Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

Top Contributors


So I've been having a lot of trouble with my bowling lately, and I was watching this video again and I think I might have picked up on something.

At about the 55 second mark, when Warne brings his shoulder over he kind of bends to the left slightly to allow the shoulder to come through. Is this something I should be doing? Or have I completely misread what I'm seeing in the video? I think if that little give/bend to allow his shoulder to come through is actually there, then that's something I need to incorporate it into my action.
 
Cleanprophet said:
I'm not sure what to make of that hand position however because the ball has been coming out and still turning away, even when I can see the hand position is sometimes not right. Using the two-coloured ball I can see that the ball is tending to come out with mostly topspin (probably 80% topspin and 20% sidespin) for a lot of deliveries.
Click to expand...
^
this

is my issue.

it's not a bad delivery of course, turns a little and bounces nicely but I'd love to have control over the range 45 degrees and squarer legbreaks. I can occasionally produce them with big turn but they are the exception. What's the secret? Any tips or thoughts welcome :)
 
boogiespinner said:
^
this

is my issue.

it's not a bad delivery of course, turns a little and bounces nicely but I'd love to have control over the range 45 degrees and squarer legbreaks. I can occasionally produce them with big turn but they are the exception. What's the secret? Any tips or thoughts welcome :)
Click to expand...

It's a tough one, that's for sure. What I find is that it only becomes a problem when I try to get my arm through as quick as possible. In other words, when I am trying to really rip the ball hard. When I bowl at about 80%-90% I have the hand position very good. As soon as I try to put that little bit extra on the ball, I find the hand ripping over the ball and not across it. Plus, all subsequent deliveries tend to do it too (even when I slow the action down a little). To change it, I have to really focus hard.

The one thing I always think about is getting the palm of my hand facing the floor. In fact, whe you bowl the ball your palm won't face the floor, but thinking about trying to get it in this position does help me stop the hand from opening up too much.

The slider often helps me as well. That's a ball that I can bowl and the hand position is almost always ideal. Much like bowling a googly can mess up your hand position, the slider can get it back on track (well, it does for me anyway).
 
Cleanprophet said:
I bowled a ball to a batter last week that landed outside legstump, beat the bat and clipped the top of off-stump. It was very similar to the Warne-Gatting ball, but obviously not quite as good and not in an Ashes Test match ;) . I have footage of it and my hand position is perfect (I'll post footage of that delivery in the next day or so).
Click to expand...

Here's that footage (shot on a cold and icey day):

 
Spin Lizard said:
I am seriously impressed with the dedication to be bowling in snow. Good aggot too.
Click to expand...

Pretty much everyone else at the club think we are lunatics for bowling in weather like that. To be honest, it's not that bad. It's only a problem when it's windy because that's when it gets seriously unpleasant in that sort of weather. On a calm day like that, it's not a problem once you get warmed up a bit.

boogiespinner said:
That is fantastic!!!
Click to expand...

I was very happy with that one. That was probably bowled at about 80%-90% and about 45mph. As soon as I start pushing to flat out and 50mph+, the hand tends to (not always but quite often) go over the ball rather than across. The aim is to bowl that sort of ball at 100%/50mph. That said, even at that sort of level, if you get the length right, it is very effective bowling. It was probably the most satisfying ball I've bowled and the batter certainly felt it was the best ball I've ever bowled to him (you can just see his little nod of approval after he was bowled :D ).
 
Spin Lizard said:
Two-coloured ball is your friend.
Click to expand...
I have twenty of them now!
Shivam_ipl said:
do u know about the under arm and round arm drill in which u can see your wrist.
Click to expand...
I guess you mean bowling 90 degree legbreaks underarm and translating through roundarm and then finally up to overarm? I have done some of this but will be doing more. I can't fault the logic in the approach Shivam.
Cleanprophet said:
The one thing I always think about is getting the palm of my hand facing the floor. In fact, whe you bowl the ball your palm won't face the floor, but thinking about trying to get it in this position does help me stop the hand from opening up too much.

The slider often helps me as well. That's a ball that I can bowl and the hand position is almost always ideal. Much like bowling a googly can mess up your hand position, the slider can get it back on track (well, it does for me anyway).
Click to expand...
That's interesting. I've never tried to bowl the slider.
 
Cleanprophet said:
I was very happy with that one. That was probably bowled at about 80%-90% and about 45mph. As soon as I start pushing to flat out and 50mph+, the hand tends to (not always but quite often) go over the ball rather than across. The aim is to bowl that sort of ball at 100%/50mph. That said, even at that sort of level, if you get the length right, it is very effective bowling. It was probably the most satisfying ball I've bowled and the batter certainly felt it was the best ball I've ever bowled to him (you can just see his little nod of approval after he was bowled :D ).
Click to expand...
And you caught it on video too! Well bowled!
 
Made my return to the bowling crease today for he first day of a 2 innings match, unfortunately the day ended early due to rain.

Bowled quite well on a green pitch in slightly greasy conditions, ended up with 7.2 overs 2 wickets for 15 runs as the opposition struggled through to 130/8.

First wicket came in my first over. First ball the batsman danced down the wicket and smashed me over mid-on for a great 4, remained calm and brought in a short cover, 2 balls later I squared the batsman up with a leg break that took the leading edge and went to that short cover :)

Next wicket took longer as I slowly made the batsman stretch further and further for balls of varying spin before he finally went too far and was well stumped.

Should have had another 2 as a googly that hit the back pad was given not out for some reason while a wild flail from one of their tai lenders launched a top edge that landed between long off, cover, short cover and me as we all ran toward it.

Overall I felt good, throwing still jars the shoulder but the fact that I'm bowling pain free is fantastic.
 
leftie600 said:
Overall I felt good, throwing still jars the shoulder but the fact that I'm bowling pain free is fantastic.
Click to expand...

I damamged my shoulder around Feb/March last year. Couldn't bowl for an entire month (couldn't even rotate it without considerable pain). Throughout the year the shoulder got a little bit better week by week (even with me still playing and training every week). In the last 2-3 months I've had no pain or discomfort at all. As you say, to be able to bowl pain free is fantastic. I genuinely had doubts about whether I could bowl properly ever again, for a good 5 or 6 weeks and now my shoulder is probably stronger than ever (thanks to the changes I made to how I look after my shoulder - mainly, lots of strengthening work and stretching work down the gym and, of course, proper warm ups before bowling).
 
Chino#21 said:
Does anyone have footage of Yasir Shah bowling the googly? So far I've searched through most of his wickets and I haven't seen one.

Great bowling! How do you go about turning the ball on a green, greasy pitch? I've always tried to bowl with more over-spin on those, but on particularly grassy pitches this lessens turn even more. I'd imagine backspin is a deadly weapon on such pitches. Philpott mentions the "unpickable googly" in his book, which is basically a backspinner bowled on a wet, greasy pitch that skids on, in the opposite direction of the spin. I'm surprised that there are so few leg spinners in international cricket that use this.
Click to expand...
I thought there were more highlights of Yasir on YouTube? I do remember watching one of the test highlight packages where he got a wicket with a googly.

To turn the ball I varied my pace and angle of spin until I found the 'right' mix to get turn. For this pitch it was slightly loopy with more sidespin than overspin (say 15 degrees rather than 45, if 90 degrees is a topspinner). This makes sense as the softer or greener pitches you move more toward a backspinner to get turn. As you probably know overspin digs in on soft wickets and at best will give you slow turn.

Unfortunately my shoulder injury meant that bowling a pure OBS or an inslanting delivery (-45 degrees) was too difficult with the shoulder injury.

From my experience FC quality wickets (and I'd imagine test quality) are too hard for the inslanting delivery to be truly effective on a consistent basis although it works well as a shock weapon every now and then. to make it work you really need the in drift/swing (it is both) playing its part. Interestingly Dilshan has been bowling it as a variation to his offspinning darts in the ODIs against NZ, had a few people confused but I knew what I was seeing :cool:
 
leftie600 said:
I thought there were more highlights of Yasir on YouTube? I do remember watching one of the test highlight packages where he got a wicket with a googly.
Click to expand...

His finishing position is quite chest on. From what I remember, his finishing position for the googly is much more side on, like you would expect for most spin bowlers.
 
Chino#21 said:


Interesting video of Warne's early bowling against England. It's something that you should watch over and over again to see how he went about bowling at batsmen in different scenarios. I've picked up a number of intriguing things from this video:
1) 8:45 - Flipper gone wrong / 7:48 - Excellent flipper
2) 15:18 - Possibly an OBS? You can see that it's much flatter and quicker than his leg break, and has some clear "carry" or float on towards the batsman. It deceived him as he was initially just hanging on the back foot, but it went fuller than expected and trapped him in between backwards and forwards. Some turn out of the rough as well. Commentator picks it for the exact opposite of what it probably was, which means it definitely was the backspinner (reverse psychology by commentator)
3) 16:42 - Another OBS? I can't think of another delivery that would look the same besides the flipper, and you can clearly see here that it wasn't the flipper.
4) 20:25 - Yet another one.
5) 21:36 - One of the few googlies you will see from Shane Warne.
6) 24:56 - Googly from around the wickets.
7) 27:58 - Yorker wicket.
8) Just watched it again. At 10: 48 - Warne comes charging in like a bull and bowls with a rather funny looking action that is very similar to how I bowl at times.
Click to expand...

I'll add this to my leg break blog page. Cheers for drawing attention to it. Still watching it now 10.48 sounds like it's worth a Butchers...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top