Who is the third greatest spinner of all time in Test cricket?

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Stats from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru, as of August 6.

There is an incredible debate to be had over who the best Test spinner of all time is. The two most obvious choices are Shane Warne and Muthiah Muralidaran – pick your fighter. You can look at Murali’s wickets per Test and the incredible workload, or how Warne was a genius on wickets not really set up for him. But it doesn’t matter who you chose. When it comes down to it, this is the two you chose from. There is no real debate that anyone else is on their level.

But maybe a more interesting discussion is who the next best might be. If you like a lot of wickets at a great average, R Ashwin might be the first name that pops up in your mind. But is he better than Anil Kumble, who bowled in an era of flatter wickets? Nathan Lyon is an offspinner who plays his home games in Australia.

What about Lance Gibbs, Hugh Tayfield and Jim Laker? Then there’s Clarrie Grimmett, who apparently claimed to confuse Don Bradman with his googlies. You could name a few more as well. Oh, and do we consider Sydney Barnes a seamer or a spinner?

Working out who the third-best spinner is might be like looking for the second-best batter ever. There are many candidates, but after a point it's about personal choice. You have to account for DRS, LBW laws, and the various types of surfaces – uncovered, spin, seam-friendly, and flat. It might be easier to handle a delivery from Bishan Bedi on the fifth day than work out who the third-best spinner in Test history is.

Until the 1880s, spin was more effective than pace in terms of bowling average. The first time we see pace do better was in the 1890s. In those days, the quicks often bowled spin as well, so the classifications are a bit confusing. Both bowling types averaged about the same in the 1920s. Australia – and the world’s – best bowlers in this period were spinners. However, they do not average less than pacers in any decade since the start of the 1940s.

The big change for spin is uncovered wickets and flatter, harder surfaces. When teams didn't cover their pitches, finger spinners reigned in and out of Asia. But as England – the last holdout – start to cover their pitches from the 1960s onwards, the spinners do drop off on non-Asian pitches.

But they keep taking wickets. Lance Gibbs was the first spinner (and the second bowler after Fred Trueman) to take more than 300 wickets, and he did that while playing his home matches in West Indies. Warne, Lyon and Vettori all take loads of wickets. But we do see spinners from the subcontinent dominate more. In total, we have seven spinners in the 400-club. Lyon and Ashwin have more than 500, but going past Kumble’s wicket tally may not be as easy for either.

Laker and Grimmett average less than 25, while Warne is at 25.41. Naturally, three spinners from the subcontinent have a sub-25 average – Murali, Ashwin and Jadeja. Tony Lock, Derek Underwood, Hugh Tayfield and Richie Benaud round out the rest of the spinners who feature in the list for the top 10 bowling averages.

Murali takes more than six wickets per match, the most by a spinner with at least 150 wickets. Laker does pick up more than four wickets but isn’t quite an outlier here like average. Yasir Shah and Saeed Ajmal take more than five wickets per Test, but average 31 and 28 respectively. Ashwin and Grimmett take more wickets while going at a significantly lower average. Warne, Herath and Kumble have vastly differing averages, but they’re roughly in the range of 4.5 to 5 wickets per match.

Varun came up with another metric to assess spinners – the geometric mean of the inverse of average (because a lower mark is better) and wickets per match. The higher this measure, the more effective a bowler is in terms of average and wickets per match. Murali is the only one above 0.5, while at the other end of the graph we see Shastri at 0.21 – which makes sense, as he wasn’t a frontline bowler.

Workload is another important factor while judging the value of a player. How many deliveries do they send per game? Grimmett is way ahead of anyone. The little man took a long time to make it to Tests. When he did, he offered to bowl all the overs.

We have gone through the numbers at a surface level. But we cannot underestimate the importance of conditions in Test cricket. Where does the spinner play his games? When does he perform at his best? Is he a first-innings specialist, or a destroyer in the fourth?