Plastic Balls For Practice
- Thread starter boogiespinner
- Start date
What would you like, a quote from a qualified, professional coach?
boogiespinner
Active Member
Neville Young
Active Member
Instead of the windball in the fruitbowl, fill it with oranges and use it for practice on your walks and after hand to hand practice you can eat it.
An orange spun a couple of hundred times is always juicer than an unspun one. Vitamin C won't do you any harm either.
I'd rather just eat some broccoli for the vitamin C and stick to spinning cricket balls
Neville Young
Active Member
Broccoli in preference to an orange!!!. SLA might be right, you may be past the point where you can be helped.
Broccoli may not have the taste but it has almost twice the amount of vitamin CBroccoli in preference to an orange!!!. SLA might be right, you may be past the point where you can be helped.
boogiespinner
Active Member
Yeah, but it's very likely an orange will go splat at some point.
And once you eat the orange what then? You have no orange.
You cannot have your orange and eat it too.
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someblokecalleddave
Well-Known Member
Late to the conversation I know but what is the verdict on alternative balls?
I too have been attempting to learn with windballs. I have no prior leg spin training. No club facilities and few daylight hours to train. I appreciate that they will behave differently in terms of bounce but I notice that they offer high levels of feedback when landed on the seam - something really useful when self coaching. I'm presently at the stage of just trying to build a repeatable action. I acknowledge that I'll have a period of adjustment but at present I can't see a practical solution
Am I doing myself an injustice by trying to train this way or is it just going to be slower progress? I try to get out and put time in during 2 or 3 lunch breaks a week. My plan was that short regular practice sessions would give me the technique and some of the control (shorter/longer/etc) I'd need to convert this into something to use in the nets.
I too have been attempting to learn with windballs. I have no prior leg spin training. No club facilities and few daylight hours to train. I appreciate that they will behave differently in terms of bounce but I notice that they offer high levels of feedback when landed on the seam - something really useful when self coaching. I'm presently at the stage of just trying to build a repeatable action. I acknowledge that I'll have a period of adjustment but at present I can't see a practical solution
Am I doing myself an injustice by trying to train this way or is it just going to be slower progress? I try to get out and put time in during 2 or 3 lunch breaks a week. My plan was that short regular practice sessions would give me the technique and some of the control (shorter/longer/etc) I'd need to convert this into something to use in the nets.
If you teach yourself a bowling action with light wind balls, it will be very difficult for you to adjust to heavier cricket balls and your action will be out of synch. It will be harder for you to bowl in nets than if you hadn't practiced at all.
Don't even buy wind balls. They're designed for little children who are scared of cricket balls. Just bowl a cricket ball into a net or something. You can buy golf nets from Argos for about a tenner.
Fair point. Looking up the weights, the windballs are about 10g lighter than a junior cricket ball. I can see how that would cause an effect.
Do you have any tips for waterproofing them? Beyond concrete (too many cars anyway), I have to make do with well drained but only occasionally mown grass areas. The long grass hangs onto the moisture throughout the winter and I would have thought this would result in short shelf life of the balls. I'm trying to be lazy and not need a tin of clear shoe polish in my work drawer.
Thanks
Do you have any tips for waterproofing them? Beyond concrete (too many cars anyway), I have to make do with well drained but only occasionally mown grass areas. The long grass hangs onto the moisture throughout the winter and I would have thought this would result in short shelf life of the balls. I'm trying to be lazy and not need a tin of clear shoe polish in my work drawer.
Thanks
boogiespinner
Active Member
MagicDave I would keep experimenting. That is going to be your most valuable asset in your development.
I wouldn't take anything SLA says as gospel, and same for everyone else. I would be quite intrigued to see how windball net practise would pan out. Tbh, I can't control those things at all but they are fun.
I intend to buy a few readers indoor balls for net practice: I believe if I could control them then bowling a cricket ball will be easy. They are much more like a cricket ball than a windball.
I wouldn't take anything SLA says as gospel, and same for everyone else. I would be quite intrigued to see how windball net practise would pan out. Tbh, I can't control those things at all but they are fun.
I intend to buy a few readers indoor balls for net practice: I believe if I could control them then bowling a cricket ball will be easy. They are much more like a cricket ball than a windball.
When I was younger you could buy cheap cricket balls that were basically painted cork for about a fiver. They wouldn't last long in a game situation, but they were fine for practicing bowling with, and they didn't get water-logged.
Alternately, if you can't find them, try hockey balls - the ones with the dimples are better than the smooth ones. If you can make them two-tone (red on one side, white on the other), then you will be able to receive feedback about the spin you are getting rather than having to rely on what happens off the lush grass, which is likely to be misleading.
Most important things is that they are the same size and weight as a cricket ball otherwise you will permanently ruin your bowling action!
Boogiespinner is the man to talk to if you're interested in learning circus tricks, but he doesn't really know much about cricket. If you're interested in learning to bowl spin, there are plenty of good, qualified, professional coaches who comment here and are happy to offer advice, including myself, Tony and Liz.
I have the wind balls already from learning to bowl seam last year but I do remember a difference due to the weight on match day - I could flip my wrist forwards during the bowling action in practice for extra pace but not on match days. On the other hand I went from madly spraying balls around to moderate dobbing accuracy so there is some merit - although its likely that with better training facilities and regular cricket balls I would have been in an even better position.
I guess its about taking a pragmatic approach to your resources available. I happen to have some time available at lunch times so its about filling that time without stopping it being fun. As a member of the lowest level of cricket possible, we have 4 net sessions a year at the start of the season, and no facilities (playing on uncovered municipal pitches) so without finding a new club, I'm pretty much on my own.
I follow S SLA 's point - if you only have limited time, make sure you make the most of it if you really want to get good. I guess I just need to work out how much I 'really' want to improve vs just have a bit of fun.
Edit: For context I posted this before I read S SLA 's response if it seems a little nonsensical
I guess its about taking a pragmatic approach to your resources available. I happen to have some time available at lunch times so its about filling that time without stopping it being fun. As a member of the lowest level of cricket possible, we have 4 net sessions a year at the start of the season, and no facilities (playing on uncovered municipal pitches) so without finding a new club, I'm pretty much on my own.
I follow S SLA 's point - if you only have limited time, make sure you make the most of it if you really want to get good. I guess I just need to work out how much I 'really' want to improve vs just have a bit of fun.
Edit: For context I posted this before I read S SLA 's response if it seems a little nonsensical
boogiespinner
Active Member
M
MagicDave
if you decide you no longer want the windballs send them to me! I actually think that bowling with a cricket ball is easier in terms of accuracy, as the extra weight gives greater inertia, so sideways jerking will have less effect.
I've just had one windball in my bag and whenever it came up it flew all over the place so I am encouraged that you managed to control the things with practice.
I've just had one windball in my bag and whenever it came up it flew all over the place so I am encouraged that you managed to control the things with practice.
Well, I learnt to bowl largely from bowling at a set of stumps on my back lawn. I would practice all year round with cheap cricket balls - if you bowl in the snow, its like an automatic pitch-mapping system. Its not ideal, because its too far away from match situations, but its ok. However it left me a lot of work to do to actually become a competent match-day bowler. Its one thing to bowl a ball down at an empty set of stumps that rips sideways, its quite a different thing to outsmart a batsman with variations of pace and drift in a tense match situation.
Bear in mind that every aspect of your practice that isn't like a match, builds in one additional problem for you to have to overcome later on.
So if you bowl with balls of the wrong weight, you will have to learn to adjust to a heavier ball. If you bowl with a pitch that is too short, you will have to learn to adjust to a longer pitch. If you bowl without a batsman, you will have to learn to bowl with a batsman. If you learn to bowl a ball every 0.5 seconds, you will have to learn to adjust to the rhythm of an over in a match. If you learn to bowl a ball with no run-up, you will have to learn to adjust to a full run-up.
Most coaches agree that once a practice gets so different from a match situation that you have multiple things to learn to adjust to, it is not just useless, its actively detrimental to your development, because you're ingraining bad habits into your muscle memory.
Depending on whether you mean the leather version like this:
http://www.cricketdirect.co.uk/Cata...lls/Readers-Indoor-Yellow-Cricket-Ball-119026
or the plastic version like this
http://www.itsjustcricket.co.uk/cri...s-c38/readers-indoor-cricket-ball-yellow-p543
The plastic version seems like a very similar ball to the old wind ball. I got a box of 12 equivalent balls to that from ebay for about £15. They are indistinguisable to the Readers version. Bear in mind I was starting from nothing without any coaching. I did find they would offer a reasonable level of feedback (would spit forwards low with overspin/forward spin, spit sideways for a conventional leg break and bounce high for a scrambled seam). They also drift/swing MUCH easier than a real ball. For someone who can already bowl, I think they would have limited value beyond 'keeping your eye in' - and you might find a tape ball offers a similar opportunity for that (they split too quickly for learning seam bowling but are cheap)?