Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

[someblokecalleddave]

To be honest Dave I think I am confusing myself, I think I have a good run up, which you commented on on Youtube a couple of days ago, I have only just checked it and have replied now. I don't know whether I can still be upright (like I am now) with the lower arm, or whether I should be dropping the shoulder and leaning over, like Warne, Shah and all the other great Leg Spinners.What do you think?

However, I also need to work on front arm position and front foot. I also agree with what you commented on my video about the verdict and Rashid and how he hasn't mastered his stock ball, I think that goes for me aswell.

Tom read Lefties article he's just found, one of the things that comes across in it is this is the hardest thing to do in cricket and you're going to be having issues for years! Having been at it for 8 years myself, looking back at my videos shot since August I can see massive changes and the prospects for next season look good if I keep these things in place and maintain my fitness. I was the 12th highest wicket taker in our club, 3rd in my team. Next year I want that to be better... a lot better, more than anything else I just want to get my line and length right. I know I can spin the ball, but it's the accuracy and I think that's down to the run-up and the consistency of the run-up and movement through the crease. Since September this has got better, so I'm hopeful, but it's practice, practice, practice and then some more practice. Groove the run up make it totally reliable, so you can do it with your eyes closed and still get the ball in the right area. You then don't have to worry about it and then you can start planning and scheming, but if the batsman can see your faffing around with run-ups he can see you're not the real deal - especially if it's obvious that it affects your bowling.

Stock Ball - yeah just work with that, just get that so that it lands where you want it - middle and off, make the batsman play.

What about that Monty Panesar jump stop at the end of your action - will we see that in the new video?

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Thanks for the link, some interesting opinions in there and a fair range of views which is perhaps what makes legspin so hard/interesting/difficult to coach (delete as applicable!) and its a good update to the modern era having just read Philpott's book, some of MacGill's comments are straight out of the book but others, not so much.

It's good that they acknowledge a number of things in there - massive side spin. Kumble didn't have it, neither did Mushy and watching Yashir Shah he doesn't either, or Pravin Tamble. Over-spin and dip for some of these blokes is the thing that works for them, so the pitch condition doesn't even matter, as MacGill says, they're beaten in the air. Good to see that Mushtaq added the low arm factor in attaining drift. This is something SLA used to say to me - high arm = no drift. If I bring my arm down lower I have much higher incidence of drift, might be something to work with in 2016/17?

 

[TomBowler97]

Tom read Lefties article he's just found, one of the things that comes across in it is this is the hardest thing to do in cricket and you're going to be having issues for years! Having been at it for 8 years myself, looking back at my videos shot since August I can see massive changes and the prospects for next season look good if I keep these things in place and maintain my fitness. I was the 12th highest wicket taker in our club, 3rd in my team. Next year I want that to be better... a lot better, more than anything else I just want to get my line and length right. I know I can spin the ball, but it's the accuracy and I think that's down to the run-up and the consistency of the run-up and movement through the crease. Since September this has got better, so I'm hopeful, but it's practice, practice, practice and then some more practice. Groove the run up make it totally reliable, so you can do it with your eyes closed and still get the ball in the right area. You then don't have to worry about it and then you can start planning and scheming, but if the batsman can see your faffing around with run-ups he can see you're not the real deal - especially if it's obvious that it affects your bowling.

Stock Ball - yeah just work with that, just get that so that it lands where you want it - middle and off, make the batsman play.

What about that Monty Panesar jump stop at the end of your action - will we see that in the new video?

i think the Monty think does happen occassionally, but it is just trying to get out of a bad habit, however, when I do follow through, I dont think I am rotating properly. It is uploading now, so should be up shortly.

 

[GoldenArm]

To be honest Dave I think I am confusing myself, I think I have a good run up, which you commented on on Youtube a couple of days ago, I have only just checked it and have replied now. I don't know whether I can still be upright (like I am now) with the lower arm, or whether I should be dropping the shoulder and leaning over, like Warne, Shah and all the other great Leg Spinners.What do you think?

However, I also need to work on front arm position and front foot. I also agree with what you commented on my video about the verdict and Rashid and how he hasn't mastered his stock ball, I think that goes for me aswell.

This is something to avoid mate, don't be trying to work on multiple things at once picking yourself apart like this. You'll go loopy. Focus on the positives and quietly and assiduously work on one thing at a time. Mostly everything looks in good order with your bowling, keep your run up to whatever feels comfortable and stick with it. Don't be messing around with walking in then running in. I've done this for years in the past and it was a huge mistake, you are what you are. You just want to roughly be hitting good positions (which you are) and don't sweat the small things. A qualified coach working with you week on week can help you the most and he will be sparing with advice if he's any good. If you want to practice something specific just do the standing start drill to get a feel for it then go back to your normal run up. I'd even suggest put the video camera away and focus on feel and the end result of what's happening with the ball when it gets to its destination. Ifs it's good, why change it?

 

[TomBowler97]

Video is now up!

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Video is now up!

I videoed myself today and noticed something I need to work on your video basically confirms my analysis of my own bowling. All the way through your vid I was watching the fact that you're bringing your leg through, but like me your hips are not driving the rotation. But then as I'm watching it, suddenly out of nowhere your hips rotate and lo and behold up comes "Drifted loads"! The hip rotation is a massive part of getting the ball to spin more and therefore increases the chance of drift and the evidence here that you've offered pretty much confirms that notion.
So if I get the chance I've got to go out again and try and incorporate that hip rotation which looking at my bowling from the side looks really poor - I look like I'm almost totally front on, so I've got a lot of work to do. I need to be coming out of the bound with my foot landing side-ways in order to set myself up and I know this means almost starting from zero almost.

 

[Cleanprophet]

I did notice that I sprayed a lot of balls down the leg side, why is this? Opening up early? The front arm? That might need answering after I post the video

Looks like you release the ball a bit too early at times. Look at the slow motion one on 1:33. That is a topspinner (not sure if that is your intention? If it isn't, then it is probably slipping out of your hand and down the legside) and you can see the ball is released a fraction early than a legspinner would be released. The palm of your hand is facing to the legside of the target. There's a few balls in there where you can see the slightly later release with the palm of the hand more torwards the target and those are your legspinners. Essentially, if the ball is down the legside and quite full, you have almost certainly released it too early. The problem is, it is only being released a fraction too early. You can usually only see this when you watch it back in slow motion. I've found that the best way to fix it is to focus on getting that feeling of your fingers dragging across the ball. If you are having real problems with it, bowl a lot of deliveries over a shorter distance (12-15 yards) and just work on dragging your fingers across the ball and imparting lots of sidespin.

 

[Cleanprophet]

Kumble didn't have it, neither did Mushy and watching Yashir Shah he doesn't either, or Pravin Tamble.

The captain of our 1st team knows Tambe well. I remember him talking to me about facing Tambe and another legspinner in the nets. The other legspinner was turning it big and Tambe wasn't spinning it very much. He was using his feet to the other bowler and Tambe said to him "why are you using your feet to him? You should be using your feet to me. I'm not spinning it anywhere near as much as him". From then on he used his feet to Tambe and handled him very well.

When you see footage of Tambe, he does bowl with more overspin in his stock delivery.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

New video... Side on - has raised a few points/issues to look at.



I missed a trick with this - I had two cameras and a son with me and somehow I managed to screw up videoing the action from both front and side. Chances are this was the last chance of 2015 to do this. If I get the chance to do it again I'll try and get it right next time!

 

[TonyM]

The captain of our 1st team knows Tambe well. I remember him talking to me about facing Tambe and another legspinner in the nets. The other legspinner was turning it big and Tambe wasn't spinning it very much. He was using his feet to the other bowler and Tambe said to him "why are you using your feet to him? You should be using your feet to me. I'm not spinning it anywhere near as much as him". From then on he used his feet to Tambe and handled him very well.

When you see footage of Tambe, he does bowl with more overspin in his stock delivery.

If he bowls with more overspin (or even variations in overspin) that surely be a reason for the batter not to use their feet as the length is the hardest thing to judge? Bowlers with a bit of drift and more sidespin are the ones to use your feet to as they 'should' have less dip, so as long as the batter gets to the pitch of the ball they can negate the any turn off the pitch surface.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Check out Majid Haq's bowling action. Not good, but he's playing 1st class cricket and taking wickets

 

[Cleanprophet]

If he bowls with more overspin (or even variations in overspin) that surely be a reason for the batter not to use their feet as the length is the hardest thing to judge? Bowlers with a bit of drift and more sidespin are the ones to use your feet to as they 'should' have less dip, so as long as the batter gets to the pitch of the ball they can negate the any turn off the pitch surface.

To be fair, that's what I was thinking. But, this is a batter who has been with Lancs and has played with and against pros for nearly 20 years - and, Tambe also suggested that he should be using his feet to him rather than the big turning spinner. He was playing Tambe from the crease and I suppose Tambe was suggesting that he should be using his feet to both bowlers, but especially him. It all depends on the length the bowlers are bowling. It may well be that the big turning spinner was dropping short a lot and Tambe was bowling a consistent good length.

I think it is the combination of drift and dip that really does for a batter. If you were to face a bowler who gets very little dip and lots of drift or a bowler who gets very little drift but lots of dip or a bowler who gets a decent bit of drift and dip, then I think the latter would be the most problematic. The drift messes with line judgement and the dip messes with length judgement. A good batter can adjust for drift and can adjust for dip. Once you get drift and dip, then using your feet becomes a major problem.

 

[Cleanprophet]

Check out Majid Haq's bowling action. Not good, but he's playing 1st class cricket and taking wickets

He's not too bad. The major problem with him is that he bowls quite slow and with no overspin at all. It's one of those odd things. In club cricket, he would probably get smashed. In pro cricket, his type of bowling can be effective because the batters put lots of value on their wicket and are far more watchful.

 

[TomBowler97]

Looks like you release the ball a bit too early at times. Look at the slow motion one on 1:33. That is a topspinner (not sure if that is your intention? If it isn't, then it is probably slipping out of your hand and down the legside) and you can see the ball is released a fraction early than a legspinner would be released. The palm of your hand is facing to the legside of the target. There's a few balls in there where you can see the slightly later release with the palm of the hand more torwards the target and those are your legspinners. Essentially, if the ball is down the legside and quite full, you have almost certainly released it too early. The problem is, it is only being released a fraction too early. You can usually only see this when you watch it back in slow motion. I've found that the best way to fix it is to focus on getting that feeling of your fingers dragging across the ball. If you are having real problems with it, bowl a lot of deliveries over a shorter distance (12-15 yards) and just work on dragging your fingers across the ball and imparting lots of sidespin.

You're right, these deliveries are all meant to be leg spinners. Coincidentally, I was discussing with my dad yesterday about I think that I am releasing the ball a tad early, and then I come onto this thread and you have said the same thing.

 

[TomBowler97]

I was doing some shopping the other day, and being cricket mad I looked down the aisle and it was clear, so (hopefully no one was looking) I went through my action. There it was, I did it 5 or 6 times, an action where it was repeated and rhythmical, I was taking off on the same foot, had a good bound, a low arm (my dad said) and more importantly, I drove through with my hips and that led to an actual follow through, not the Monty stop like someblokecalleddave had previously mentioned. So I am thinking about the psychological impact of not having and having a ball. Hopefully I can get down to nets, run through my action without a ball and then out a ball in and it will all fall into plan.

Another area of discussion, some of you may remember when I discussed how my growth spurt massively affected my bowling about 2 years ago, where I grew from 5ft exactly when I was 14/15 to 5ft 8 within 6 months (Within off season, about Sept to April, Sadly an off season where winter training wasn't a thing). Anyways I also discussed about how to I took 50 wickets in a season, to now where I only bowled 70 overs this year in about 15 games, so about 5 a game, and towards the last months of the season I didn't bowl, I opened the batting because of lost faith in my bowling. This all because I had to recreate my bowling action because when I was 5ft, I had to literally bowl as high as possible to get it down there, meaning easy flight and also slow to confuse batsman, now if I bowled high it would go over the batsman's head. Look at this video I came across of my action from 2 years ago, you will see from then to now a significant growth in height.

Sorry for the long post, but is this position alright? I feel the cocked wrist may be wrong? C Cleanprophet GoldenArm

Cocked Wrist: https://gyazo.com/5c21e4c415263047e2e514b684788132
Ball release: https://gyazo.com/a3526b9eaf2a11caf7beb2440895dc9a

Backing up your point about ball slipping out, this shows the ball being released without the seam being how it should be: https://gyazo.com/d8d878f2becc6263f053eceff1951c83

 

[Cleanprophet]

Backing up your point about ball slipping out, this shows the ball being released without the seam being how it should be: https://gyazo.com/d8d878f2becc6263f053eceff1951c83

This last video is set to private.

But the wrist looks fine in those two pics. No problem at all. The release pic shows the position you should be in. The early release pic does show the ball being release a fraction of early. It is suggested that the ideal release position is about 60 degrees (that is, about 30 degrees from the vertical). But I've seen plenty of quality legspinners releasing the ball around 70-75 degrees. The key thing is to not release close to the vertical position because you simply cannot produce a legspinner from there. This is something I've had lots of problems with in the last few months and it all came from developing the googly. To bowl the googly, you often drop the left shoulder and release the ball a little earlier than the legspinner. In my case, I ended up dropping the shoulder and releasing the ball a bit early for all deliveries. You get the feeling of the ball slipping out of your hand (mainly because that is precisely what is happening). It was quite heartening to read that MacGill said he lost his legspinner after developing the googly and it took him 6 months to get his legspinner back.

If you are producing too many balls that slip out of your hand and go full down the legside, then you should do some bowling over a short distance and just focus and dragging your fingers across the ball - trying to turn it square. Drag downs are not a concern as they are sign that you are getting your fingers over the top of the ball.

One drill I was doing today was to bowl from about 12-13 yards and as soon as I bowl a ball that turns big, I moved back 2 or 3 yards and bowl again. As soon as I bowl ball at that distance that turns big, I moved back again and keep doing it until I am bowling from the full distance. At that point, you should be turning every ball with a fair amount of sidespin.

You can worry too much about technique. Sometimes, you need to just bowl. Philpott would talk about bowling with your eyes closed and just get the feeling of your whole action working as one smooth motion. It's also helpful just to watch footage of that legspin release and just try to picture it when you bowl.

You're right, these deliveries are all meant to be leg spinners. Coincidentally, I was discussing with my dad yesterday about I think that I am releasing the ball a tad early, and then I come onto this thread and you have said the same thing.

It's very easy to release it a bit early. As I say, I have found that the best way to fix it is to aim for that feeling of the fingers dragging across the ball. It doesn't even matter where the ball lands, as long as you impart a good amount of sidespin. Once you get rid of that unintentional early release, you can get back to getting the line and length right.

 

[TomBowler97]

This last video is set to private.

But the wrist looks fine in those two pics. No problem at all. The release pic shows the position you should be in. The early release pic does show the ball being release a fraction of early. It is suggested that the ideal release position is about 60 degrees (that is, about 30 degrees from the vertical). But I've seen plenty of quality legspinners releasing the ball around 70-75 degrees. The key thing is to not release close to the vertical position because you simply cannot produce a legspinner from there. This is something I've had lots of problems with in the last few months and it all came from developing the googly. To bowl the googly, you often drop the left shoulder and release the ball a little earlier than the legspinner. In my case, I ended up dropping the shoulder and releasing the ball a bit early for all deliveries. You get the feeling of the ball slipping out of your hand (mainly because that is precisely what is happening). It was quite heartening to read that MacGill said he lost his legspinner after developing the googly and it took him 6 months to get his legspinner back.

If you are producing too many balls that slip out of your hand and go full down the legside, then you should do some bowling over a short distance and just focus and dragging your fingers across the ball - trying to turn it square. Drag downs are not a concern as they are sign that you are getting your fingers over the top of the ball.

One drill I was doing today was to bowl from about 12-13 yards and as soon as I bowl a ball that turns big, I moved back 2 or 3 yards and bowl again. As soon as I bowl ball at that distance that turns big, I moved back again and keep doing it until I am bowling from the full distance. At that point, you should be turning every ball with a fair amount of sidespin.

You can worry too much about technique. Sometimes, you need to just bowl. Philpott would talk about bowling with your eyes closed and just get the feeling of your whole action working as one smooth motion. It's also helpful just to watch footage of that legspin release and just try to picture it when you bowl.



It's very easy to release it a bit early. As I say, I have found that the best way to fix it is to aim for that feeling of the fingers dragging across the ball. It doesn't even matter where the ball lands, as long as you impart a good amount of sidespin. Once you get rid of that unintentional early release, you can get back to getting the line and length right.

Video should work now! Sorry about that! The weather has been awful recently so hopefully it will brighten up so that I can get down there and practice flicking the wrist and dragging my fingers over the ball simultaneously. I have also just watched the Stuart MacGill video he did, and he said about having a relaxed, floppy wrist, which I don't believe I have!

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Video should work now! Sorry about that! The weather has been awful recently so hopefully it will brighten up so that I can get down there and practice flicking the wrist and dragging my fingers over the ball simultaneously. I have also just watched the Stuart MacGill video he did, and he said about having a relaxed, floppy wrist, which I don't believe I have!

Must have a floppy wrist! Or at least the agility in the wrist to get it into the angle you need it to be in when you bowl, it needs to unfurl though at the point of release, so the ball snaps out of the fingers. You need to be flicking it all the time indoors and whenever - keep it supple.

 

[TomBowler97]

Must have a floppy wrist! Or at least the agility in the wrist to get it into the angle you need it to be in when you bowl, it needs to unfurl though at the point of release, so the ball snaps out of the fingers. You need to be flicking it all the time indoors and whenever - keep it supple.

My wrist is very tight and tense

 

[someblokecalleddave]

My wrist is very tight and tense

Do some exercises to get it supple