The art of spin bowling in cricket is beautified by a range of bowling techniques from topspin, off-spin, leg spin, googly, leg break, off break and many more. One such term is chinaman. The origins of this word date back to the 19th century, when Reggie Schwarz, a right arm legbreak bowler would start bowling the googly. As a legbreak bowler, Schwarz’s deliveries would turn from left to right upon pitching. However, in a googly, the ball’s direction would inverse to right to left which often bamboozled the batters.
Charles Llewellyn was a teammate of Reggie Schwarz. From one Protea to another, Schwarz advised Llewellyn, to add a variation in his leg-spin delivery by making adjustments in his wrist movement. Lleywellyn, who had a high arm action would take several years to master this technique as he was a left-hander bowler. But when he finally executed it on the cricket pitch, the ball would turn sharply from right to left. He is thus credited as one of the first proponents of the chinaman delivery.
When English cricketer Walter Robins was dismissed by Ellis Achong in 1933 with a sharp spinning delivery, Robins said to the umpire a line which is now etched in history books. On his way back to the pavilion, Robins told the umpire, “Fancy being done by a bloody Chinaman!”. Learie Constantine, one of the greatest all-rounders of all time, heard Robins’ comment and replied, “Is that the man or the ball?”. Since Achong was a West Indies spinner of Chinese origin, the word chinaman grew in popularity after the altercations between the Englishman and the Caribbean.
Brad Hogg, Paul Adams, Kuldeep Yadav, and Tabriz Samsi are some prominent exponents of the chinaman delivery in the 21st century. This variant of spin bowling is also called unorthodox left arm wrist spin. The term chinaman has grown less in popularity as some believe it to be discriminatory.
