The unpredictability of the game of cricket is known to every cricket fan. One delivery, One hit, or One over can completely change the intense thrilling matches. Many times a part-time bowler can pick a hattrick and a five-wicket haul and on the other hand, Many tailenders can hit boundaries to help their team accomplishing a sweet victory.
Uncertainty of the game does not only stay inside the cricketing field it goes far behind that, as many cricketers switch their profession,i.e. bowlers become batsmen and batsmen become bowlers. Due to changes in interest over time cricketers focus on developing their secondary skills and master them to overtake their primary skills.
Many cricketers transform themselves after realizing their true potential. Historically, many bowlers have evolved them into a complete specialist batsman and ruled the ICC rankings It’s fascinating to see players totally change their specialist field and work in other provinces to grow in their cricket careers. Let’s have a look at players who evolved them from being spinners:
Steve Smith
The Australian leg spinner with blonde hairs; Steve Smith. In the early stages of his career, he was often compared with the Veteran Aussie leg spinner Shane Warne, many even thought he would be the one to be called Warne’s successor. But who thought he will be correlated with legendary Sir Don Bradman.
Steve Smith shifted his career path and focused more on his batting skills. From being a leggie he turned into a professional batsman and became a player who can’t be even considered as an all-rounder. The 32-year-old is among the top batsmen in the world and is also a member of Fab-4 in the cricketing world.
Shoaib Malik
The off-spinner started his career solely as a spinner and batted at 7 and 8 positions to support the tail. Being a spinner didn’t help him archive great heights so he worked hard and focused on his batting skills more to become a handy batsman for the team
Malik is still considered one of the top batsmen on the Pakistan cricket team. Also, He is among the top run-getter for the team in limited over cricket. The 39-year-old is still a part-time all-rounder who can deliver some nice off-spin deliveries to pick wickets.
Nasser Hussain
Former Indian-born English captain is among the most successful player to lead England in international cricket. He started his career as a leg spinner but soon transformed himself into a brilliant batsman.
Nasser scored 5000+ Test runs and over 20,000 runs in First-class cricket. He entirely quit the bowling and has only 2 wickets in his name in first-class cricket. Hussain will always be recognized as one of the finest England skippers.
Currently, he has is a full-time commentator and is one of the finest in the business.
Kevin Pietersen
Another successful player of England cricket team in the list. He was a right arm-off-spinner in the introductory stage of his career but he wasn’t able to enjoy the bowling and turned himself into an extraordinary batsman.
The 6ft 4 became very successful and the switch turned out to be the best decision of his life for him. Kevin enjoyed massive success throughout his career and is named among the top players to play for England on the international side.
He is currently the third-highest run-scorer for England in international cricket. Pietersen also scalped 18 wickets in his career.
Sreesanth
The hero of the 2007 T20 World Cup semi-final dismissed batsmen like star batsmen Adam Gilchrist and an on-fire Matthew Hayden. Sreesanth in the early stages of cricket idealized veteran leg spinner Anil Kumble and wanted to become a successful Leg spinner like him but he failed miserably.
Sreesanth however in the process of learning leg-spin discovered his pace and became a fierce pacer for India. He was an important asset for the team, but due to some spot-fixing controversies, his career in international cricket ended in an unfortunate manner.