Leg Spin

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Re: Leg Spin

I find that if I try and bowl too much quicker than I'm currently bowling that I lose what little control I have at this stage. I can occasionally throw in a quicker leg-break every now and then, but for the most part my speed is a tertiary concern at the moment after line and length and turn.
 
Re: Leg Spin

someblokecalleddave said:
C&B control and balance?

The thing I found with increasing my walk-in/run in speed was that I didn't get the same flight and with the increase in speed the trajectory of the ball was too predictable which then suggests that I don't get the dip at the end which is worrying?
Click to expand...

Speeding things up makes the ball go flatter, or should do atleast.

There's most definitely advantages to this as the angles change, instead of a loop the ball is as straight as anything, so batsmen have to play harder for one.

The thing i like about speeding the ball up is that you cant quite predict how much spin will be generated. Bounce you can usually predict well enough if you understand your bowling, but the spin part is baffling. I find the best way to speed up you spin is to "in-build," a straight, medium paced ball in which you bowl with exactly the same action, but just seam up.

I think i've mentioned it to Dave before, but if you grasp this, then just repositioning the ball in the hand, and just rolling the wrists should be the easy part.
 
Re: Leg Spin

I've just been watching Panesar at last years world cup in WI and noticed how fast he bowls and the fact that there's no loop or dip it's straight and fast with spin and the NZ batsmen were hardly getting the bat on it and it was flying off for 4's directly behind the wicket keeper suggesting he bowls particularly fast - certainly a lot faster than I do!
 
Re: Leg Spin

Hmmm, because such things interest me (and also because I'm a bit of a nerd) I've spent the morning devising a way of working out your approximate bowling speed without paying a couple of hundred quid for a speedgun. It's a bit rough and ready, but it'll do for an approximate figure if you're interested in finding out how quick you're bowling.

NERDY EXPERIMENT ALERT!
=====================================
What you'll need:
A Stopwatch
An Area 22yds plus run-up long
A Friend or A method of recording yourself.

What you need to do:
Set up the camera (or friend) so it is square of the wicket and can see both sets of stumps. The squarer it is, the easier it will be later on when it comes to working out when the ball is released and when it pitches.

Start recording (or tell your friend to get ready!).

Bowl an over of the ball you want to measure. (Leg breaks, quicker ball etc)

Now, if you're using a friend, get them to start the stopwatch as soon as you release the ball, and stop it as the ball pitches. Depending on your friend's reaction time, the accuracy will vary, but it's better than nothing.

If you're using a camera, even better, as you can play it back later and slow it down and all sorts.

Now, the geeky bit.

A cricket pitch, wicket to wicket is 22 yards. However, you probably don't want to be pitching it that far up. In a match, you'll be looking to pitch it about 3-4 yards further back on a good length. So let's use 19 yards as the distance the ball will travel before pitching.

If you divide the distance (19 yards) by the time it took for the ball to travel from your hand to the point where it pitched (let's say... 0.83 seconds), you've got a speed. Only problem is, it's in yards per second. In this case, 22.89yps.
So now we need to convert yps into mph - after much mathematical farting around, I can tell you that to do this you need to multiply by 2.045 (or two if you're lazy ;)) It's basically using the Distance=Speed*Time triangle, and you're just converting the figure at the end.

Soooo, our little calculation is now looking like this:
Take the length the ball pitched at. (19yds)
Divide that by the time it took between release and pitching. (0.83s)
Multiply your answer (22.89) by 2.045....

...and you were bowling at approximately 46.8mph!

To summarise and simplify, divide your distance by your time and multiply that by 2.

Obviously this is only a rough measurement, and only measures horizontal speed between release and pitch, but hopefully it will give some indication of the speed you're bowling at and help you work out how close you are to the ideal 53-55mph mark. If you're wanting anything more accurate, I suggest you buy a speed gun! :laugh:

===================================================
NERDY EXPERIMENT OVER!

If the mood takes me, and it's quiet at work, I might even produce an excel spreadsheet that you just enter the figures into and it will do the maths for you... but that's not a promise!
 
Re: Leg Spin

good post, if you do this 6 times with a friend you can work out a rough average of the 6 as it's unlikely there reactions are perfect each time.
 
Re: Leg Spin

Thanks. I've done the spreadsheet as well, but I'm currently trying to find somewhere to upload it to. Most of the file-sharing URLs are blocked at work, so I'm having to improvise. :)
 
Re: Leg Spin

There, got home and uploaded the spreadsheet. I've also worked out how to calculate the horizontal speed of the ball after pitching as well, although you'll almost certainly need to record yourself for this, as the measurements are far more precise. Anyway, you can download it here.

And yeah, think you've got some competition in the obsessive stakes now, Dave! ;)
 
Re: Leg Spin

BTW nightvisions way is right but i thought i'd be an arsehole and bring this up:
get a stop watch:
you start the watch as you release the ball and stop it when it reaches the batsmen
d/t=s
19.5(m)/time in secs=Ans
Ans x 60 x 60 ( into hours)= Ans in metre/hours
ans in metre/hours/ 1609(turns it from metric to imperial i.e km-miles) = average speed in miles per hour

so for example 19.5/0.5 secs= 39 so 39 x 60 x 60 = 140400 140400/1609 = 87
if it takes 0.5 secods for the ball to reach the batter your average speed is 87 mph

I also have this one that wrecks your head lol:
OK, in summary, the percentage change in speed from release to piching is approximately:

Change in Speed = 0.766 x D

where D is the distance between release and pitching in metres. So for a yorker D is about 18m and the ball slows about 14%(thats quite simple). (on the otherhand this will hurt your head) The physics behind this equation is as follows:

First you need to calcuate the aerodynamic drag of the ball which is given by:

Drag = Cd x 0.5 x Rho x A x V x V

Where Cd is the drag coefficient of a sphere (about 0.5)
Rho is air density, about 1.225 kg/m3 at sea level and 25C
A is the cross sectional area of the cricket ball, 0.004 m2
V is the speed at release in m/s

Once you have the drag force, you can can then calculate the deceleration d=drag/m , where m is the mass of the cricket ball (0.16kg). When you have the deceleration, you can calculate the change in speed over the time the ball is in flight, which is approximately t=D/V. Interesting V cancels out of the final equation, and it becomes the simple formular above when you plug the numbers in.
 
Re: Leg Spin

Nightvision i'm gonna query your calculation. I'm sure its right but one thing. A cricket strip is 22 yards long but from crease to crease it's 18 yards yes? As you said divide 19 by the time taken from release to when it reaches the crease but wouuldn't it be less than that, more like 16? Or am i completely wrong with this, using 16 would mean the speed would be slower i believe.
 
Re: Leg Spin

Yeah, I've had a look round and you're right. It's 22 yards from stumps to stumps, but I forgot to factor in the popping creases, which are 1.22m (according to the best measurements I could find) in front of the stumps.

1.22m = appx 1.32yds

2 popping creases (2 x 1.32 = 2.64yds)

22yds between wickets - 2.64yds of popping creases = 19.36yds (we'll call it 19)

You'll probably want it to pitch 1-2 yards short of the popping crease, so if we say 17-18yds. I'll use 18 as a ballpark figure when I recalculate the spreadsheet tomorrow. As far as the spreadsheet is concerned, the only table this calculation is likely to effect is the speed after pitching. The speed before pitching (the uppermost table) is still fine.
 
Re: Leg Spin

Right, sorry for the doublepost, but I've actually got something specifically Leg-spin related! :p

Remember my post about my alternative method of bowling a googly? (Instead of inverting the wrist position, I'm ripping the ball the 'wrong' way from the normal leggie's wrist position, causing it to move very slightly into the right hander).
Well, whilst practicing today, I was experimenting with the delivery, and I think I've gone and developed a pretty evil little wicket-taker of a ball.
What I'm doing is holding it more or less the same as I would for a leg-break, but on release, I push my thumb upwards and really rip the ball clockwise with my first finger, so that by the time the ball has left my hand, it's actually almost underneath the ball. In the followthrough, I bring my bowling arm down past the opposite hip (so right arm coming across the body and past the left hip), in the same way a swing bowler would after bowling an outswinger.

The ball (aimed to pitch just outside the off stump) starts to... well, either gently swing or drift, depending on your point of view, but it definitely starts to move away from the right-hander in the air. It then pitches, and depending on the amount of spin I've managed to get, either straightens or actually turns into the batsman, hopefully catching him on completely the wrong line, and if not clean bowling him, at least getting an edge or lbw shout.

So, basically I've got what (if I can sort the length out, as it's a bit short at the moment) is an outswinging googly that looks like a leg break. Because I'm having to bowl it a bit quicker to get the swing/drift, it's an ideal quicker ball as well. I'll try and get it on film, but it's difficult, as my phone is the only method I have of capturing video.
 
Re: Leg Spin

The standard Leggie's grip is a two-up, two down. You hold the ball so that the seam is pointing across the batsman with your first two fingers bent up so that the fingertips are resting on the seam on top of the ball at about halfway between 11 and 12 o'clock, and 12 o'clock and 1 o'clock. The third and fourth fingers rest with the side of the finger along the seam at about 3 o'clock downwards.

It's a lot easier than I've made it sound - try the BBC Sport page for some diagrams and so forth, although the grip they show there isn't the one I've just described, it's still a perfectly good way. Also, search youtube for leg spin stuff, there are two excellent Terry Jenner videos (one BBC and one Cloverdale) on there, and a good one from Warney himself at the WACA.
 
Re: Leg Spin

Ah right.

To be honest, you can use pretty much any grip that feels right for you. If it works for the way you bowl, then there's no right or wrong answer. Our other leg spinner has a real frog-in-a-blender style action, where he actually delivers the ball with his body bent double, and his arm in a position that would make yoga masters wince. I'd never be able to bowl that way, but it works for him, and his line and length is much better than mine.

As for tightness, I prefer a fairly relaxed grip on the ball. I find that if I'm trying to squeeze the ball to death, the tension carries on through my arm and into my shoulder, and my delivery is much less natural. I also tend to find that I actually get less turn the tighter I grip the ball. I tend to use Shane Warne's advice that if you can't get a finger inbetween the ball and your first finger, you're holding the ball too tight.
 
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