Where has my swing gone ?

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madbunny

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Hey all,

I've been playing Club cricket for about 5 years now. I've always been a big swinger of the ball and bowl medium/fast. I open the bowling with the new ball and my natural action was has always allowed my to bowl outswing to right handers/in-swing to left handers.

However, this year I have noticed I have been unable to get the ball to swing at all. Even other teams have commented on it as I am well known to swing the ball quite a bit. I haven't really changed my action, it's been the same as long as I've played cricket. The only thing that I have noticed recently is I seem to fall off to the left in my follow through nowadays, possibly because of the 10 kilos I've stacked on in the last year :)

Anyone have any insight as to what could be the cause or some drills to try and get it back? I miss my swing :(
 
Even I am in the same boat as you guys! I have no clue why I am not able to swing it anymore.

Maybe, is it the global warming?
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Could be the ball you're using. Small changes in the manufacturing could have negated the swing (less seam, less varnish etc). Other than that it is going to come down to grip, wrist position and arm position. Check they are all as they're meant to be - isolate each one and play around to see what happens.

It be the atmospheric conditions, too warm/wet/dry/cloudy and so on, if so there is little you can do but grin and bear it.
 
Last weekend, it was quite humid (rather than dry as it is usual) and I was able to swing the ball both ways. For the first time, I was able to bring the ball into the right hander. It was just a magical day and a great feeling when you can demand the ball to go out or come in.


I just concentrated on providing the back spin and also the seam position. I did not care about a slightly different action to bring the ball in. Very few batsmen actually notice that your action is weird. So rather than concentrating on your action, concentrate more on the physics of the ball. "Back spin and seam position".

I am telling you this because it worked really well for me. Hopefully you can get back your swing too. Goodluck!
 
I have seen this problem a lot in young kids.
Being a cricket coach myself, you get kids that one day they can swing it and one day they cant.

I have videoed them and found that the main problem they have is there technique changes constantly due to lack of strength and bad habits.

might want to get yourself looked at by a coach or just get your mate to take a video of you with a camera.

then you can see if your wrist position is straight or slightly cutting or anything.

to swing the ball from my experience, your wrist has to be between 0-45 degrees from a straight wrist to angled out.

anything more than that and your cutting the ball.

I hope this helps :)
 
Thank you all for your responses. I actually managed to get my swing back. It did seem to be the position of my wrist. I found that when I concentrated on my wrist position as well as "flicking" my wrist on release my swing came back.

The pitches we played on this year were rather terrible which meant they scuffed the ball up very quickly. We found that both sides of the ball were pretty much destroyed inside 10 overs. Could well be a cause for finding it difficult to swing the ball.

Cheers
 
I find the slower I bowl the more it swings. So if it has stopped swinging, I would take a bit of pace off until the swing returns. And it generally doesn't swing at all without big shine on one side of the ball.
 
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