Tips for keeping seam alignment

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legspinner_don

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Tips for keeping seam alignment

In the last few days I've had a pack of 6 new balls delivered so I can start some lonesome practice! But in trying to rip the ball from hand to hand I've noticed I can't get the ball spinning on the seam, and after a few seconds the seam becomes scrambled. I was hoping you guys and gals have had similar problems and found ways to solve them. I've tried altering the starting position of the ball in my hand but it doesn't seem to be making a difference.

My problems were compounded today at nets. There was a bit of rain beforehand making the surface a bit greasy, and I got very little turn, if any. Others were getting a bit more and I think it may have been to do with the seam position.

The funny thing is, I've got an older ball that I still rip with, and I the seam position on this is a lot better for longer. It's just when I get other balls that I seem unable to get the same sort of seam position...
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

legspinner_don;397724 said:
In the last few days I've had a pack of 6 new balls delivered so I can start some lonesome practice! But in trying to rip the ball from hand to hand I've noticed I can't get the ball spinning on the seam, and after a few seconds the seam becomes scrambled. I was hoping you guys and gals have had similar problems and found ways to solve them. I've tried altering the starting position of the ball in my hand but it doesn't seem to be making a difference.

My problems were compounded today at nets. There was a bit of rain beforehand making the surface a bit greasy, and I got very little turn, if any. Others were getting a bit more and I think it may have been to do with the seam position.

The funny thing is, I've got an older ball that I still rip with, and I the seam position on this is a lot better for longer. It's just when I get other balls that I seem unable to get the same sort of seam position...
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Are you doing this across the body or in towards yourself?
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

You'll never guess what.... I just went to get a ball to see if it occured when I spun it back or across, and I managed to spin right along the seam both back and across. And kept doing it, and with different balls. Very weird!

It may have been the fact that I spun it back into myself first, or the fact my fingers are a bit more sticky and I'm able to get better grip. What were you going to suggest anyway? It's such a key issue to get sucess in legspin bowling. Is it basically a form thing?
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

I think it's just a case of practice and settling on where your finger goes and with the practice the whole action becomes more and more controlled and precise, it's just something you end up doing with apples, oranges, balls and anything that you can get your hands on and can give a big flick and spin it.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

youll just figure it out based on finger position. generally if you keep a relaxed grip and hold the ball slightly away from your palm, then the rest of the action just corrects itself, and "self-centres" the seam. you just have to practice it really until it works.

you literally need to get to a point where you NEVER scramble the seam, even by a few degrees, between your hands. when youre actually bowling its a lot easier to get it scrambled, so if its happening between hands then youll struggle over 22 yards. just keep practicing it.

just to throw a spanner in the works - in actual bowling i think there are times when its better to scramble the seam slightly though. especially on damp/slippery pitches. if the seam is perfect and you are trying to turn it big then its very easy to angle the ball and miss the seam. the more overspin you add, the greater the chance generally of finding some seam. but if you slightly scramble the ball you can increase the probability of the seam gripping quite a bit. you want it to spread over about 2-3cm as it spins ideally. any more than that and its counter productive. you impart the slight scramble though by spinning it perfectly straight, but gripping it at an angle (its the only way to be 100% consistent). so you still need the perfect seam technique.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

You're probably where I was a couple of months ago. There's no great trick to it, you just have to keep doing it until you naturally hit upon what works for you. I would say you need to think about what your ring finger's doing, figure out whether you're more comfortable with your thumb on or off the ball, and how far into your palm you hold the ball, but other than that it just seems to come eventually. So yeah - just keep spinning from hand to hand and let your brain figure it out instinctively.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

Thanks guys. It's one of these things that comes and goes at the moment. Hopefully the more I practice the more consistent I'll get.

Interesting point Jim. Although today was pretty woeful in terms of leg breaks, I did try a couple of sliders, and they noticeably suprised the batsman by coming on to them a lot quicker. It seems that on greasy decks that the slider becomes quite a useful delivery, and the scrambled seam certainly helped in this case (although it was deliberate!).
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

Hand to hand. Against a wall. Over a few yards to someone who can observe the rotation. That seam needs to be spinning perfectly around an axis like the rings of saturn.

Having said that I remember Warnie saying that when he first bowled to Allan Border in the nets Border was smashing everything and AB told Warne that he could read the seam rotation easily because it was so perfect. After that day Warne began to scamble the seam every so often on purpose.

Most of us get the scrambled seam from natural variation it is almost impossible to get it every ball. I dont know if Swanny scrambles the seam on purpose but it certainly works well for him.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

macca;397745 said:
Hand to hand. Against a wall. Over a few yards to someone who can observe the rotation. That seam needs to be spinning perfectly around an axis like the rings of saturn.

Having said that I remember Warnie saying that when he first bowled to Allan Border in the nets Border was smashing everything and AB told Warne that he could read the seam rotation easily because it was so perfect. After that day Warne began to scamble the seam every so often on purpose.

Most of us get the scrambled seam from natural variation it is almost impossible to get it every ball. I dont know if Swanny scrambles the seam on purpose but it certainly works well for him.
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Swann generally has one of the cleanest seams ive seen on an off spinner. more often than not his seam is perfect, and with pretty good revs too. theres an Indian (i think) offie in the IPL called Powar who also has excellent seam discipline and really rips the ball hard. id not heard of him prior to this tournament so i dont really know anything about him.

someone like Muralitharan is a real example of how a scrambled seam can work. hes incapable of keeping it straight with his unorthodox action, but its never hindered him. if anything it helps.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

Jim2109;397790 said:
Swann generally has one of the cleanest seams ive seen on an off spinner. more often than not his seam is perfect, and with pretty good revs too. theres an Indian (i think) offie in the IPL called Powar who also has excellent seam discipline and really rips the ball hard. id not heard of him prior to this tournament so i dont really know anything about him.

someone like Muralitharan is a real example of how a scrambled seam can work. hes incapable of keeping it straight with his unorthodox action, but its never hindered him. if anything it helps.
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Every so often Swann scrambles the seam though doesn't he? on purpose or not he seems to pick up wickets with it. He's a very tricky customer, a lot more to what he bowls than first meets the eye dont you reckon?
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

macca;397793 said:
Every so often Swann scrambles the seam though doesn't he? on purpose or not he seems to pick up wickets with it. He's a very tricky customer, a lot more to what he bowls than first meets the eye dont you reckon?
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yeh he does scramble them quite often, presumably on purpose. given that all he really has is an off break and an arm ball, i think he has a lot more guile than it would seem from watching him. hes never bothered to get caught up with the doosra, or even any kind of top spinner so far as i can tell. he bowls his off breaks around 53-57mph, has an armball capable of over 60mph (and can still get it to turn), and then just puts all his efforts into subtle variation on the off break.

quite often he will get a hard spun ball to go straight on. commentators usually start out saying "thats the arm ball" or something equally dumb in live commentary. then when they see the slow-mo replay and the ball spinning really hard they backtrack and say that it just didnt grip the pitch. but i think that does Swann a disservice. if you watch those balls, the seam is usually tilted off axis. it might just be natural variation in his action, but id like to think the best players in the world are better than that. otherwise it means club players are/were only a few moments of luck away from international cricket lol.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

Hauritz and Krezja both wasted lots of time on doosras. Kreszja got a couple of good ones out in the shield games but you could see them coming a mile after the first time.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

Jim2109;397802 said:
yeh he does scramble them quite often, presumably on purpose. given that all he really has is an off break and an arm ball, i think he has a lot more guile than it would seem from watching him. hes never bothered to get caught up with the doosra, or even any kind of top spinner so far as i can tell. he bowls his off breaks around 53-57mph, has an armball capable of over 60mph (and can still get it to turn), and then just puts all his efforts into subtle variation on the off break.

quite often he will get a hard spun ball to go straight on. commentators usually start out saying "thats the arm ball" or something equally dumb in live commentary. then when they see the slow-mo replay and the ball spinning really hard they backtrack and say that it just didnt grip the pitch. but i think that does Swann a disservice. if you watch those balls, the seam is usually tilted off axis. it might just be natural variation in his action, but id like to think the best players in the world are better than that. otherwise it means club players are/were only a few moments of luck away from international cricket lol.
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Actually Swanny debuted his doosra against Bangladesh! didn't exactly go very well and it was when the game was practically over anyway, but I expect its something we're going to see a lot more of, it was more like a wristspinners variation as well. can't find any videos of it online unfortunately, perhaps we'll see it again in the 20/20 World Cup.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

Haha yeah, I remember Swann's doosra. I'd be wary of him trying to experiment with it too much though. He's got where he is without having one, and I think that spending too much time on the other one has negative effects - look what's happened to Mendis. He was a strange one, commentators and journalists would bang about the magic of Mendis... but his wickets were almost always due to batsman playinig for spin that wasn't there - and was never there! It'll be intereting to see if and how Mendis comes back from this slump...

On the original point of alignment of the seam, I think my problem was my thumb. When I slowed down my flick to a snail's pace, I noticed that my thumb would come round the ball; but because it is not nearly as long or flexible as the "spinning" fingers, it would drag the seam out of position. So I'm going to try and avoid using the thumb for a leg break and topsinner. It does present an interesting variation though...
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

legspinner_don;397859 said:
Haha yeah, I remember Swann's doosra. I'd be wary of him trying to experiment with it too much though. He's got where he is without having one, and I think that spending too much time on the other one has negative effects - look what's happened to Mendis. He was a strange one, commentators and journalists would bang about the magic of Mendis... but his wickets were almost always due to batsman playinig for spin that wasn't there - and was never there! It'll be intereting to see if and how Mendis comes back from this slump...

On the original point of alignment of the seam, I think my problem was my thumb. When I slowed down my flick to a snail's pace, I noticed that my thumb would come round the ball; but because it is not nearly as long or flexible as the "spinning" fingers, it would drag the seam out of position. So I'm going to try and avoid using the thumb for a leg break and topsinner. It does present an interesting variation though...
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That is an important point, I reckon if the thumb gets in the way get it off the ball and out of the way. Especially for the backspinner.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

Hmmm, I'm still pretty inconsistent. I went back to The Art of Wrist Spin and noticed that Philpott's suggested orthodox grip is subtlely different to Warne and Jenner's "two up, two down". Philpott advocates the "half-cup" grip with the index and middle fingers a lot closer together and more angled, with the thumb playing a prominent role in lying over the seam, parallel to it.

Initially, this "half-cup" grip proved successful in keeping the seam straight. But since, the same problems have come back. What kind of grips to you use? Have you noticed any differences when/if you changed grip?
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

legspinner_don;397902 said:
Hmmm, I'm still pretty inconsistent. I went back to The Art of Wrist Spin and noticed that Philpott's suggested orthodox grip is subtlely different to Warne and Jenner's "two up, two down". Philpott advocates the "half-cup" grip with the index and middle fingers a lot closer together and more angled, with the thumb playing a prominent role in lying over the seam, parallel to it.

Initially, this "half-cup" grip proved successful in keeping the seam straight. But since, the same problems have come back. What kind of grips to you use? Have you noticed any differences when/if you changed grip?
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That half cup grip is how i was first shown I suppose. You have half the ball in your grip. I give it a little twist to straighten up the fingers. My thumb is on the ball right up to release except for the backspinner where i keep it up and off the ball out of the way.

You have to work out what works for you to achieve that fast and perfect spinning ball. You shouldn't get too unorthodox but o'rielly, o'keefe, chandrashaker, all had unusual grips.
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

I do seem to be getting a few more revs with this half cup grip. It's weird, I'd never really thought much about the grip before. I'd always gone with the Warne method, and must have just not taken in Philpott's alternative. Time to experiment!
 
Re: Tips for keeping seam alignment

legspinner_don;397910 said:
I do seem to be getting a few more revs with this half cup grip. It's weird, I'd never really thought much about the grip before. I'd always gone with the Warne method, and must have just not taken in Philpott's alternative. Time to experiment!
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It is like the same thing just a different way of looking at it. I find it easier to show kids the grip by extending the thumb and first two fingers place the ball there close it up then see if they can rev it.
 
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