Robin Smith

i dont remember him being particularly bad at playing spin bowling.

like david gower, chris broad and various others, he was discarded because the selectors were a bunch of muppets.

He struggled against Warne and so did every English batsman in 90's except for Thorpe and that could only be the cricketing reason for his ouster.

fair enough. thorpe was so underrated during most of his career. although he didnt have the same sort of talent as gower had, he's arguably the best england middle order batsman since the 1960s.

He could have been as big as Micheal Hussey at prime,if he had got better support from the other end.

just watched a couple of robin smith videos on youtube. people were rating him the best batsman in the world in 1991.

england's selectors dropped him for john crawley

Robin Smith was a truly magnificent player of pace bowling, but he just couldn't play spin. He could never read where the ball was going.

In 1992, he struggled against Mushtaq Ahmed.

Then in the tour to India in late 1992, the 3 Indian spinners (Raju, Kumble and Chauhan) troubled him.

Then in 1993 Warne terrorised him.

By 1994, even Shivnarine Chanderpaul was giving him trouble.

Still, as bad as he was against spin, he was so much better than some of the other players at the time that his career was cut short. Selectors didn't have a clue at the time.

he averages 60 against pakistan and over 40 against both india and sri lanka.

you can not have those averages against those teams and not have a capacity to play spin bowling.

Pre-Murali, SL were nowhere near the team they are now.

I remember the series vs Pakistan in 1992 Summer, whilst he made a hundred in a drawn first test and 80* in the final test once England had lost the match, he never really produced when it mattered, because Mushtaq kept giving him trouble.

He did score heavily against India in the Summer of 1990 (who didn't) and I assume he was a better player of spin in his younger days, but once the doubts started to creep in (around 1992), he was clearly struggling.

However, when you consider quality of fast bowlers that were around then and you think how he handled them, it just shows what a phennomenal player he was against pace.

Nearly every English batsmen struggled against Indian spinners in 92 and against Pakistan pacers and Mushie in 92.It was only selectors fault that he did not played more test.The way he handled Ambrose,Walsh and Bishop in 90 was incredible

I've just seen a clip of him on YouTube, the way he used to stand up on his toes to the fast bowlers was phenomenal!- And, his cut is as brutal as people say.

The size of the bats back then are like Mickey Mouse compared to what they are now. Amazing contrast.

Plus, apart from the fact that he was just a simple genius at the square cut from what I saw another reason why he was so good at it was the fact that he used to keep his bat in the air quite a lot before the ball was delivered.