Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

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If you want a really good and free tool to work with video with have a look at Virtual dub http://www.virtualdub.org/ this allows frame counts and slow speed, scrolling back and forth. I've got it, but I use it primarily for viewing and reviewing video, it's probably much more useful than that, but I can't be asked to sort it out and learn how to use it.
 
Looks not bad at all CP. I don't see the falling to the left as a problem. If you are fully stopping over a braced front leg, the residual momentum has to go somewhere.

match was rained off today. I didn't get an email or call, and travelled halfway to the ground before I found out.

Had an hour or so in the nets late in the evening. It's a tricky road but I am seeing benefits from the regular practice. This is still short distance standing start stuff, but its a different class altogether from stuff I've previously done. Definitely more on target and good spin. And maybe a bit more pace too.

I tried to video some, but got 'red light fever', bowled some really bad stuff, and then found that it didn't record anyway as not enough memory.
 
Youtube suggested this video for me after watching CPs link. I think there are real similarities between throwing a discus and legspinning. Maybe some ideas here for training?

 
boogiespinner said:
Looks not bad at all CP. I don't see the falling to the left as a problem. If you are fully stopping over a braced front leg, the residual momentum has to go somewhere.

match was rained off today. I didn't get an email or call, and travelled halfway to the ground before I found out.

Had an hour or so in the nets late in the evening. It's a tricky road but I am seeing benefits from the regular practice. This is still short distance standing start stuff, but its a different class altogether from stuff I've previously done. Definitely more on target and good spin. And maybe a bit more pace too.

I tried to video some, but got 'red light fever', bowled some really bad stuff, and then found that it didn't record anyway as not enough memory.
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Yeah, I'm not to concerned about falling away to my left at the moment. If I'm having difficulty with the line I'm bowling, then I will need to look at it. In general, when I was bowling a month or two ago I wasn't falling to my left at all. My momentum took me to the left a bit, but I moved to my left with control and balance. I have found that, sometimes, I do move to my left quite sharply and the ball can end up down legside. That's what I need to fix. At the moment, I'm not doing that and I hope that continues.

I've looked at various bowlers and some of them step right across with the front leg (like Warne does) and some step straight down the wicket as I do (Bishoo for example), so I'm not going to worry about my approach to the crease either, at the moment.

No match for me yesterday either. Rain pretty much all day and quite heavy too.

Good news on your bowling practice. I suppose it's a question to taking it small step by small step and build it up gradually.

There are some similar aspects to discuss throwing. Obviously, that's mainly in the hand position at the release. The arm movement is very roundarm and it is far more rotational.
 
boogiespinner said:
Looks not bad at all CP. I don't see the falling to the left as a problem. If you are fully stopping over a braced front leg, the residual momentum has to go somewhere.

match was rained off today. I didn't get an email or call, and travelled halfway to the ground before I found out.

Had an hour or so in the nets late in the evening. It's a tricky road but I am seeing benefits from the regular practice. This is still short distance standing start stuff, but its a different class altogether from stuff I've previously done. Definitely more on target and good spin. And maybe a bit more pace too.

I tried to video some, but got 'red light fever', bowled some really bad stuff, and then found that it didn't record anyway as not enough memory.
Click to expand...
I get that as well 'Red light fever'. No camera and I'd give Shane Warne a run for his money, soon as the video is turned on the ball is being sprayed all over the shop! Bowled at the weekend in two spells, first spell was bowled as though there was a camera there - terrible. I couldn't get my approach to the crease sorted, kept stopping and all sorts. Then I was brought on again in the last overs where the game was all but lost and decided that I'd 'Terry Jenner' it with a two step approach to the crease thinking about the fact that Majid Haq bowls so slow. This went far better - the batsmen back in there shells and the ball beating the bat threatening an edge almost every ball of the over. Their big hitting captain was in - I had him on his arse once with an almost 99.99% certain stumping that everyone that was anywhere near saw as being out including people watching from the boundary, but their square leg umpire disagreed. Then I looped one up and he hit it straight to our best catching fielder at deep square leg and on one of those rare occasions he spilled it having parried it twice and then finally losing it on the 3rd attempt. Earlier I'd had two dead cert LBW's that were just ludicrously not given as out, but hey 4th XI cricket - it just happens, but is a real shame as I should have been walking away with 3 wickets!

That aside - the Terry Jenner approach worked, whether it was the state of the game and the two bats felt even though they had overs in hand and were well set to win, the loss of their wickets may have set off a collapse? Because they played with caution - which then played into my hands beautifully and meant that I bowled 3 really tight and very well executed overs with the two highlights mentioned above. With the tragic first spell it still meant I came away with 7-0-44-0. This now puts me in a situation where I'm thinking - can my body ever be fit and strong enough to run in as I did pre-achiles or (Certainly in the short term) do I look at bowling a la' Terry Jenner and look to develop that further and change my field settings and have a bloke out at deep square leg if they're looking to bat aggressively? Thinking it through, I've got far more potential to bowl variations if I bowl slower, it spins more and I can use the flipper and the top-spinner and the occasional wrong un - just needs more guts and accuracy and 3 good fielders in the deep?
 
"The right pace to bowl at is the pace where you gain your maximum spin. Then you vary your pace from there. But you must understand what pace you need to bowl at. That is very important." Terry Jenner

I like this quote very much. I believe the action to seek is one where pace and spin are unified - the more effort put in to the delivery, the more pace and more spin result.

I think if your achilles needs looking after Dave it's a no-brainer. I would just walk in, look after those achilles and then spin it more than you were doing before! That is certainly the best way to look after your achilles and it might be the best thing for your bowling too.

I'd be interested to know what else you are doing re: achilles. Mine aren't bad, but it's not as if they are 100%.
 
"Then I looped one up and he hit it straight to our best catching fielder at deep square leg and on one of those rare occasions he spilled it having parried it twice and then finally losing it on the 3rd attempt."

A thought I had on this - if you are catching a ball, and fumble it, the thing to do is automatically drop to your knees while you are trying to find where the ball went! This gives you a good fraction of a second help to catch it again.
 
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Quite a long net practice today. Mostly topspinner standing start practice from 16 yards. Think I clicked into a better action with a higher arm. I couldn't possibly describe the change other than that. It's all to do with timing of the various movements. I also practiced 'throwing' topspinners over the short distance with as little windup as possible, I think this was really helpful.

Still a mountain to climb. But if I can climb it I am going to jump and fly!
 
boogiespinner said:
"The right pace to bowl at is the pace where you gain your maximum spin. Then you vary your pace from there. But you must understand what pace you need to bowl at. That is very important." Terry Jenner

I like this quote very much. I believe the action to seek is one where pace and spin are unified - the more effort put in to the delivery, the more pace and more spin result.

I think if your achilles needs looking after Dave it's a no-brainer. I would just walk in, look after those achilles and then spin it more than you were doing before! That is certainly the best way to look after your achilles and it might be the best thing for your bowling too.

I'd be interested to know what else you are doing re: achilles. Mine aren't bad, but it's not as if they are 100%.
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Yeah it kind of feels like at 55 my days of trying to run in faster might need to be re-considered and to approach it in a different way as described - just look to spin it harder and be more accurate and if that means it's at 37mph for 90% of the time, that's fine - just aim to be good at that. I like your quote, I'll have to make that my mantra from now on!

Re my Achilles - At the moment other than when I'm in bed, I have it in a compression sock, double the thing over so that there's 2 layers and it's just supporting my ankle. I'm doing physio somewhat infrequently as and when I remember using the heel drop technique (Less hardcore versions as some of them are hardcore)!
(1). I go up onto the toes using the good leg/ankle to rise.
(2). Then get the Achilles foot into the same position while all the weight is on the good leg.
(3). Transfer all the weight while up on both sets of toes onto the bad leg.
(4). Then using only the bad leg with all your weight on it transfer slowly from the tip-toe position to flat foot position.
(5). Repeat in reps of 10 frequently during the day.

I do it in a door way to help with balance holding gently on to the door frame. It's a toned down version of this

Any sign of inflammation or soreness after exercise I'm straight in an ice bucket for 1/2 hour. Prior to running or bowling I warm up the whole leg, sometimes with massage in the early days I used to get my younger son Joe to massage the whole area and solieus in the morning of any active days. Feet up as well as often as possible.


http://www.runnersworld.com/injury-treatment/treating-and-recovering-from-achilles-injury
 
yep that's the exercise Dave.

I think you want to not be sore after exercise. If you are you were pushing too hard. I know it happens but try to save that for game days. other than that you sound pretty organised. Out of cutting edge stuff something I really recommend is grounding. You can find a paper on that here

The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases

please have a read. there's lots of other articles on the net. Quite a bit on youtube too (type in 'earthing' to youtube). I have one of the earthing sheets that plugs into the earth socket and can vouch it really helps sleep quality (something I need!). But if you don't have an earthing sheet you can achieve benefit by just getting your feet in contact with the earth for half an hour a day.

Also something really valuable I've found seems so ordinary that you might be surprised. Vitamin C! It seems that high-dose vitamin C treatment is valuable for an amazingly large range of conditions. Here is a study I just found which involved rats. High-dose vitamin C supplementation accelerates the Achilles tendon healing in healthy rats. Now injections of vitamin C are probably not practical, but I've been supplementing with this stuff Liposomal Vitamin C and it is amazing. The liposomal encapsulation allows the vitamin C to easily access any cell in the body and it's much more potent than simple oral vitamin C. This stuff really helped my health. The other thing which I think I've mentioned before is ozonated olive oil. This is a form of oxygen therapy. I've known it to be really good for skin conditions but it's a bit more of a push to think it might get inside the tendons. I think it might help.

Stretching is really good. A while ago I was doing loads of hamstring stretches. I am pretty sure that the achilles improved greatly during that time. You can be lazier and just stretch the achilles by leaning against a wall with your feet flat. I think this should be done every day.

Hope useful!
 
Had two bowls today. I hadn't bowled since Monday I think which is really bad... took me a while to get back into it. I had gone backwards from my last peak, but after a while I was remembering what I was doing. When I came out for the second session it was promising. This is still so far off the real thing, standing start from 12-15 yards... but it is so different than before. I can feel that I am getting plenty of stuff on the ball, and can see life in the trajectory and bounce of the ball. I am starting to think I am getting a little bit of either swing or drift too...

otherwise bit down as I didn't make the team for Saturday's match :( I shall practice tomorrow instead!
 
Been bowling at the park and it's not too pretty lol. I guess the only reason I'm uploading it is to make everyone else here feel better about their own bowling though I feel like it's not too bad for someone who has never had coaching or club experience before.
 
eiglow_ said:
Been bowling at the park and it's not too pretty lol. I guess the only reason I'm uploading it is to make everyone else here feel better about their own bowling though I feel like it's not too bad for someone who has never had coaching or club experience before
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That's not bad at all. The one thing that stands out is that you are quite chest on when you get to the crease. Your right leg lands in a position that leaves you quite chest on. If you get that right leg to land across and closer to the line of the stumps, you will be much more side on and then will have a lot more rotation. More rotation means more energy in your action, more pace and more revs.

Maybe you could try a slightly wider delivery stride too. It will feel odd when you do it, but it won't feel odd for long if you do it stick with it. A wider delivery stride will give you more balance and more power in your action. Standing start drills are very helpful for that. Take up your delivery position and just rotate through your release point.

I'm no expert but if you work on those things and try to spin the ball hard, you can worry about accuracy later.
 
Had a game yesterday. Once again, we only had 8 players and none of them was a keeper. The opposition gave us a player and he kept for us. It still left us with only 9 players and plenty of spaces in the field on a ground with relatively short boundaries. In other words, not great conditions to bowl in. I ended up with 2 wickets for 50 odd runs off 8 overs. One batter, in particular, tucked into my bowling with a series of slogs to cow corner. He probably took a good 25 runs off me alone before I got him him LBW with a slower and more flighted topspinner that he totally missed (should have smashed it for six in fairness). The other wicket was some old guy who decided to charge me first ball. He ran past it and the ball turned from outside leg onto the top of legstump.

I still produced a few balls that came out as topspinners even though I was trying to bowl a legspinner. But, I bowled quite a few that turned a decent amount away from the bat. I produced one ball that was as good as anything I've ever bowled. I just really tried to rip one and it drifted a fair bit into the batter's legstump before turning and bouncing over the top of off-stump. Pretty much, the ideal line, length and movement your are looking for. The batter got nowhere near it. He could play for a few more years and still not be good enough to get an edge.

I managed to get a couple of edges off two batters but the keeper wasn't good enough to take the catches. The second one was an intended googly that really bounced and turned in, tucking the batter up and getting an edge. Unfortunately, the keeper was turning away and not even looking at the ball. A half-decent keeper would have taken a very simple catch.

Overall, they scored about 180 off 40 overs and we ended up 115 all out (I was ran out). Just not enough players and not enough batters. I'm just treating these games now as extended net practice.

I went up to the nets today and was getting most balls coming out as I wanted them to. I'm starting to get over the googly syndrome problem, but I'm still not quite there yet.
 
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Cleanprophet said:
That's not bad at all. The one thing that stands out is that you are quite chest on when you get to the crease. Your right leg lands in a position that leaves you quite chest on. If you get that right leg to land across and closer to the line of the stumps, you will be much more side on and then will have a lot more rotation. More rotation means more energy in your action, more pace and more revs.

Maybe you could try a slightly wider delivery stride too. It will feel odd when you do it, but it won't feel odd for long if you do it stick with it. A wider delivery stride will give you more balance and more power in your action. Standing start drills are very helpful for that. Take up your delivery position and just rotate through your release point.

I'm no expert but if you work on those things and try to spin the ball hard, you can worry about accuracy later.
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Thanks for the advice, I'll have to try it the next time I get an opportunity to head to the nets, which will be difficult knowing my homework from high school.
 
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