Leg Spin

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Re: Leg Spin

I've got to agree - the grip can vary from person to person, you just adopt a way that works for you. The same with your arm action, run in etc, if it works and you can pitch the ball where you need it and get it to turn, then you're not doing to much wrong even if you look like the hunchback of Notradame has just decided to take up bowling! :laugh:
 
Re: Leg Spin

Take Paul Adams as an example (although I swear he nicked the idea off my mate who was bowling that way years before :laugh:).

033988.jpg
 
Re: Leg Spin

Was watching a kid bowl leg spin tonight and he got incredible amounts of drift on the the ball, almost swing like. A little bit of spin as well and it was quite hard to get away.
 
Re: Leg Spin

I think that's the thing with Leg Spin, once you've got the basics down, there are so many ways you can take it - drift, turn, flight, pace, variation... I don't think it would be stretching the truth too much to say that no two leggies are exactly alike, as everyone will have their own unique mixture of the elements required.
For example, I get an awful lot of flight on the ball, causing drift to become a factor (and the wind!), meaning that while I'm not beating many batsmen off the pitch, they're finding it hard to really get me away when I pitch it up at them.
Dave seems to have a big bag of tricks as far as variation is concerned, which I'd imagine has the batsman guessing which way the ball's going after it pitches, and this lad is getting huge amounts of drift, making it hard to really get after him.
Technically, we're all 'similar' bowlers, but in reality, I'd imagine we're three very different animals, each with our own strengths and weaknesses.
 
Re: Leg Spin

I can't believe that blokes action in that image but it gives me hope with my new "Gipper" ball! Today I've managed to get out with some balls and bowl a bit and in both sessions I was trying the new delivery and having varying success with it, but overall it's still needs a ton of work. There's another thread elsewhere that discusses the need to bowl the same delivery around 10,000 times before you get it sussed and today It was reflecting on exactly that kind of idea. Because this new delivery is so random at the minute I can't get any consistency with it at all. Sometimes it spins and deviates massively and other times it goes straight and I can't figure out whether it's the position of my arm or my hand or the velocity and it's simply just difficult to pinpoint what works and what doesn't. It seems as though if I just use the delivery out of the blue one in every 14 balls or something like that it works nicely, but then if I try and repeat the action it goes to pieces?

The other thing I realised is that to bowl this ball it requires a really weird bowling action that's easily recognised because I start with a really strange and twisted round straight arm as I go into the action. I've tried to bowl it with a normal action and it works but is far less consistent. So looking at the picture above that's comforting from the point of view that some other people bowl using really unconventional actions and my delivery may mean I bowl using this weird straight and twisted arm which possibly looks equally as weird?

In an ideal world I'll work on it and be able to bowl it using a normal looking wind up, but I think as I realised today it may take all season before I feel I can use it in a match - it's that 10,000 practices thing I reckon?
 
Re: Leg Spin

yeah you really do have to love the leg spin it really has so many things you can vary and variations, the most of any bowler which if you get it right the batsman won't have a clue what to do, can't wait to get bowling again after my fingers heal up
 
Re: Leg Spin

had a leg break spin wrong way through my fingers and dislocated my finger, just one of the freak things that happens sometimes i guess, probablly caused by the wide spacing of my index and middle fingers. One thing i can say is getting ice on n injury quick is a saviour
 
Re: Leg Spin

luckily it happened at nets and they happened to have a trained medic who popped it back into place, it wasn't that bad it was only like the tip of the middle finger, main thing is the swelling round the finger and knuckles afterwards
 
Re: Leg Spin

supposedly there wasn't much muscle damage as it seemed it rather just popped out, so i've been told to rest it for 2 weeks and see how it is, knowing me though i'll be bowling medium pace with taped fingers by early next week though :p ,couldn't make my batting much worse :D
 
Re: Leg Spin

I reckon you should take it easy and I may even grass you up to Liz Ward that you're intending to break your 2 week curfew! :laugh: But seriously - I'd rest it as the Doctor has suggested otherwise you might end up with screwed fingers for the rest of your life - I'd at least run it past Liz and see what she says.
 
Re: Leg Spin

Dave is absolutely right. Its not the muscles you need to worry about but the ligaments and any floating fragments. You really do need to rest for two weeks; you got off lightly, I would have said three to six ;)

You can easily knock it again, there is no way you can sufficiently buddy tape the distal joint of the middle finger. Participating in sport too soon can cause permanent swelling or disfigurement which would seriously impede any technique you have.
 
Re: Leg Spin

Had a good session yesterday. Went down the field with the girlfriend, and she padded up so I could work on my line and length against an 'attacking' batsman.
She's a bit of a sporty type, but Cricket isn't one she follows much, and as such, there were a lot of big cross-batted swipes at the ball, which to be honest, was ideal for me. She was whacking me through the leg side quite a bit at first (showing some excellent timing to boot), but to be honest, I expect it as a leggie, so wasn't too bothered by this. After about ten minutes, I'd actually managed to force her to go back into her shell a little bit, to the point where she was actually having no other option but to play defensive shots to keep it off the stumps. To get a non-cricket player who was quite happily slogging it away left right and center a few minutes ago to retreat like that means I must be doing something right, no?

As a side topic, how often do you guys throw in variations? At the moment, I'm making sure I can bowl a delivery 'correctly' (ie getting it to turn/bounce in the manner I intended it to on a playable line/length) 8 or 9 times out of 10 before I'll start bowling it at a batsman, so the deliveries I allow myself to bowl at a batsman are limited to the following:
Leg Break (stock ball)
Googly
Quicker Ball (usually straight, but working on a little bit of leg break in there)
Full-Flighted (slower?) Ball

Now we'll assume for the sake of debate that we'd be bowling at a fairly set batsman who isn't exceptionally aggressive or defensive, and who doesn't have any blatant weaknesses.

I tend to bowl 4-5 leg breaks and 1-2 googlies, occasionally 4 leg breaks and 1 googly, with one of the other balls thrown in. I know this is actually a bit more than some believe is ideal, but my primary aim is to be a defensive bowler, not a wicket-taker, and coupled with my difficult to spot googly (which is now starting to turn very fiercely), I like to keep the batsman reactive rather than proactive, force them to play defensively and hopefully get them frustrated and to go for an ill-advised slog. How about you guys?
 
Re: Leg Spin

Today I was bowling (Trying to) mainly wrong uns and top spinners with a few flippers, one slider.

60% Wrong Uns
30% Top Spinners
9% Flippers
1% Slider

Bowled quite well - my best spell to date, turns out all that practice over the winter has worked. Over 6 overs I had one no ball, 2 wides, with very few runs made off the spell. (I should get the stats shouldn't I)?
 
Re: Leg Spin

Was reading This Article on cricinfo today, and it was quite interesting to see the effect 'mystery' and unpredictability can have on a batsman, particularly the excerpt from Viv Richards.
Certainly makes you think about the value of disguising your deliveries, which is something I've not really been doing.
 
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