Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)
- Thread starter Richard the Third
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So your slider spins like a leg break ?
Cleanprophet
Active Member
I've not only watched the clips, but I've also watched the man himself describe the delivery, how the delivery came about and what the delivery does. He initially bowled the ball unintentionally. It was early in the season, cold and the ball was new. Essentially, he said he tried to bowl a big sidespinner but the ball slipped out with very little spin on it and it just skidded on, catching the batter out. In his own words, he said it looks like the ball should turn a lot but it's just a basic straight ball. I'll post a link to the footage and you'll see. There's no backspin and no dirft. If there were enough revs to create drift, then the ball would spin off the pitch. If there was any spin, it would be sidespin, not backspin.
EDIT: I've just watched it again (a dismissal of Stewart with the slider delivery) and there is a very small amount of drift. Not enough to cause a problem to most batters and certainly not a Test match batter. The problem comes from the fact that it looks like a hugely spun "sidespinning legspinner" (Warne's words) but it just goes straight on. At Test level, a batter would be watching a legspinner and playing for the turn off the pitch. The ball going straight on would catch them out. The ball will also come on a bit quicker because the bowler isn't dragging his fingers over the top of the ball, converting speed-potential energy into revs. As we've mentioned before, at Test level the ball that skids on will cause problems. It is less likely to in club cricket because the batters are not trying to pre-empt the bowler. Warne mentions that he lost the ability to bowl the flipper after operations to his shoulder and damage to his finger. This slider delivery, pretty much, filled the space left by the loss of a flipper from his armoury.
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Cleanprophet
Active Member
Well, essentially, this has always been one of the main things Warne has always said when he said that you need to get the captain onside and backing you. I would never tell a young spin bowler to give a second's thought about staying on. The art of bowling is dominating the batsman and taking wickets. Do that and staying on takes care of itself.
Cleanprophet
Active Member
Yes, very much so. The deeper you hold the ball in your hand, the less revs you will generate with this release from the front of the hand because you don't have much of a wrist flick. The release looks just like a legspinner to the batter but you're not coming over the top of the ball and you're not putting a lot of wrist into it. However, if you grip the ball loosely (with the tips of your fingers on top of the seam) then you can generate plenty of revs mostly from the fingers. You can then shift the ball back, deeper in the hand and bowl the Warne-type slider that just slides on straight, with not drift or turn.
Should the head be straight while bowling warnes head is angled on the left if his head was straight he would be bowling with an arm angle of about 45° .........and....... I was bowling with m'y normal action then i saw warne bowling and i had the impression that warne was moving his head to the side / pivoting early to let his arm Come through i tried this i had les energy on the ball but the ball came straighter before bouncing does he really do thit or am i wrong?
Cleanprophet
Active Member
It's very much down to the individual. Most legspinners I've seen do tend angle their heads to the left. It's not a conscious thing. For most people, it has to happen to allow their arm to get right through the action. If you develop a googly, then it is very difficult to bowl it with you head upright. Mushtaq Ahmed was quite upright when he bowled, but most have their head tilted a little bit.
It doesn't really matter either way. As long as you are looking where you are bowling (although there are plenty of bowlers, spin and seam, who don't look where they are bowling it), you are fine. The head position is mainly an issue of balance. If your head tilts to the left, it can unbalance you. If you are having problems with your balance (you will know this simply from your follow through - you should follow through straight down the crease or reasonably straight and not fall away to your left), then you might have to look at your head position.
You can clearly see the backspin on the ball in the slo-mo replay.
Quite often when bowlers say "no spin" or "very little spin" they mean "no side spin" or "very little side spin".
Backspin in the default spin for 99% of deliveries. I have never seen a cricket ball bowled with no spin (although I've seen people try), if you did succeed it would act a bit like this:
The drift is crucial to the slider - without the drift the batsman would instinctively recognise that it wasn't a legbreak. Its the drift that disguises it so well. That's why IMO its a better ball than the flipper. Its both easier to master and harder to pick.
its not a test match thing, even at the mediocre level I play, if you bowl three dipping, turning legbreaks in a row the batsman starts to play for it automatically, leaving them vulnerable to a ball that drifts but doesn't turn.
Why doesn't it turn even though its got enough sidespin on it to drift? Because as we've discussed before, on hard pitches backspin inhibits grip.
Its a 50:50 mix of sidespin and backspin. The sidespin makes it drift in, the backspin then makes it skid straight on.
Although it was Warne with all his showmanship and bluster that gave it a name made it famous, its actually a very old and very common variation with both legspinners and offspinners alike.
I filmed myself bowling and took a picture just when my arm came over and i always thought that i had a low arm but my arm was at 12 oclock can you tell me the pros and cons of bowling with a high arm but i think that i bowl with a high arm because im only 14 and 1 m 70 about 5 ft 8 (in bloody english system) so i do this unconciously to get good flight and bounce and it will change when i grow older???
(PS: i was bowling in a football ground because i dont have access to pitches in France : p)
(PS: i was bowling in a football ground because i dont have access to pitches in France : p)
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Cleanprophet
Active Member
I disagree. You can't clearly see backspin. To be honest, it would be very, very difficult to see backspin clearly anyway. What you can see clearly is the release and it is imparting almost entirely sidespin. Backspin is imparted by a lot of seamers as they flick the ball out of their hand and their fingers drag down the back of the ball. In this instance, there may be a bit of backspin because the ball is released out of the front of the hand. But it will be minimal. To get the magnus effect on a ball requires a fair amount of revs. Warne gets just enough revs to get the ball to drift a small amount. Just as a topspinner causes the ball to dip, a backspinner cause the ball to drift on to a fuller length. If this slider has any amount of backspin, it would not dip as it does. If you watch footage of the flipper (particulary the delivery to Alec Stewart - poor old Alec Stewart once again!) you will see the ball just carry a little bit. It's not so easy to see with the flipper because the trajectory is into the pitch and not up out of the hand, but you can see it just hold a little even in that delivery.
Not really. It is bowled quicker and flatter and on a Test match pitch. I've bowled this ball myself in the nets on a surface that offers more turn than a Test match pitch. When bowled quicker and flatter it will just skid on. Give it a bit more air and bowl it a touch slower and it will turn plenty and sharply.
The problem is, this delivery is so variable. I've bowled it with a bit of overspin, I've bowled with only sidespin and it's possible (when bowled quickly) that it has a little bit of backspin on it. It can bowled flat and it can be bowled up out of the hand with a bit more flight.
What I would agree with 100% is that it is a better delivery than the flipper. Purely because it is easier to master.
I'd say, if there is backspin on it, it would be more like 90:10 or 80:20 at the most. If it has enough revs to drift and it is 50:50, then it would have enough backspinning revs to hang in the air a fraction longer and have no dip at all.
SLA means on a flat hard pitch back spin will inhibit grip, I can confirm this. On a slightly softer or dusty pitch a backspin delivery seems to dig and can get more and "quicker" spin than an overspun delivery, this is what you are describing.
Early in the season I use backspin on the soft green wickets, through the middle I move to more overspin and later in the season if the pitches break up more easily I go back to backspin.
Cleanprophet
Active Member
I'm talking purely about the movement through the air (the magnus effect) and how it is effected by revs. The direction the ball is spinning in creates resistance and forces the ball into particular directions. We all know this, but spin to the left creates resistance that pushes the ball to the right and vice versa. Forward spin creates downward pressure and backwards spin creates lift.
If there are enough revs to create sideways drift and the revs are 50:50, then it will also cause the ball to lift. A ball bowled with 50:50 sidespin and overspin (in other words, an out-and-out legspinner) has drift and dip. A ball bowled with 50:50 sidespin and backspin (as SLA is suggesting this Warne delivery has been bowled) will have drift and lift - unless there isn't sufficient revs to create movement through the air. We can see that the Warne slider does drift a little but it also dips a little. The flipper, which is pretty much 100% backspin has a little bit of lift, even though it is bowled flat and into the pitch. In other words, the Warne slider has very little backspin on it. You can see that anyway from the footage. The downward drag on the ball from the fingers is simply not enough to generate very many backspinning revs. The fingers are pulled across the ball, generating almost entirely sideways spin but there is significantly less wrist flick so the spin generated is almost completely from the fingers - hence there being fewer revs than his normal wrist spinning deliveries.
Warne actually did try to bowl a backspinner in his early days (in the West Indies) that involved flicking the wrist back and creating drag down the back of the ball. He dropped it pretty quickly because you simply cannot put enough revs on it. Nuwan Kulasekara is possibly the best exponent of backspin in modern cricket. Obviously, he is a seam bowler but he flicks his wrist back quite sharply, dragging his fingers down the back of ball and creating significantly more backspin than a normal seam bowler would do. It's still not a huge amount revs, but it does create enough for the ball to skid on.
OK and I agree but that's not what SLA was referring to and not how it came across in your reply to SLA.
Can anyone help me ??
Cleanprophet
Active Member
To be honest, I never mentioned anything at all about turn off the pitch. SLA mentioned that. The talk was purely about the movement of the ball through the air, but SLA said that on a hard pitch backspin prevents the ball gripping. I replied that actually, more than anything, quicker and flatter deliveries inhibit spin and the Warne slider is quicker and flatter. That, more than anything else, is going to prevent the ball spinning.
It's besides the point anyway. My point was that backspin prevents the ball from dipping. The Warne slider does dip a little as well as drift a little.
That is also besides the point. My initial point was that a batter is deceived because he plays for the turn but the ball doesn't turn. SLA said that actually it is the drift that is the most deceptive because the batter believes it is a legspinner. Essentially, he argued my very point but came at it from the arse-end.
Cleanprophet
Active Member
An upright arm helps with a nice consistent line. The same as for a seam bowler, the more angled your arm is, the more problematic it is for your line if you release the ball a fraction early or late..
There is a suggestion that you will get less drift with an upright arm. I'm not sure how true that is. My feeling is that as long as you rotate your arm on the same line, from the take back point to the release and you spin it hard, you will get drift.
Overall, I wouldn't worry at all about whether your arm is upright at 12 o'clock or angled more at 11 o'clock. The main thing is that it feels comfortable and the ball is coming out nicely.
boogiespinner
Active Member
hey, I replied on the other thread
My thinking is that 12 o'clock is the 'purest' arm angle and if it comes naturally to you, great.
From your photo I would say - maybe you can straighten your front leg a bit more? It's also not clear but it looks as if your front foot might be pointing toward the slips which if so I think is too far round.