Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

It seems like you need a long ring finger to do that.

It helps, but it isn't essential. Shorter fingers just mean you have to have the ball a little deeper in the hand and/or have your thumb rested on the ball (as GoldenArm says) to ensure your wrist/fingers stay in the correct position. But, if you hold the ball in your hand and the spinning finger is on the seam or right next to it, then there's no reason why you can't rip that finger over the top of the ball.
 
Can you guys post a sequence of images that shows the wrist and finger position when you are bowling the big legbreak?
I am struggling to get the ring finger over the ball and when I try that position with the ball in hand, it seems
impossible to have any kind of support on the ball if the index and middle fingers slip over to the other side.
May be I have small fingers?.
This I feel is critical to rip the ball, and I am not happy with the revs I am getting.
You need to read the Peter Philpott book, The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling. There's series of chapters that take you through what he describes and going round the loop, but in essence he explains and suggests how you'd change your wrist position in stages to bowl all of the wrist spin variations. Having said that though there's no guarantee that despite knowing the theory you're going to have the dexterity or technique to execute all of them. Have a look at this video here as it may help... It's years old now and I could probably knock up a far better version, but in essence to get the Big Leg break sussed, you need to get the wrist right round so that you're almost trying to release the ball out of the back of the hand. For me there's a massive disparity between what I think I'm doing and what I actually do and in order to bowl these more extreme variations, I have to try and over do it e.g. try and bowl an Orthodox back-spinner in order that the ball comes out spinning at 90 degrees. What I then find is that because of the lack of control over the rotation of the seam, the ball rarely hits the seam and skids on to give you, what a lot of people call a 'Slider'. Of course it's not a 'slider' it's a Big Leg Break gone wrong see here
In essence try and spin the ball not side-ways but so that it has back-spin. Try it over a shorter distance and use a two tone ball. The other really basic thing to try is try and get your wrist right around so that it feels you're almost bowling with a karate chop hand position.
 
Thanks Dave, I have read the book, and I kind of understand what you are saying.
I think for some time, I was bowling sliders or legbreaks, with my wrist over the ball
sometimes to the right of the ball.
Then watched some of warne's slow motion and realized my wrist should be on the left
side of the ball, as you describe reverse karate chop position with thumb pointing at the
batsman. This I always thought was a topspinner wrist position.
When I try to adjust my wrist so that it is on the left of the ball, I get a feeling that I
am not getting as many revs, as this is new feel for me. Now I am trying to see
how I can get my ring finger to go over the ball.
I think I use my ring finger but it is more of a push, rather than active engagement
till the ball is released. I dont have any hard skin on the ring finger, but
my inside of the index finger, near the nail is a bit hard, probably from the grip.
I need to get rid of the index and middle fingers from engaging, but dont know how
to do that - do they just slide over the ball as well?
 
Thanks Dave, I have read the book, and I kind of understand what you are saying.
I think for some time, I was bowling sliders or legbreaks, with my wrist over the ball
sometimes to the right of the ball.
Then watched some of warne's slow motion and realized my wrist should be on the left
side of the ball, as you describe reverse karate chop position with thumb pointing at the
batsman. This I always thought was a topspinner wrist position.
When I try to adjust my wrist so that it is on the left of the ball, I get a feeling that I
am not getting as many revs, as this is new feel for me. Now I am trying to see
how I can get my ring finger to go over the ball.
I think I use my ring finger but it is more of a push, rather than active engagement
till the ball is released. I dont have any hard skin on the ring finger, but
my inside of the index finger, near the nail is a bit hard, probably from the grip.
I need to get rid of the index and middle fingers from engaging, but dont know how
to do that - do they just slide over the ball as well?
This here is the view the batsman would have of my 90 degree side-spinner
Bats%2Bview%2Bof%2Bmy%2B90%2Bdegree%2Bball%2B-%2Bkarate%2Bchop.jpg
as far as I'm concerned in my head, this is what I feel like I'm doing but I'm patently bot because the ball come out spinning side-ways rather than backwards. So what I try and do is spin backwards, but it come out sideways.
 
Interesting and I did feel this but I was avoiding too much of this.. Seems worth trying if you had good results... Cheers


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For me I just love short practice. Maybe once a delivery is mastered it's no longer necessary to work off a short distance but I don't think it does any harm. I just don't really see any other way to really develop a really good legbreak but to bowl not just hundreds, but thousands of deliveries and surely the best way to do that is have an empty net, a bucket of balls and bowl salvos off fifteen yards of so from one pace, and going for maximum spin not match delivery pace. This gives the freedom to experiment, become attuned to the ball and if you have the balls in a bag over your shoulder you can bowl fifteen balls a minute easily. From a full run up you are looking at two balls a minute, maybe three.
 
This here is the view the batsman would have of my 90 degree side-spinner
Bats%2Bview%2Bof%2Bmy%2B90%2Bdegree%2Bball%2B-%2Bkarate%2Bchop.jpg
as far as I'm concerned in my head, this is what I feel like I'm doing but I'm patently bot because the ball come out spinning side-ways rather than backwards. So what I try and do is spin backwards, but it come out sideways.

Unless you're Saeed Ajmal, that's the view the umpire would have, not the batsman, right?
 
I dont have any hard skin on the ring finger

I know Warne said that he didn't have any hard skin anywhere on his bowling hand. I have hard skin right on the inside of the end knuckle of my spinning finger. This is the part of the finger that is running across the seam and imparting spin.
 
Unless you're Saeed Ajmal, that's the view the umpire would have, not the batsman, right?
No you've missed the point. This is what I'm trying to do and intending on doing, but what actually happens is totally different, but in order for the ball to come out of the hand at 90 degrees, I have to run in with the intention that at the point of release I intend for my wrist to be like this, as I say, I doubt very much if it is.
 
No you've missed the point. This is what I'm trying to do and intending on doing, but what actually happens is totally different, but in order for the ball to come out of the hand at 90 degrees, I have to run in with the intention that at the point of release I intend for my wrist to be like this, as I say, I doubt very much if it is.

oh right, I get you now. To compensate for the natural over-pronation that results from your high arm and lateral bowling action, you try to force yourself to supinate earlier than necessary.
 


A few videos have appeared on youtube featuring Adil Rashid... nothing too exciting in the way of explanations, but it is nice to see slow motion footage and I think it's useful seeing bowlers attempting to show what they are instructing the hand to do dead slow
 


A few videos have appeared on youtube featuring Adil Rashid... nothing too exciting in the way of explanations, but it is nice to see slow motion footage and I think it's useful seeing bowlers attempting to show what they are instructing the hand to do dead slow


Horrible case of over editing with the videos though! Christ just let us see what's going on without all the jumping around.
 
Horrible case of over editing with the videos though! Christ just let us see what's going on without all the jumping around.

Yeah, I saw those videos a couple of months ago and thought exactly the same thing. Really, they could have done a much, much better job. I can only assume the people putting the video together knew very little about cricket. No idea why the videos are so very short as well. Why not make them a few minutes longer and more of what is actually going on?
 


A few videos have appeared on youtube featuring Adil Rashid... nothing too exciting in the way of explanations, but it is nice to see slow motion footage and I think it's useful seeing bowlers attempting to show what they are instructing the hand to do dead slow

No Ball! Still no-where near as slow as it could be and are there not already 6 gazillion of these what you're trying to do with the hand, wrist and fingers type videos?
 
Perhaps someone could rig up a high-speed camera, mount it on the arm of a legspin virtuoso, and then we'd really see what's happening with the wrist and fingers
 
Perhaps someone could rig up a high-speed camera, mount it on the arm of a legspin virtuoso, and then we'd really see what's happening with the wrist and fingers
You'd have thought that someone would have done so already. There is one bit of footage of Warne bowling a leg break, but it is just the one. I want to see the sub variations of the leg-break and all the classic variations. Even an intentional 'Slider' if he says he has one!!! It would be interesting to see what he comes up with. The technology is coming, I bought my son a Go-pro and he seems fairly convinced he can come up with something half decent with that because of the quality it shoots at, I'm not convinced, but he's insistent that it's up to it. When we get a nice day we'll give it a go.

But you'd have thought someone like Rashid or Warne would say to these production companies that shoot these vids "Mate, get your act together, go and see Olympus and hire one of their high speed cameras and we'll do this properly for once and for all".
 
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