The Off-Spinning Flipper

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Thanks for the replies, guys. I think people do pick it more than my wrong un. They don't know it's a flipper but they know it's my faster straighter one, maybe because of the arm speed. I will have to work on disguising it.
 
macca said:
"As I spun the ball the hand had to be pointed to the left across toward cover.The wrist had to be bent, and the ball allowed to leave over the top of the hand, the back of which was facing the batsman." That is Grimmett describing his hand position for his topspinning flipper, his nominated "mystery ball".
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You can stand with your arm out in front of you and your wrist in exactly that position that Grimmett describes, then you flick the ball out with your thumb pointing towards the batter at the point of release. The problem I have is keeping my wrist in that position when bowling with a full swing of the arm.

The natural thing to happen when you have a full swing of the arm is for the wrist to fall back into an uncocked position from which you will bowl with backspin. I have to cock the wrist a lot just to ensure that I can prevent the wrist straightening too much so that I can impact offspin on the ball. What is the starting position of the wrist for a topspinning flipper?
 
Darth Spin said:
Thanks for the replies, guys. I think people do pick it more than my wrong un. They don't know it's a flipper but they know it's my faster straighter one, maybe because of the arm speed. I will have to work on disguising it.
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You may find that you are not cocking your wrist very much, if at all. That's what I found and batters did exactly what you said, they spotted it as a quicker, straighter delivery. It was only when I filmed my bowling that I noticed how obvious it was because of that wrist position.

The beauty of the offspinning flipper is that you have to have a cocked wrist right up to the point of release. Thus, it looks just like the legspinner in all but the thumb on the ball (and you can even disguise that if you want to by only putting the thumb on the ball at the take back point of your action rather than at the very start of your approach to the crease).

I find it difficult to disguise the backspinning flipper because I don't cock the wrist in the same manner I do with the legspinner. Just something I have to work on.
 
Cleanprophet said:
You may find that you are not cocking your wrist very much, if at all. That's what I found and batters did exactly what you said, they spotted it as a quicker, straighter delivery. It was only when I filmed my bowling that I noticed how obvious it was because of that wrist position.
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Yeah I think that's right. Something to experiment with away from the nets/batsmen. Also when I bowl it now the trajectory makes it obvious that it's not my stock ball. That said some don't get picked and cause problems.
 
Darth Spin said:
Yeah I think that's right. Something to experiment with away from the nets/batsmen. Also when I bowl it now the trajectory makes it obvious that it's not my stock ball. That said some don't get picked and cause problems.
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It's good to use variation in flight and pace with your stock ball. It just prevents the batter from lining you up, but it also makes it less likely that the batter will pick any variation on the flight or pace alone.
 
Yeah, that's something I need to work on too. Mixing up pace. So far I've just been mixing up deliveries to get variation, or changing line. Philpott recommends changing the pace of run up slightly to achieve this rather than arm speed. I will give it a whirl. Should be warm enough to practice outdoors again now. Need to get out there.
 
Darth Spin said:
Yeah, that's something I need to work on too. Mixing up pace. So far I've just been mixing up deliveries to get variation, or changing line. Philpott recommends changing the pace of run up slightly to achieve this rather than arm speed. I will give it a whirl. Should be warm enough to practice outdoors again now. Need to get out there.
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One of Grimmett's tips is to bowl with a more front-on action so that you get less body rotation and, subsquently, less action on the ball. Just means the ball comes out a littler slower and with a bit less spin on it. I've only tried that once and it felt a bit awkward.
 
Once you've got the clicking action getting the ball spinning - there is so much you can do with this spinning method. Even if you end up doing something completely unrelated to any of the variations described elsewhere or on here and you come up with something that is a hybrid - just go with it.
 
Part of me doesn't want it to work. I have put in so much effort in trying to master the elusive, shoulder-contorting, elusive but occasionally magical googly! Can turning it the other way really be this simple...?
 
boogiespinner said:
Part of me doesn't want it to work. I have put in so much effort in trying to master the elusive, shoulder-contorting, elusive but occasionally magical googly! Can turning it the other way really be this simple...?
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Yeah if you use this method - seemingly dead simple. To be honest a lot of people struggle with bowling a back-spinning flipper so never even get that far. But once you've mastered the click, got through the medial epicondilytis phase, the world is your oyster. If your bowling a wrong un as one of your balls you should try bowling your googly with the finger click - you might find that it breaks like a leggie! If you do that'll be Grimmetts Wrong Wrong Un!
 
boogiespinner said:
Just tried this delivery for the first time in today's brick wall practice, was quite suprised, it seemed quite promising!!!
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I've been using it in the nets against batters, but I've not yet got it to the standard I'm happy with just yet. It catches them all out. However, it catches them out because my arm comes through as normal but the ball comes of the pitch a bit slower. So they are beaten by the slow pace rather than the spin. I need to work on getting ball coming off the pitch a good bit quicker. Due to an injury, I had about a month of no bowling after bowling this off-break flipper for a few weeks. During that initial period of bowling I produced some very good off-break flippers. Grimmett was working on this delivery for years before he actually used it in a match. It takes time to master it.

I have no doubt that it is a better delivery than the googly because it is harder to pick and it spins more. I've had deliveries actually drift away from the batter, which suggests there is a decent amount of revs on the ball. I'd been bowling a flipper for quite some time and bowling a version that was about 50/50 backspin/offspin. Moving from that to a ball that was an offbreak of entirely sidespin (no backspin or topspin at all) wasn't too difficult. The only tricky thing I had to deal with was keeping the wrist fully cocked right up to the point of flicking the ball out. I tended to open the wrist a bit too early and then you end up with a ball with some backspin on it. I've mentioned this before, but it is key. Flick the ball as hard as you can. Whether it comes out with offspin, backspin or somewhere inbetween it doesn't matter as long as you put as many revs on the ball as you can.
 
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someblokecalleddave said:
Yeah if you use this method - seemingly dead simple. To be honest a lot of people struggle with bowling a back-spinning flipper so never even get that far. But once you've mastered the click, got through the medial epicondilytis phase, the world is your oyster. If your bowling a wrong un as one of your balls you should try bowling your googly with the finger click - you might find that it breaks like a leggie! If you do that'll be Grimmetts Wrong Wrong Un!
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Cleanprophet said:
I've mentioned this before, but it is key. Flick the ball as hard as you can. Whether it comes out with offspin, backspin or somewhere inbetween it doesn't batter as long as you put as many revs on the ball as you can.
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I like this advice but I did use to have a problem where I lost the ability to land the ball on the seam and could only bowl flying saucer-ish legbreaks - which weren't going to break an inch no matter how hard they were spun. It was very distressing.
 
boogiespinner said:
I like this advice but I did use to have a problem where I lost the ability to land the ball on the seam and could only bowl flying saucer-ish legbreaks - which weren't going to break an inch no matter how hard they were spun. It was very distressing.
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That usually comes from opening the wrist too early or not cocking the wrist enough in the first place. It's problem I had for a while too. Your fingers are pointed upwards as you release to ball and that's why the spin isn't upright, as it should be. Obviously, the key with legbreaks is to rip your fingers over the top of the ball. If you are having this problem you will need someone to watch your wrist position or video your bowling yourself and watch for the wrist position.

Whether you are bowling legbreaks or flippers, you have to spin it hard. In this instance, of the off-break flipper, you want to feel your fingers really slap into the palm of your hand as you flick the ball out.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Yeah if you use this method - seemingly dead simple. To be honest a lot of people struggle with bowling a back-spinning flipper so never even get that far. But once you've mastered the click, got through the medial epicondilytis phase, the world is your oyster. If your bowling a wrong un as one of your balls you should try bowling your googly with the finger click - you might find that it breaks like a leggie! If you do that'll be Grimmetts Wrong Wrong Un!
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SBCD I thought this was an utterly extraordinary proposition. But today against a brick wall from a few metres away I just gave it go to see what happened. Amazingly a ball came out straight ahead smoothly and spinning at a fair rate! And yes it seemed that the spin was fairly square legspin.

WTF?

I have absolutely no idea what was going on.

I got a bit freaked out and had to stop as my mind was exploding.

WOW!!!
 
boogiespinner said:
SBCD I thought this was an utterly extraordinary proposition. But today against a brick wall from a few metres away I just gave it go to see what happened. Amazingly a ball came out straight ahead smoothly and spinning at a fair rate! And yes it seemed that the spin was fairly square legspin.

WTF?

I have absolutely no idea what was going on.

I got a bit freaked out and had to stop as my mind was exploding.

WOW!!!
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Yeah, maybe as Macca has pointed out it's not that easy, the flinger click is something I do constantly all day long at home at work - apples, oranges, rolls of tape, cricket balls, wind balls anything I can get hold of and flick like this I do (Drives my wife crazy). If you're able to do that part as much as possible in the same way that I do - it then takes a bit of time to convert it to a delivery you can use, I think I probably practiced with it for a season or a winter before using it in a game.

Getting the length and the bowling action wired is the hard bit, as you have to have your wrist in weird positions. But, I think I came to find that not being too obsessed with the ball doing exactly what you want when it hits the ground is the best way to go. In the years I tried all the variations the ones I liked and used in matches were this one, but there is that caveat that I wasn't always relying on it breaking like an off-break. The top-spinning version - again difficult and thinking back I'm not sure I bowled that in games, but I always felt it had potential and used it practice against batsmen in nets and it worked okay. The back-spinner which I use and the wrong - wrong un. My Wrong Wrong Un, though is more of a messed up version - again going with the idea that... Okay it might not break every time like a Leggie, but the fact is it spins in a freaky way. If you're the batsman, the delivery looks like a Wrong Un out of the hand, but the seam looks as though it's aligned to be a Leg Break. but it's got back-spin on it. The bottom line is - it isn't a Leg Break or a top-spinner, but it's another delivery that does something different - holds up instead of dipping and does all sorts of weird things when it hits the pitch depending on whether the pitch is damp, dry, hard etc.

I would say that if you can click the finger out of your hand, try it, practice with it and see what it gives you, but don't get hung up in what it does. Try different wrist positions and just go with the flow.

If you've got the ability to bowl like Murali with your arm twisted the wrong way - the potential becomes even greater!
 
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