Assessing the theory of a “Revolution of 1959”

Several years ago, I discussed how I had long noticed a shift in the late 1950s from spinners almost always heading the averages and wicket-takers, to pacemen equally consistently doing so afterwards. I called this putative change the “Revolution of 1959” as there were, in an undoubtedly short-sighted manner, changes to pitch covering in county cricket after the financial disaster of 1958.

The change that occurred over county cricket during the late 1950s was noticed to some extent in the press, but Wisden did not seriously note it until after the West Indies beat England in the 1963 series — then for the rest of the twentieth century one sees quite frequent lamentations of the decline of spin bowling in England. It is highly possible though that there is an element of code in these lamentations and that writers like Norman Preston, John Woodcock, Graeme Wright, Robin Marlar and David Green were more concerned to see England win more than to see more spin.

In order to test the hypothesis of a “Revolution of 1959”, I have compiled and tabulated below:

1. the number of spinners amongst the top 30 non-touring bowlers bowling at least one thousand balls in each English season between 1919 and 1999
2. the number of non-touring spinners who took over 100 wickets in each English season between 1919 and 1999
3. the most wickets by a non-touring spinner in each season

High numbers of spinners have been coloured in gold, and low numbers of spinners and of wickets have been shaded in red. Extremely low numbers of spinners and total wickets by the leading spinner have been shaded in dark red. There could be some variations in these figures due to difficulties of classifying many bowlers, especially older ones.

Season	Spinners in top 30	Spinners with over 100 wickets	Most wickets by spinner
1919	13	3	164
1920	18	12	185
1921	14	10	167
1922	12	12	206
1923	13	15	209
1924	12	12	204
1925	13	12	222
1926	15	14	213
1927	14	6	193
1928	15	9	304
1929	16	13	267
1930	17	12	275
1931	14	12	276
1932	17	11	253
1933	15	11	298
1934	11	9	205
1935	11	12	212
1936	11	8	216
1937	13	13	248
1938	13	11	153
1939	12	7	200
1946	20	15	184
1947	17	12	238
1948	20	13	174
1949	16	17	183
1950	18	16	193
1951	15	11	157
1952	15	14	177
1953	17	10	172
1954	15	11	196
1955	15	18	216
1956	18	17	177
1957	14	13	212
1958	12	5	170
1959	11	11	122
1960	9	7	142
1961	9	11	128
1962	8	4	136
1963	12	7	126
1964	12	11	136
1965	6	3	121
1966	10	8	157
1967	9	8	136
1968	7	5	131
1969	8	2	102
1970	7	4	106
1971	15	4	131
1972	10	0	90
1973	7	1	105
1974	6	1	113
1975	11	0	85
1976	13	0	93
1977	7	0	87
1978	5	1	110
1979	6	1	106
1980	9	1	101
1981	6	0	90
1982	7	0	90
1983	7	3	106
1984	8	0	93
1985	3	0	72
1986	6	0	89
1987	4	0	88
1988	1	0	76
1989	3	0	67
1990	3	0	75
1991	6	0	88
1992	6	0	87
1993	5	0	85
1994	2	0	90
1995	4	1	105
1996	3	0	78
1997	4	0	66
1998	2	0	63
1999	4	0	66

If we study the table above, we do see definite evidence of a “Revolution of 1959”. We do see that the number of spinners in the top thirty does fall abruptly between 1956 and 1962, and to a lower level than seen at any point between 1919 and 1956. Moreover, the 1959 season itself saw no spinner take 125 wickets, whereas in every season from 1919 (in fact from 1905) to 1958 at least one spinner took at least 150. There is, indeed, clear evidence that increased pitch covering and other changes like a standardised 75 yard boundary and intensive use of pesticides and artificial fertilisers (which allowed balls to retain shine for much longer, often from one new ball to the next) reduced the influence of spinners in the late 1950s, and that the influence of spin has continuously declined since.

Some scholars have argued that the decline of spin began much earlier — with the response to Bradman’s prolific scoring in 1930. It is true that the unusual postwar predominance of spin occurred because World War II almost completely eliminated a strong England pace attack, and replacement pacemen did not get the training against top opposition during the war they did in Australia. Nonetheless, even between 1934 and 1939, there were never so few spinners in the top thirty as there have constantly been since the beginnings of World Series Cricket in 1977, and the decimated postwar pace bowling recovered before the proportion of spinners plummeted.