Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

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i just got my first powerball through the post! It is indeed awesome! What a gadget! I might have to carry it around with me so I can powerball at the bus stop. I might get some strange looks but who cares.
 
boogiespinner said:
i just got my first powerball through the post! It is indeed awesome! What a gadget! I might have to carry it around with me so I can powerball at the bus stop. I might get some strange looks but who cares.
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You need to keep us informed of what you reckon it does for you, I'm not convinced yet, but I could be if your report back with convincing results. On a similar train of thought, I'm about to start getting fit - upper body strength stuff and what have you and some of the exercises I'll be doing look like those that would strengthen your wrists, but I'm wondering does strong wrists also equate to less flexibility? Might be one for Tony or Liz to answer?
 
someblokecalleddave said:
You need to keep us informed of what you reckon it does for you, I'm not convinced yet, but I could be if your report back with convincing results. On a similar train of thought, I'm about to start getting fit - upper body strength stuff and what have you and some of the exercises I'll be doing look like those that would strengthen your wrists, but I'm wondering does strong wrists also equate to less flexibility? Might be one for Tony or Liz to answer?
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hmmm, I don't know. I'm not sure tbh. I have been suckered in by the promo section of the site which has all the musicians saying how great it is. It does feel after using it like I've done some serious exercises at the piano so so far I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
 
shahidpak said:
Im now able to do push ups, the volume of my Pecs has already started to increase :cool:
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Nice one, don't know how many I could do at the minute - 15 maybe? I'll give it a go later. Once you've got to the point where you can easily do ten or so you might want to look at doing these. I find these essential for my bowling arm. Without doing some of these I have deltoid injuries.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
but I'm wondering does strong wrists also equate to less flexibility? Might be one for Tony or Liz to answer?
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I wouldn't have thought so. For me, strengthening of the wrist means strengthening the tissue (tendons, ligaments etc) rather than bulking anything up. One area I would imagine you could have problems is if you bulk up muscles in the arm, shoulder and chest. There's no doubt that you could cause restriction of the arm if your shoulder and chest was bulked up a bit. But you wouldn't be bulking up like a body builder, so I can't imagine there being any problems even in this area.

someblokecalleddave said:
Without doing some of these I have deltoid injuries.
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Any excercise like this is good for getting your arm through quicker and a quicker arm gives you more opportunity for revs.

I sorted out my seam bowling action recently and have started getting the ball through at a decent rate. One area I felt after a spell of my quickest bowling was in the lats. Any sort of strengthening will help with arm speed. As much as anything, it will just toughen up all the muscles involved in bowling a ball and reduce the chance of a strain.
 
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Cleanprophet said:
I wouldn't have thought so. For me, strengthening of the wrist means strengthening the tissue (tendons, ligaments etc) rather than bulking anything up. One area I would imagine you could have problems is if you bulk up muscles in the arm, shoulder and chest. There's no doubt that you could cause restriction of the arm if your shoulder and chest was bulked up a bit. But you wouldn't be bulking up like a body builder, so I can't imagine there being any problems even in this area.



Any excercise like this is good for getting your arm through quicker and a quicker arm gives you more opportunity for revs.

I sorted out my seam bowling action recently and have started getting the ball through at a decent rate. One area I felt after a spell of my quickest bowling was in the lats. Any sort of strengthening will help with arm speed. As much as anything, it will just toughen up all the muscles involved in bowling a ball and reduce the chance of a strain.
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Yeah that's what I found.
 
Chino#21 said:
Had another great game today, in fact it was the best so far! I got 6 wickets for 35 runs in 8.4 overs against the team one point below us in the league and we won by 2 wickets. I can't remember most of it because I was so tired but I must have bowled quite well. This puts me at 22 wickets in 12 games @14 apiece.
One thing that I can take from the game is that accuracy and building pressure is the only consistent way to take wickets. I was bowling to right-handers most of the time and when I got my 3rd wicket I knew that to get a five-fer I had to be accurate. Most of my deliveries pitched outside off on a nice length and I built up some pressure which forced them to start advancing. It's actually quite easy to get someone out stumped when you know they are going to advance. Just bowl the googly as slow as possible and pitch it short. Philpott discusses how to bowl with more flight and overspin to tempt the batsman and it does take a long time to master but it works when you get it right.
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Nice one Chino! Any photo's or video footage?
 
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Hahahaha

but with a qualifier: I took 6/40 or 50 odd to win a semi-final, and I literally had no idea as I was walking off. I can remember none of it.
 
Chino#21 said:
Thanks! Sadly I only have a few blurry photos of my action. It looks like my front knee is very bent and my wrist is bent almost at 90 degrees. It's an unothodox action but besides Beau Casson there hasn't been any perfectly orthodox chinaman that I know of.

That's what I thought, but it all feels like a dream! I only remember two of the clean bowled dismissals and a stumping. The wicket that took my to my five-fer (stumping) was a slower googly, and as the ball was still in mid-air I saw the batsman stepping, said "Please step me I'm begging you." (Which he did) And as the ball was going through to the keeper all I could say was "Thank you very much mr. Batsman."

Of all the types of dismissals I think LBW is my favourite. Clean bowled dismissals are also a joy but LBW means to me that I totally fooled the batsman. How about the rest of the leg spin clan?
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I think my favourites are leggies on off stump, edged to slips or the wicket keeper, but then I do like a bowled round the legs, but to be honest I don't think any of them have ever been planned so I can't really claim them.
 
Any googly dismissal where the batsman is deceived is pretty good. Bowling around legs is pretty cool too.

I am definitely getting results from the powerball after a week or so. Already there's noticeable forearm development and I don't feel I've lost any flexibility. Really happy with that. I'm also doing bodyweight exercises daily. Gotta keep it up
 
boogiespinner said:
Any googly dismissal where the batsman is deceived is pretty good. Bowling around legs is pretty cool too.
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We started our winter nets this past Sunday. In the past we have used a school gym that had a couple of lanes. You often end up with 7 or 8 bowlers in each lane, so you have something like a 5min gap inbetween deliveries. For me, that just didn't work. Far too much waiting around and you just can't get any rhythm going. This new venue we are at has four lanes and on Sunday I was bowling with just one other bowler in there (at times, just me) and it was very enjoyable.

It still took me a good 10mins to get going (early on there were 3 or 4 bowlers in one lane until someone strapped their pads on and opened another lane), but once I got going, the ball came out very nicely. I bowled a lot of decent stuff. In particular, and this is why I quoted boogiespinner above, I bowled a number of very decent googly's. I bowled one to a batter that tucked him up, forcing him to edge one to the keeper. The best one was a delivery that landed on an ideal length, beat the batter (who had used his feet to try and get to the pitch) and turned from outside off to hit legstump. For someone who has taken a lot of time and effort to develop the googly, it was very satisfying to see. I was bowling it pretty quick at times too. I'm keen for the season to start now because I'd love to take a few wickets like that.
 
Cleanprophet said:
We started our winter nets this past Sunday. In the past we have used a school gym that had a couple of lanes. You often end up with 7 or 8 bowlers in each lane, so you have something like a 5min gap inbetween deliveries. For me, that just didn't work. Far too much waiting around and you just can't get any rhythm going. This new venue we are at has four lanes and on Sunday I was bowling with just one other bowler in there (at times, just me) and it was very enjoyable.

It still took me a good 10mins to get going (early on there were 3 or 4 bowlers in one lane until someone strapped their pads on and opened another lane), but once I got going, the ball came out very nicely. I bowled a lot of decent stuff. In particular, and this is why I quoted boogiespinner above, I bowled a number of very decent googly's. I bowled one to a batter that tucked him up, forcing him to edge one to the keeper. The best one was a delivery that landed on an ideal length, beat the batter (who had used his feet to try and get to the pitch) and turned from outside off to hit legstump. For someone who has taken a lot of time and effort to develop the googly, it was very satisfying to see. I was bowling it pretty quick at times too. I'm keen for the season to start now because I'd love to take a few wickets like that.
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Have you still got your Leg Break though?
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Have you still got your Leg Break though?
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I have. Although, in the last month or two I've watched footage of my bowling and noticed my hand coming over the top and even, at times, reversing just like a googly. I've had to focus hard on getting my hand to drag across the ball, like a leggie, rather than over the top. I bowled a ball to a batter last week that landed outside legstump, beat the bat and clipped the top of off-stump. It was very similar to the Warne-Gatting ball, but obviously not quite as good and not in an Ashes Test match ;) . I have footage of it and my hand position is perfect (I'll post footage of that delivery in the next day or so).

I'm not sure what to make of that hand position however because the ball has been coming out and still turning away, even when I can see the hand position is sometimes not right. Using the two-coloured ball I can see that the ball is tending to come out with mostly topspin (probably 80% topspin and 20% sidespin) for a lot of deliveries.

I didn't film the winter nets on Sunday, so I don't know what the hand was doing but when I wanted to bowl a leg break, the ball turned like a like break and when I tried to bowl the googly it either went straight on or turned in. That's got me thinking that whilst that is happening I shouldn't worry about hand position too much. I think I've got to the position now where I can sort my hand position out if it becomes a problem.

There were plenty of very decent leg breaks bowled on Sunday, including a few that I really tried rip hard and someone watching from behind said the ball was drifting a good amount. Just got to keep that happening because it can go wrong quite quickly with legspin.
 
I haven't been posting much about my season so far is due to a great run of injuries that have kept me out of the game or at least only playing occasionally.

Injuries in chronological order: Left glute (tendon), right calf (strain), left calf (strain) and finally right shoulder impingement.

However I may be able to play this weekend! The downside is that I can't bowl any googlies until my shoulder has finally calmed down, throwing is also out of the question.

The upside about all of this is that it has allowed me to step back and think about what has been going right and wrong with my bowling. The things that I know I'm doing right:
  • Right variations for each batsmen
  • In general good ball by ball over plans
  • Bowling to the situation
  • Have increased the revs I'm putting on the ball
And now the bad (mostly technique):
  • Misidentified physical strain with getting the most out of my action (rookie error, hence the injuries)
  • Spending too long searching for spin in the wrong conditions
  • Have bizarrely stopped looking for batters tells if they are going to charge
Things I've worked on while I haven't been a physical wreak:
  • Emphasize the 'flick' and not arm speed
  • Remain as upright as possible through the entire action
  • Use Warne's advice of 3 different paced legbreaks to find out early how the pitch will play (I used to do this, why did I forget?)
  • Trust myself and watch the batter
All going well I'll survive this weekend and be able to finish the season doing good things in a good state of mind :)
 
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