What To Do During The Off Season

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That's how I used to be, I'm trying a slightly less intense approach at the moment. Peter Philpott would approve! I liked a post SLA wrote a couple of days ago about the way I bowl and the fact that I have a much higher arm than most and therefore might not necessarily achieve the same outcomes as others? Thinking it through it seems to make a lot of sense and might explain why when I work on it, my Googly is very good and my leg break is relative less of a turner. The point he made with regards the over-spin was useful too, so I reckon I'm going to play on my strengths this coming year and not go searching for a square turner, but work on varying what I've got and getting more control over it. So it looks like I'll be working with a stock ball leg break and a Top-Spinner, my top-spinners are useful in that they often come out as wrong uns and I'm happy with that. Last year I couldn't get it working that well and I put that down to weak upper body strength and lack of practice, so I reckon I'll not be going out in the *freezing cold bowling, but staying indoors working on upper body strength and flexibility and stretching ready for some intense practice as the season approaches.

Have you heard the predictions about the worst winter for 100 years? If that's true no-ones going to be going anywhere this winter and if it's like 1961 no-ones going anywhere till April!!! Folklore indicators suggest there's an essence of truth in the prediction, have a look at how many berries are on the trees, folkelore would say this is nature gearing up for a bad winter...:(
 
Darth Spin said:
Didn't we already have a worst winter in history ever recently? Stupid winter.
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No mate that was girls stuff compared to the two bad ones of recent years. 62-63 & 1947 was bad, snow started on Christmas Eve and it didn't melt till April, for 4 full months the average temp was 0.5 degrees centigrade. 1987 was bad for a couple of weeks. But I noticed looking around at this, that this was a claim by the Daily Express and the Met office have said this winters going to be no different to any other.
 
I use some local free tennis courts through the winter using these balls.They are proper ball weight and made of hard rubber, the seams eventually wear out but usually last a winter. I also use pocket click heat handwarmers to keep the fingers warm through the coldest days.
 
In terms of fitness I posted on thread a few months back on how to improve fitness with sample programs for each area of fitness essential to physical development for cricket. This is the same approach that I'm using with Guernsey's national team are using to prepare for world cricket league for in Malaysia next year. If you have any questions about anything please let me know and I hope this helps.

http://www.bigcricket.com/community...irtness-in-the-off-season.183814/#post-558121
 
TonyM said:
So, LLS what were your initial impressions? Also interested to hear if the instructor was able to identify some areas to work on from a cricketing perspective.
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I really enjoyed it, it was very relaxing and I've always been quite flexible so it wasn't too hard. We did deep breathing to relax which is one thing that can be be transferred directly to cricket.

It was mainly a session to introduce the skills of yoga I think, we didn't really do anything that was meant to be cricket specific. But I can see some of the exercises for the core and some of the relaxation techniques being useful in cricket. It also increases your flexibility which can't be a bad thing.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
How did that go Loopy? What did he get you doing and what did you find useful?
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We started off with bowling from the coil position and corrected some minor things like over-rotation. Then we moved into bowling with a run-up off the full twenty two yards and focused on spinning the ball through gates; one was outside leg and I had to hit the stumps and the other was around middle and I had to beat the stumps. He then asked to see any variations I had so I showed him my slider, topsinner and googly (which he was very impressed with) but we didn't really do any work on those. The rest was mainly batting.

He knows my PE teacher though and says that he'll recommend me for the school team (it's my first year at this school so we haven't done any cricket yet).

Also, it was my birthday last Monday and I got several things, the most exciting of which was 'The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling' by Peter Philpott, which I've read cover to cover in three hours :)
 
Hi all leggies*...:)

I've discovered a new AMAZING practice that has helped me tremendously ! You know all probably know that one of the most important parts of wrist spin (please pay attention to the name of our art "WRIST spin") is the use of the wrist as a vessel for the ring finger to impart the spin we love so much. Well we really underrate the importance of practicing our wrists, it certainly isn't enough to just bowl and expect your wrist to get more supple. The wrist is mostly made up of tendons, which have a unique property, they are similar to springs! If they are supple enough you can actually load your wrist up like a spring (the more load up the more energy at release) [see Newton's laws of motion] and whiplash the ball out to get fierce spin. That was Shane Warne's secret to his revs. His wrist:eek:... My wrist is abnormally supple, so I am also a colossal spinner of the ball. With these simple exercises that I discovered on the internet I can physically FEEL the ball coming out with more spin on it. They aren't used in cricket as far as I know, but cheerleaders use them according to the author of the article, and also ping-pong players. I started doing them a few days back and if they continue to improve my revs at this rate I will be spinning the ball an impossible amount :D hopefully!...

They are very simple and easy to do: Sit on your knees wand put you palms on the floor so that your fingers are pointing towards you, keep stretching your wrists and keep the position for about a minute. Repeat.
Put your palms together with your fingers pointing upwards and your elbows pointing sideways. Keep your wrists in the position while you try to push your elbows up. Remain in that position for a minute. Repeat.
Do the same as above, but this time with your fingers pointing downwards. Do the same as above but now with the back of your wrists together.

You can do this during the in and off season, but I wouldn't recommend doing it before a match, since the author warned about temporary loss of "feel" in the wrists or something similar.

Good luck and keep on spinning up !
 
Jacques Voigt said:
Hi all leggies*...:)

I've discovered a new AMAZING practice that has helped me tremendously ! You know all probably know that one of the most important parts of wrist spin (please pay attention to the name of our art "WRIST spin") is the use of the wrist as a vessel for the ring finger to impart the spin we love so much. Well we really underrate the importance of practicing our wrists, it certainly isn't enough to just bowl and expect your wrist to get more supple. The wrist is mostly made up of tendons, which have a unique property, they are similar to springs! If they are supple enough you can actually load your wrist up like a spring (the more load up the more energy at release) [see Newton's laws of motion] and whiplash the ball out to get fierce spin. That was Shane Warne's secret to his revs. His wrist:eek:... My wrist is abnormally supple, so I am also a colossal spinner of the ball. With these simple exercises that I discovered on the internet I can physically FEEL the ball coming out with more spin on it. They aren't used in cricket as far as I know, but cheerleaders use them according to the author of the article, and also ping-pong players. I started doing them a few days back and if they continue to improve my revs at this rate I will be spinning the ball an impossible amount :D hopefully!...

They are very simple and easy to do: Sit on your knees wand put you palms on the floor so that your fingers are pointing towards you, keep stretching your wrists and keep the position for about a minute. Repeat.
Put your palms together with your fingers pointing upwards and your elbows pointing sideways. Keep your wrists in the position while you try to push your elbows up. Remain in that position for a minute. Repeat.
Do the same as above, but this time with your fingers pointing downwards. Do the same as above but now with the back of your wrists together.

You can do this during the in and off season, but I wouldn't recommend doing it before a match, since the author warned about temporary loss of "feel" in the wrists or something similar.

Good luck and keep on spinning up !
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Thanks, I'll try them!
 
loopylegspinner said:
Thanks, I'll try them!
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Have you tried them yet, and how useful do you think these wrist exercises are? I haven't been bowling recently (it's raining all the time:() so I don't know if they are working. (I only bowled twice after trying them so I'm not sure if they keep improving your bowling with each day that you practice them)
 
loopylegspinner said:
I've tried them today but, like you, I can't get outside due to bad weather.:(
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The rain is obviously jealous:mad:...
I've seen a few videos that mention the fact that most people can only bend their wrists upwards about 45 degrees. The ideal wrist flexibility for wrist spinning (and other sport as well) is 90 degrees. I would like to achieve 180 degrees if it is possible, that would make it easy for me to bowl any desired variation. From the doosra to the googly with clean side spin. I'm far from that! Only 90 degrees of flex so far:rolleyes: Where's your wrist flexibility at?
 
Jacques Voigt said:
The rain is obviously jealous:mad:...
I've seen a few videos that mention the fact that most people can only bend their wrists upwards about 45 degrees. The ideal wrist flexibility for wrist spinning (and other sport as well) is 90 degrees. I would like to achieve 180 degrees if it is possible, that would make it easy for me to bowl any desired variation. From the doosra to the googly with clean side spin. I'm far from that! Only 90 degrees of flex so far:rolleyes: Where's your wrist flexibility at?
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About 80 degrees on it's own but 100 degrees using my other hand (which I guess counts as cheating :))
 
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