Bruce Yardley - Australia - Batsman

Like a lot of spinners during his times, Bruce Yardley also started off as a medium pacer who then took to off spin bowling with great success. During the 1980s, he was Australia's premier spinner who peaked in the 1981-82 season, even winning the International Cricketer of the Year award. There were a spate of impact performances with his command over a bulldozing West Indian line-up being the pick of the lot. Yardley was an unconventional cricketer, both with the ball and with the willow. Unlike most off-spinners, he preferred to operate at a much more quicker speed while also using his middle finger to roll the ball instead of the traditional index finger. His greater speeds meant that the batsmen often didn't have the time to adjust off the pitch and had to pick him in the air. This was Yardley's modus operandi as a bowler.

While batting, he was plucky and would seldom go down without a fight. While the fast bowlers hurled bouncers at him, his trademark stroke would be the slash over the slip cordon - a shot he perfected so nicely that opposition captains would often place a fly slip just to counter this stroke. While he had tremendous success in Tests, the same couldn't be replicated in ODIs where he struggled to get going. Even his red-ball career got into a muddle when he was strangely dropped for the Ashes tour in 1981. A couple of years later, on Australia's first ever tour of Sri Lanka, Yardley shone with a five-wicket haul but was shockingly never picked again after that game. After retirement, he was an active commentator and became Sri Lanka's coach in 1997. A huge admirer of Muttiah Muralitharan, it was Yardley's advice that saw the Sri Lankan adding the 'Doosra' to his repertoire. Yardley was a loyal servant of Western Australia, having been a long-serving Regional Cricket Officer of the association for years

By Hariprasad Sadanandan.