Fast spin is a defensive setting and captains use it like a shield

Pushing the ball through flat at ninety kilometres an hour is containment dressed as attack, and sweepers punish it.

A spinner bowling flat at ninety plus, into the pitch, with a ring field and a man back on each side, is not attacking anyone. He is buying overs. There is nothing wrong with buying overs. Just call it what it is.

The physics are simple enough. Spin beats the bat in two places, in the air and off the surface. Push the ball through quickly and you delete the first one entirely, because dip and drift need time in flight to act. What is left is whatever the pitch gives you, and on day one of most matches the pitch gives you very little. So the fast spinner is relying on the batter making a mistake against a ball that is doing almost nothing, which is a strange plan to describe as aggression.

What it does do is control. Flat and quick is very hard to get under. You cannot get to the pitch of it, you cannot easily go over the top, and the risk of a top edge is high enough that most batters take the single and move on. Against a side four wickets down and rebuilding, that is exactly the right bowler. Against a side that has decided to attack you, it is a gift.

Which brings me to the sweep, and to the argument I would actually pick a fight about. The sweep is not really a shot for turning pitches. It is a shot for flat quick spin, because it takes the length out of play and uses the bowler's own pace, and a batter who sweeps and reverse sweeps competently can render a containment spinner useless within three overs. The bowler's only reply is to slow down and give the ball air, at which point he becomes the bowler he was avoiding being.

I would like captains to be honest about this in their field settings. If you want containment, set a containment field and admit you are trying to bowl ten for thirty-five. If you want wickets, take the sweeper out, bring the man up, and tell your spinner to toss one above the batter's eyes and accept that he may get hit for six.

Most captains want both, get neither, and blame the surface afterwards.