right-arm off-spinner who, over the next decade, played 22 Tests, picking up 68 wickets at 30.17 apiece. Ghulam, who had an easy action, was the master of subtle flight and possessed immense variation over length and direction. A deep analyst of the game, he always gave the impression that he was thinking the batsman out. His best moment came in the Calcutta Test against Australia in 1956, when he took 10 for 130; but he also harried the English batsmen at Leeds in 1952, when he took seven of the 13 wickets that fell.

By the early fifties, the first great Indian spin trio was completed with the arrival of Subash Pandarinath Gupte on the scene. In a class of his own and, at his peak, the best of his type in the world, Gupte was India's champion bowler of the fifties. For most of the decade, he would have walked into a World XI. Like Mankad in an earlier period and Prasanna around a decade later, Gupte made batsman look like a clown in a circus. As long as they stayed at the crease, it would be an ordeal for them. To spot his googly was akin to finding one's way in a fog; one just groped blindly forward and hoped for the best. To differentiate between Gupte's leg spinner and top spinner was the most difficult "examination" for a batsman.

For a leg-spinner, a breed of bowler that generally has to purchase wickets, Gupte was remarkably accurate in his direction and almost impeccable in length. To add to all this, he was also a prodigious spinner of the ball. The times were not infrequent when he used to bowl the perfect specimen of the leg spinner's art ­ a ball pitched on the leg stump, drawing the batsman out, and hitting the top of the off-stump. But he was not a mechanical spinner; he was constantly thinking of ways to get the batsman out. While his googly was the most difficult to spot in international cricket, his top-spinner used to leap up at the batsman with the ferocity of a tiger leaping on its hapless victim.

As the side's premier bowler in the fifties, Gupte suffered most through dropped catches and poor fielding, yet finished with an impressive tally of 149 wickets from 36 Tests at an average of 29.54. The youngest of the trio, he kept going until the early sixties. There was the occasional star turn by other bowlers, notably off-spinner Jasu Patel who, with 14 wickets, scripted a famous victory over Australia at Kanpur in 1959. But it was the trio who bore the burden of Indian bowling through the fifties. By 1959, Mankad and Ghulam had retired, while Gupte played his last Test in 1961. A great era, which paved the way for young spinners to take over, had come to an end.

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