Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

[Cleanprophet]

Once I can pitch these things consistently, if they do pick them no matter. It's still a big spinning delivery to deal with. Also, that'll be perfect to set up Grimmett's "wrong wrong 'un". That'll learn them!

Actually, that is the next logical step for a batter that is picking you, the double bluff. Disguise the legspinner as a googly.

I sometimes try to bowl the googly and it goes straight on as a topspinner or even turns away slightly. The position of the hand is changed such a small amount from a ball that is 90% overspin/10% legspin to a ball that is 100% overspin and again to a ball that is 90% overspin/10% offspin. This is what SLA was saying about the ball turning a small amount, but if a batter thinks he can pick you then he will open a can of worms for himself if you can change between these 3 deliveries and do so on a good line and length.

 

[boogiespinner]

In Abdul Qadir's case, he had one googly that was very difficult to pick. In fact, the only batter who could pick it was Ian Chappell and he only picked it because he noticed that Qadir's body language completely changed at the start of his run up (if I remember rightly, Chappell said that Qadir would almost smile to himself as he started his run up). It was never picked in the action and he took plenty of wickets with that delivery.

Amarnath claimed to pick Qadir, along with Gavaskar:

"What is it with Indian batsmen and legspinners? Let me start with a little story Mohinder Amarnath told me years ago. Abdul Qadir, the man to whom the world tends to do an injustice when hailing Shane Warne as the saviour of legspin bowling, never got any joy bowling to Indians. He had a googly far deadlier and far more deceptive than that of Warne, but the Indians rarely had trouble spotting it. Amarnath and Sunil Gavaskar took particular delight in announcing it to the world. "Every time he would bowl a googly," Amarnath said, "one of us would shout 'googles' before hitting it away. Qadir felt quite bad about it and said to us, 'It's bad enough you can read it, but can you please stop shouting it out aloud?'
Sambit Bal, The legspinner's graveyard, ESPN

 

[SLA]

The thing is, once you get to test level, every spinner is unique anyway, so trying to become a world class bowler by copying someone else is the wrong approach.

However, how many people here are really in the position where they need to be concerned about whether or not test batsmen will pick their variations? How about getting to first class level first before worrying about the step up to international standard.

99% of spinners will never even play first class cricket. They will have long, happy, successful careers being decent level club cricketers bowling out club batsmen. At this level a googly is a great variation for a legspinner. For leggies of a certain type, its the first and only variation they will ever need. For others, the slider is the better option. Pick one or the other, not both. Don't bother with the flipper, you're John Smith, amateur leggie bowling on a pudding of a pitch on a wet Saturday in Basingstoke, not Clarrie ************** Grimmett. You don't need it, it won't help you.

Variation is overplayed anyway. A good stock ball plus one decent variation, plus some subtle tweaking of line and pace is enough to get out 90% of club batsmen.

Exactly the same applies to offies: decent stock ball plus one good variation.

 

[Cleanprophet]

Variation is overplayed anyway

A good example of this is Ravi Ashwin. He bowls all kinds of variations and I think it actually makes him a lesser bowler. I saw it in a Test last week. He bowled a very nice ball that beat Ian Bell all ends up. Instead of bowling the same ball again and trying to get the edge this time, he bowled a completely different delivery which Bell knocked away for an easy single. Sometimes, the more options you have, the more opportunity for you have to make a mistake.

Nasser Hussain made a point about Harbhajan Singh. He said that Harbhajan would get decent revs, dip and drift on the ball. But he then developed the doosra and the doosra requires the bowler to be a little more front on when bowling. As a result, Hussain felt that Harbhajan got fewer revs on the ball and less drift with his offspinner. Effectively, he developed the doosra but at the expense of his stock ball and, overall, it made him a lesser bowler because it was that stock offie that got him to the top of international cricket.

Swann simply had that offspinner and the arm ball and stuck with it all the way through his career. Much better to have two very good deliveries than four or five decent ones.

 

[SLA]

Of course, this is quite logical. But having a googly and an OBS isn't too much, is it?

Backspin and top spin go hand in hand and accentuate the effects of each other. It's important to have at least one delivery of each. For leggies this means having either a leg break and an OBS, or a leg break and a flipper. The googly isn't very important unless you can bowl it well, in which case you just add it to your arsenal.

Ajmal overuses his doosra a bit, but he can get away with it as he is essentially the same type of bowler as Anil Kumble. (Turns the ball a little bit each way at a good pace with pin-point accuracy)

You say that, but the most prolific spin bowler of all time didn't have a ball with backspin. Murali had a big sidespinner, a topspinner, and later in his career, a doosra.

Every spinner is different, but I would say you EITHER need to be able to mix up heavy backspin and heavy topspin OR you need to be able to make the ball go both ways.

If you can do both, great. But given that the vast majority of successful spin bowlers don't, I would suggest there are probably more effective ways you can concentrate on improving.

As I have said multiple times, most spin bowlers I come across bowl far too short and far too slow, and focus too much on big turn and multiple variations ahead of more useful skills likes accuracy and strategy. They also put too much weight on glory stats like strike-rate and not enough on the nitty gritty of economy rate. Doesn't matter how amazing your strike rate is, if you're 50% more expensive than the other bowling options, you're not going to get many overs.

 

[SLA]

A good example of this is Ravi Ashwin. .

Ashwin, like Narine, is a modern t20 spinner. In t20 you don't need to turn the ball a long way, as long as you maintain a good length and a decent pace and the batsman doesn't know which way its going to turn, he can't slog it and is reduced to nudging it around.

That's great for T20 games where going at a run a ball is a fantastic over. But it won't get you many test wickets. In test cricket you need a more fundamentally threatening stock ball that dips and drifts and explodes sideways off the pitch and will beat even the most careful defensive shot. Every great test spinner has had a great stock delivery.

I like Ashwin, I think he's hugely talented and great to watch, but its a lot to ask for him to be simultaneously a great T20 spinner and a great test match spinner.

 

[Cleanprophet]

Yeah he does mix his offies and carrom balls up quite well. It's a bit easy to pick though, looks just like a glorified leg break to me.
One thing about him that I like as well is that he mixes up the amount of overspin and sidespin in his off break. There are so many offies that bowl the same delivery over and over again and it becomes predictable and easy to bat against. Ashwin changes his angle of spin a bit so the batsman rarely gets the same delivery twice. Possibly the most underrated tactic in off spin bowling.

Yeah, I agree about that Ashwin carrom ball. At first glance, I thought he was bowling a legspinner. I read somewhere (last year) that he was working on a flipper. He is a fine cricketer, but there is no doubt that the requirements of Test cricket and T20 cricket are quite different and becoming more and more different.

Using the crease is something all bowlers should do but something you don't see too often. Jimmy Anderson does it in a subtle and effective way. For spinners, if you have a good control of line, then it is a fantastic and very easy addition to your effectiveness. Warne would always talk about how important it is to use the crease. He would also talk about how some bowlers go around the wicket and bowl tight into the stumps. As far as he was concerned, you should use the full width of the crease. If you go around the wicket, get as wide as you can and really try to muck up the batter's guard and judgement of line. The one thing I have done a lot this year is bowl from right in front of the stumps from wicket to wicket, really trying to tuck up the batter and almost force him to go against the angle and the spin and then, of course, go wide of the crease and float a legspinner outside off-stump.

 

[shahidpak]

Using the crease does work well but it can upset your rhythm a bit.

There are many tactics that you can use whilst changing your position on the crease but I think the best tactic you can use is changing the angle of spin. Which is something that very few spin bowlers can do well.

Well if you use the crease you arr varying angle

 

[shahidpak]

Yes, the angle that the delivery is coming from, which doesn't change much and isn't effective on its own. Applying more over spin or side spin is important. Ex. Bowling a heavily top spun leg break at off stump from wide of the crease, then a 75 degree leg break from very close to the stumps and on leg stump. There's 4 things that can potentially fool the batsman: The increased turn, less bounce, different angle and the different line, not just the angle. To be honest I don't think merely changing the angle a little bit does anything to a good batsman unless you do it right.

Waoh never really tought of it like that ...

 

[shahidpak]

And well i dont know if the batsman you play against are very watchful of the delivery but the batsman against whom i play,( shit batsmen) will just play Every ball individually so if i have less bounce or change in angle they juste play it like it was the first delivery they faced i think they are not worth trying to be too clever against and a good legbreak aimed at the stumps will bowl them out.

 

[SLA]

Faced a good spinner yesterday, was told he was a leggie, but for all the world he looked like he was bowling Murali style topspinning offbreaks.
Of the balls I let pitch, one went like an offbreak and the rest like a legbreak. He bowled with a scrambled seam so I couldn't pick him through the air.

Faced 3 overs off him, still none-the-wiser what he was doing.

 

[SLA]

Was he bowling at a reasonable pace, because you should be able to pick a scrambled seam delivery? Just look closely at the way the seam tumbles and in which direction. Maybe he was bowling doosras then?

It looked mainly like topspin, that's all you could tell. Without a seam angle to spot, it was impossible to say whether it was topspin plus a bit of offspin or topspin plus a bit of legspin. I think if it was easy to pick a scrambled seam delivery, people like Ajmal wouldn't have the success they do.

 

[Cleanprophet]

Faced a good spinner yesterday, was told he was a leggie, but for all the world he looked like he was bowling Murali style topspinning offbreaks.
Of the balls I let pitch, one went like an offbreak and the rest like a legbreak. He bowled with a scrambled seam so I couldn't pick him through the air.

Faced 3 overs off him, still none-the-wiser what he was doing.

Funnily enough, I was playing in a game last Sunday and I did a spot of umpiring whilst we batted. One of the opposition's young lads came on to bowl and his action just looked like an offspinner's all the way, but he was turning the ball away from the bat. I was stood in the umpire's position and watching his hand closely and still couldn't work out what he was doing. I could only conclude that he was coming over the top of the ball and maybe bowling doosra's. His grip looked like an offspinner and his hand was pointed to the offside just as he got to his release position (obviously, a legspinner's hand would be in the opposite position). He wasn't spinning it much and a fair few balls went straight on. Not one ball, that I can remember, turned into the batter. Still baffled and I was stood 2 yards away from him and watching closely! I wasn't watching him from the front but as his hand came over it was in an offspinner's position. I asked one of the batters facing and he just said "it's legspin isn't it?" and the other wasn't even really looking at his hand with much interest at all.

 

[shahidpak]

They sound like downright tailenders / sloggers. You just have to bowl a decent pace against them and figure out their weakness. I always test a batsman on his legs first and if that doesn't work I try to make him play at big spinning, wide deliveries, and if nothing else works I stick with good length stock balls and variations.

In most cases against bad batsmen you need to make big adjustments in your deliveries and against good batsmen very small, subtle adjustments. Ex. Against a bad batsman you change your pace from 60kph to 85kph whereas against a good batsman you'd change it from 65kph to 71kph with another small change in angle / spin.

Now i understand why i couldnt bowl well today on a weird mat that dis not spin at all

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Funnily enough, I was playing in a game last Sunday and I did a spot of umpiring whilst we batted. One of the opposition's young lads came on to bowl and his action just looked like an offspinner's all the way, but he was turning the ball away from the bat. I was stood in the umpire's position and watching his hand closely and still couldn't work out what he was doing. I could only conclude that he was coming over the top of the ball and maybe bowling doosra's. His grip looked like an offspinner and his hand was pointed to the offside just as he got to his release position (obviously, a legspinner's hand would be in the opposite position). He wasn't spinning it much and a fair few balls went straight on. Not one ball, that I can remember, turned into the batter. Still baffled and I was stood 2 yards away from him and watching closely! I wasn't watching him from the front but as his hand came over it was in an offspinner's position. I asked one of the batters facing and he just said "it's legspin isn't it?" and the other wasn't even really looking at his hand with much interest at all.

Should have asked him at the end of the game. Thing is if he was a kid a lot of the time they haven't got a clue and they shrug and say "I just spin it". Not a lot of help normally.

 

[shahidpak]

Today i played a practice match and it was difficult because in other matches batsman always make errors and so i get wickets. Today i was getting my field and i had about an idea of about how i wanted to set it but i wasnt sure placing each fielder and my tactic was to try to drag the batsman across with leg breaks and bowl a googly but it didnt really work. Btw the pitch was a weird mat which didnt spin.only a little. Now i can bowl the leg break the googly a faster ball and my OBS is OK but knowing how to bowl them and knowing when to bowl them is different.
So i needed some advice accord ing to what and how should i set a field, how van i use thèse 4 deliveries, and what to do on non spinning pitches ?

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Lol a kid recognised me yesterday at a game - Epping 2nd XI. We turned up at the wrong ground as I got out the car, this kid said "Someblokecalleddave! - mate I read all your stuff on Big Cricket all the time, I've never signed up and joined in - but I'm always on there or watching your videos"! I had a quick chat with him and he was a Leggie and said he was doing well. Thankfully I wasn't playing against him, because I bowled poorly, came away from the match absolutely shattered, but I'm not 100% physically anyway. That's the 2nd time that's happened now.

 

[SLA]

Lol a kid recognised me yesterday at a game - Epping 2nd XI. We turned up at the wrong ground as I got out the car, this kid said "Someblokecalleddave! - mate I read all your stuff on Big Cricket all the time, I've never signed up and joined in - but I'm always on there or watching your videos"! I had a quick chat with him and he was a Leggie and said he was doing well. Thankfully I wasn't playing against him, because I bowled poorly, came away from the match absolutely shattered, but I'm not 100% physically anyway. That's the 2nd time that's happened now.

Your season finished now? We finished yesterday. Overjoyed we won the league, gutted the season is over.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Today i played a practice match and it was difficult because in other matches batsman always make errors and so i get wickets. Today i was getting my field and i had about an idea of about how i wanted to set it but i wasnt sure placing each fielder and my tactic was to try to drag the batsman across with leg breaks and bowl a googly but it didnt really work. Btw the pitch was a weird mat which didnt spin.only a little. Now i can bowl the leg break the googly a faster ball and my OBS is OK but knowing how to bowl them and knowing when to bowl them is different.
So i needed some advice accord ing to what and how should i set a field, how van i use thèse 4 deliveries, and what to do on non spinning pitches ?

In the game I played yesterday an old bloke was trying to keep the strike most of the time (left hander), careful player, looking at him I reckon he might have had nearly 50 years or possibly more experience under his belt. He was there the whole game as the No.3, the opener was bowled by my son - I caught a ball at cover off the 2nd ball. I bowled 4 or 5 overs, mostly at this old bloke. Anything on his legs was going for 4 through the gap between square leg and mid wicket. My bowling felt wrong and the pitch had nothing in it - damp, no bounce or turn. I ended up bowling round the wicket pitching it wide of his off stump, trying to turn it into him. He was hitting the ball through the covers, but for the most part I had that covered. I hate bowling at lefties anyway and this bloke was good, not powerful at all, unless it was on his legs, but technically good by my reckoning. As soon as I had a go at the right-handers, I felt a lot better, far more confident.

 

[shahidpak]

In the game I played yesterday an old bloke was trying to keep the strike most of the time (left hander), careful player, looking at him I reckon he might have had nearly 50 years or possibly more experience under his belt. He was there the whole game as the No.3, the opener was bowled by my son - I caught a ball at cover off the 2nd ball. I bowled 4 or 5 overs, mostly at this old bloke. Anything on his legs was going for 4 through the gap between square leg and mid wicket. My bowling felt wrong and the pitch had nothing in it - damp, no bounce or turn. I ended up bowling round the wicket pitching it wide of his off stump, trying to turn it into him. He was hitting the ball through the covers, but for the most part I had that covered. I hate bowling at lefties anyway and this bloke was good, not powerful at all, unless it was on his legs, but technically good by my reckoning. As soon as I had a go at the right-handers, I felt a lot better, far more confident.

Okay but i bowled to right handers too