I have been checking my inventory of ATMegas and here are the results:
ATMega32L Plastic Packing (Reel of 10) SPIEN fuse programmed
ATMega16L Plastic Packing (Reel of 10) SPIEN fuse programmed
ATMega8L (Reel of 25) 7 already used 18 present 7 used did not have SPI fuse programmed, checked the remaining 18, none of them have any fuse programmed, including SPIEN.
This leads me to assume that the reel must be from the same batch in which due to some reason SPIEN was not programmed by default.
Thanks to all for correcting my wrong assumption (out of experience rather than reading the data sheet)
Nutshell: Read the data sheet carefully even if you are a computer engineer.