Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

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someblokecalleddave said:
You and me both mate, if I could just score the odd 20 every now and then would be nice, or just have one or two shots that I could play half decent!
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I must buy that practice tee that I saw earlier. I can hit a few in the nets. Put me out in the middle though and I don't last long. I had a realisation recently about the top hand / top elbow. It really is the top hand that controls the shot and my theory is that if you initiate a shot by throwing an uppercut with the top elbow, that results in a powerful, well-directed swing... try that
 
Not a good game for me yesterday. The pitch was quite slow and I struggled to bowl with a bit more pace. I just kept dropping short and the batters were picking up runs consistently off my bowling. The keeper missed an inside edge off a googly (he's not good enough and it is really affecting my confidence as a bowler), there was a miss hit that just lobbed over mid-on and an LBW that could easily have gone my way. Other than that, no other chances and no wickets. I bowled 8 overs and I didn't check my figures at the end (felt like I went for about 40 or 50 - although there was only one 4 hit, I was going for one's and two's a lot). I've not had to really focus on getting the ball full this season. This is the first time in a long time that I've bowled too short.

To cap it off, I went out to bat and was clean bowled for just the one run. Didn't really move that front foot into line and played all around a straight one that should have been punched down the ground.
 
Not such a good net session today. I wanted to nurture what felt like a mini-breakthrough with my legspin yesterday, but there were loads of guys there so I couldn't do solo practice. I bowled seam up, not too badly, and batted, which was good but my bat is SO cheap (like £12) that most balls that hit it send a shockwave through my right arm, and by the end I just had to bat with the top hand.
 
I've had one of those really obvious realisations. I suppose that in part it's because I've been bowling so much better this year, but only now have a I realised that it's probably a good idea to make a note of wickets that spin and wickets that don't and the conditions that you've played under - dry, damp, very dry etc. Most of the wickets I've played on this year have allowed for the ball to turn off of the wicket with the exception of one which was rock hard. This rock hard one had variable bounce, but didn't offer any turn what-so-ever and that kind of left me a bit flummoxed, but I've got it in mind for next year and now know it'll be a potential issue if the weather is similar leading up to it - or am I talking nonsense here? Over-thinking things as I often do?
 
someblokecalleddave said:
I've had one of those really obvious realisations. I suppose that in part it's because I've been bowling so much better this year, but only now have a I realised that it's probably a good idea to make a note of wickets that spin and wickets that don't and the conditions that you've played under - dry, damp, very dry etc. Most of the wickets I've played on this year have allowed for the ball to turn off of the wicket with the exception of one which was rock hard. This rock hard one had variable bounce, but didn't offer any turn what-so-ever and that kind of left me a bit flummoxed, but I've got it in mind for next year and now know it'll be a potential issue if the weather is similar leading up to it - or am I talking nonsense here? Over-thinking things as I often do?
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Hell no, this is the kind of stuff that divides the pros from the top club players.

The ability to read a pitch and use one of your strengths as a spin bowler on a given pitch is golden. Anil Kumble's effort to find a way to succeed in Aus is a great example of that (it took him a while!). It has taken me a while to learn to rein myself in and vary my pace and overspin for the positions in front of me, I'll never play Aus in a test but I'll be damned if I'll never adapt to the conditions in front of me! :)
 
That's good then as the wicket I'm bowling on this weekend turned quite a bit last year and as I recall I took 3 wickets. I also had a bit of a Shane Warne effect as well helping me out as we all walked on to the pitch at the start for the inspection and toss, a young bloke recognised me and was saying to the whole team... "Oh my God it's someblokecalleddave off the internet, this blokes all over the internet because of his leg spin". I think that got into some of their heads and the fact that on the day I bowled a good line and length and the ball turned.
 
Haha lol Dave
I don't thin you're over thinking at all only 1 pitch hasn't spun this season, after a rain break I thought it would turn because it should be spongy but the seam was wet so the ball hardly turned
BTW I got to know that for the match that Middlesex played on our club ground they asked for a non spinning pitch to negate the effect of Ajmal and Moeen Ali, isn't that unfair?
 
leftie600 said:
Hell no, this is the kind of stuff that divides the pros from the top club players.

The ability to read a pitch and use one of your strengths as a spin bowler on a given pitch is golden.
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Absolutely. You can work plenty on your action (and you must of course), but then comes the psychology of playing and adapting to conditions. This master class that Warne did not so long ago featured him talking about finding a line and length for each particular pitch:



This was something I had a struggle with last week. Very slow pitch and I just wasn't able to push the ball through a bit quicker.
 
My younger son did well today, he's only a few days short of being 14 and played in a 4th XI match with me and he's come away with 6 wickets for 15 runs, he's a very good bowler, first couple of wickets were with off-spin the other 4 were seam up, he's on a hat-trick in the next game and had a hat-trick chance in the previous game. Is that right that if your took the last two wickets to finish the game off when you start your bowling in the next game you're on a hat-trick?

Also means he's catching up to me http://basildonandpitsea.play-cricket.com/website/web_pages/165800

My next cricket ambition is for all three of us to play in the same game and take all 10 wickets, between us Joe and I had 8 today - with several chances going amiss when I bowled.
 
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someblokecalleddave said:
Is that right that if your took the last two wickets to finish the game off when you start your bowling in the next game you're on a hat-trick?
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I'm not sure. It would certainly be 3 in 3 balls. Whether that's a "hat-trick" or not, I don't know. Traditionally, a hat-trick was meant to be 3 in a row. In football, a player had to score 3 in a row for it to be a true hat-trick. Even if he scored 3 goals, if someone else scored for his team in between those goals it was not considered a hat-trick. But that's changed now. In cricket, you often see bowlers pick up a hat-trick with the balls at the end of an over and then the start of an over. I think I've also seen a bowler on a hat-trick from the end of one innings into the start of the next (which can be a day or more inbetween). So who knows? 3 wickets in 3 balls is probably a hat-trick whether you do in the same match or not. For me, I think you can't beat 3 in a row, in the same over. It's a bit of an anti-climax when a bowler's hat-trick comes in seperate overs.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Is that right that if your took the last two wickets to finish the game off when you start your bowling in the next game you're on a hat-trick?
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Nope, it has to be in the same game.

i.e. In a two innings game: If you get the wickets with your last deliveries in the opposition's first innings and get the next wicket with your first delivery in their second innings you have a hat-trick. If you did this across two 50 over games you don't have a hat-trick.
 
leftie600 said:
Nope, it has to be in the same game.

i.e. In a two innings game: If you get the wickets with your last deliveries in the opposition's first innings and get the next wicket with your first delivery in their second innings you have a hat-trick. If you did this across two 50 over games you don't have a hat-trick.
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Oh ok, that's a shame.
 
We managed a game on Sunday, even with lots of rain around. It didn't lool promising when we arrived, but the rain cleared and we got underway about 2 hours late for a 30 overs-a-side game. Unfortunately, we were bowling first and the ball was soaking wet. It was like a slimey bar of soap and I couldn't grip it at all. I was switching between spin and seam and was all over the place with the ball slipping in my hand all the time. After 2 overs, we switched to a new ball, the sun came out and we managed to keep this 2nd ball quite dry for the rest of the innings. This allowed me to actuall grip the ball and bowl properly.

In the end, I ended up with 2 for 29 from 7 or 8 overs with about 24 of those runs coming off those first couple of dodgy overs. First one was a caught and bowl (batting swinging across the line and lobbing it up to me) and the second was a googly that the batter miss hit to mid-off.

They scored 145 and we managed to chase it down with a couple of overs to spare.
 
Net practice today, first for a week or so. Really struggling. I was just bowling off three quarter length, trying to spin the ball hard with legbreaks and just pitch a few googlies on the strip. My accuracy needs more improvement than ever - plenty of high loopy things down leg and nearly as many things down off that get stuck in the fingers.

The only saving feature is that someone came over to me, not to say how terrible I was bowling, but to ask me what I was doing to get the ball to turn so much! I needed the compliment.
 
My reply to both the posts is just keep practicing, focus on being relaxed, try bowling with a looser grip than usual. Also maybe get rid of the stumps and a target and just focus on bowling with an action that feels right, where you can see that the ball turns off the surface you're bowling on.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
My reply to both the posts is just keep practicing, focus on being relaxed, try bowling with a looser grip than usual. Also maybe get rid of the stumps and a target and just focus on bowling with an action that feels right, where you can see that the ball turns off the surface you're bowling on.
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Yeah, a looser grip might be worth a try. I've got a loose grip and I hardly ever get the ball stuck in my fingers resulting in the dreaded drag down.

I have an issue that maybe someone here might have some advice for. When I bowl flat out, my hand position always slips into a topspinning release (well, to be exact, it produces a ball that is about 80%-90% topspin and 20%-10% sidespin). It's still a nice ball to bowl. Anil Kumble bowled very effectively with that very release/delivery. Sometimes, however, my hand comes right over the top and I actually bowl a ball with bit of spin into the batter. When I ease off and bowl a little bit within myself, I get that hand coming across the ball nicely and produce a genuine legspinner (50% topspin and 50% sidespin). I wonder why it is that when I get that arm through a bit quicker the hand position changes and I lose lots of that sidespin?
 
Cleanprophet said:
I have an issue that maybe someone here might have some advice for. When I bowl flat out, my hand position always slips into a topspinning release (well, to be exact, it produces a ball that is about 80%-90% topspin and 20%-10% sidespin). It's still a nice ball to bowl. Anil Kumble bowled very effectively with that very release/delivery. Sometimes, however, my hand comes right over the top and I actually bowl a ball with bit of spin into the batter. When I ease off and bowl a little bit within myself, I get that hand coming across the ball nicely and produce a genuine legspinner (50% topspin and 50% sidespin). I wonder why it is that when I get that arm through a bit quicker the hand position changes and I lose lots of that sidespin?
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Basically when you attempt to move your arm through quicker you unconsciously have your bowling arm in your follow through going down the pitch (more top-spin) instead of across your body (more leg spin). You need to concentrate hard on putting the extra energy in at release not in your arm speed all the way through.
 
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