Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

Top Contributors
parbs1980 said:
Greetings fellow legspinners! I've recently started playing cricket again after bowling legspin throughout my youth - i had a quick session with Ray Bright at maddocks sports and thought id pass on some of his advice. Although ray was an orthodox bowler in his day, he's had alot of involvement with Warney as a vic selector and spin mentor.
He began by watching my basic action, and immediately had me straightening the angle of my follow through to get the weight towards the batsmen and not have me ending up in front of the umpire after delivery. Another ideal he stressed was to always be side on and have a reasonable (but not too long) delivery stride. After a fair bit of chatter and advice he's given me a bunch of parameters to work in without overly trying to 'coach' me into a specific technique. If anyone wants i can elaborate more on a few of the finer details. Hopefully soon i'll post a video of me bowling for you all to pick apart, id be very appreciative! Cheers.
Click to expand...

Nice one Parbs, good to have you join in, we seem to have lost a few of our regulars of late, so some new blood and new perspectives will certainly liven the forum up. I'd certainly like to hear more of what Ray Brights go to say, so post away.
 
Hi dave, i've seen a few of your videos and comments - it's all good stuff, keeping the art alive is of great importance and we need everyone around to encourage youngsters and guide them with sound advice.

As to the advice from Ray, there wasnt a great amount of content that hasn't already been covered here, his style seems to focus around working with your natural style and physiology which was refreshing for me (growing up i had all sorts of conflicting advice given to me from those who 'knew' what they were talking about). As i mentioned earlier, he had me and the other guys getting our weight through the crease and towards the batsman, and not running in on too much of an angle. In regards to delivery stride, it should be quite short for offspin if possible, while legspinners require a bit more of a stride, but not too far, and both styles of bowling should all be side on. When he inspected my grip he noted that it was always important to feel comfortable - be the ball resting towards your fingers or further back in the palm, and not to release the ball too far forward to aid in staying upright and getting the ball going 'up' with flight.

In light of his approach towards coaching with a bowlers natural style, he stressed the importance of having a clear mind, being relaxed, and concentrating on nothing but where you want the ball to land - he was flexible on where i was looking, when i said i walk into bowl looking at the batsmans feet he noted that either that or where you want it to land is fine. Like i mentioned earlier, this helped to clear up a few questions i had about what to do regarding certain aspects of the bowling action, and support my belief that the less you complicate things the better. There's only so much a guy can do with you in one session so i'll continue to update as i see him more often!

He came across as a genuinely nice guy if perhaps a bit disappointed with the spin talent currently going around. I remember in the 90s when i was bowling, it seemed like every team had a leggie and quite often more than one - i wonder where all the talent went? I asked Ray what he thought about it and he commented that kids see warne bowling, and get frustrated at not being able to emulate him then give up. Food for thought i guess
 
parbs1980 said:
Hi dave, i've seen a few of your videos and comments - it's all good stuff, keeping the art alive is of great importance and we need everyone around to encourage youngsters and guide them with sound advice.

As to the advice from Ray, there wasnt a great amount of content that hasn't already been covered here, his style seems to focus around working with your natural style and physiology which was refreshing for me (growing up i had all sorts of conflicting advice given to me from those who 'knew' what they were talking about). As i mentioned earlier, he had me and the other guys getting our weight through the crease and towards the batsman, and not running in on too much of an angle. In regards to delivery stride, it should be quite short for offspin if possible, while legspinners require a bit more of a stride, but not too far, and both styles of bowling should all be side on. When he inspected my grip he noted that it was always important to feel comfortable - be the ball resting towards your fingers or further back in the palm, and not to release the ball too far forward to aid in staying upright and getting the ball going 'up' with flight.

In light of his approach towards coaching with a bowlers natural style, he stressed the importance of having a clear mind, being relaxed, and concentrating on nothing but where you want the ball to land - he was flexible on where i was looking, when i said i walk into bowl looking at the batsmans feet he noted that either that or where you want it to land is fine. Like i mentioned earlier, this helped to clear up a few questions i had about what to do regarding certain aspects of the bowling action, and support my belief that the less you complicate things the better. There's only so much a guy can do with you in one session so i'll continue to update as i see him more often!

He came across as a genuinely nice guy if perhaps a bit disappointed with the spin talent currently going around. I remember in the 90s when i was bowling, it seemed like every time had a leggie and quite often more than one - i wonder where all the talent went? I asked Ray what he thought about that and he commented that kids see warne bowling, and get frustrated at not being able to emulate him then give up. Food for thought i guess
Click to expand...

The Warne thing is potentially a real issue what with kids being so media savvy they're bound to go searching for Warne on the internet and use him as the template for their own bowling and I've got to say I do exactly the same. I was only saying to one of the other blokes elsewhere on here yesterday that I'd found a video of Warne bowling to Ian Healy in the nets for one of those channel 9 'Cricket show' programs and I watched in awe as he bowled what looked like a ball that went down about 40 - 45mph that dipped and turned big. He does it with such ease and finesse and I found myself coming away disillusioned almost on the borders of questioning why I bother when I put in so much effort and seem to see saw up and down between okay and just really poor bowling. You have to come away from seeing that stuff and get it in perspective and realise you can't set that standard as a short term goal.

But then your own bowling can sometimes give you false dawns, like today I've been bowling using a slight variation on my grip and I've been bowling phenomenally looking Warnesque picthing the ball onto a mat 2' wide of leg stump 7' in front of the popping crease and getting it to turn in again and again to hit or go wide of the off-stump. Fortunately having had these 'Epiphany's' several times over the last 5 years I'm coming to terms with the fact that they are flukes. Why they happen I don't know and I suspect this time because I was bowling on long grass on a fairly uneven surface that's the factor that gave the assistance to the turn. So having got home I went in the paddock outside my house which I'd rolled this morning and tested out in there and lo and behold the outcomes were no-where near as dramatic off a surfce that does give a great deal of assistance.

With regards your info it's good to have it coming from a coach that's actually in the business of teaching spin. One of the threads of the conversations on here has been along the lines of Is there anything that is coached professionally that we've yet to discover and discuss? At the start of these wrist spin threads which tend to be the ones with more general discussions we've posted our top ten tips and as we've collectively learned they've changed each time. In the last year or so one of the things that we've picked up on is the value and importance of the stand start drill. Oddly it's never been mentioned by Warne or Jenner in the free to air videos you can find on the internet. But it cropped up a couple of years ago in an obscure video featuring Beau Casson in conjunction with the promotion of an on-line video coaching website where you pay to have your video of your own bowling analysed and the advice is given on line for a fee. It struck me that there was a lot of value in the drill and I was surprised that no-one else had ever mentioned it on-line. But then I saw the ECB coaching video that is issued to UK coaches so that they can help to develop young spinners. Featuring Terry Jenner for the most part it was all the usual stuff and nothing new or revolutionary but then he got to the 'Stand start drill' and in the ECB video he goes into it in more detail than Beau Casson does in the one that's available on Yotube. It was then that I realised that this was an example of a fundamental aspect to coaching spin bowling that doesn't generally get mentioned for free. The question is - are there more, are there more coaching secrets that are essential to really going forward with your bowling?

It'll be interesting to see if Ray covers it or whether he sees it as being important?
 
As there seems to be a big down turn in the amount of posts on here I went looking around on the internet to see if there was a reason e.g. another forum that was more active and there's not, this does seem to be the place to be for content and feedback. One or two of the others seem to have a much bigger web presence for some reason and their sites appear within the first 20 searches in google, whereas this thread doesn't turn up till you get to about 90+ options in Google. I'm thinking that this may be because we've titled it 'Wrist Spin Bowling' in the past and that maybe that's a bit esoteric and perhaps when the moderators shut part 5 down because it's too big as they do when we reach a thousand posts we change the name to Leg spin bowling? We might get more hits and more people involved?
 
The problem with watching warne is just that, he makes it look so easy. That's the art of bowling or being a top athlete im afraid, all these aspects of bowling which have been endlessly discussed over time condensed into a few seconds of running in and bowling - it's really the same for any similar action in other sports.. baseball pitching, a golfers drive, serving a tennis ball. Everyone has their own unique physiology and own style, but work within a known set of parameters that are crucial to having accuracy - such as the old standards you hear all the time eg. looking where you want the ball to land. And as we all know some people have a natural ability to get it all together, some might describe it as talent, and when they do it can appear to be very simple from an outside observer.

In regards to Warne, growing up having him on tv to use as a template for bowling spin is probably one of the main reasons i had nice (if similar to his) form in my action. You can't be discouraged by his abilities, imagine trying to be Shane Warne, having no 'ultimate' spin bowler to base his action off! we are very very lucky in this modern age to have youtube and access to all this information, i would've died to have access to it as a young leggie in the 90s. I had to simply take what all the different coaches told me and decide what worked for me, through trial and error bowling at the garage door!

Which reminds me, back then without all this information and dissection of bowling we engage in online, i would just get out there and practice - without over-analyzing everything i was doing. I strongly believe this allowed me to just walk in and bowl with Confidence, a very important and overlooked aspect of bowling. I was simply confident that i'd approach to bowl and the ball would land near where i was aiming it - as soon as i thought about bowling a bad one, i probably would. If you're confident with your bowling action that you have performed the same way time and time again you won't 'hold back' on any aspect of your action or 'overdo' or 'rush' any part of it, and you will start to look and FEEL in control. I like to think of this as being in the zone - I truly could land the ball where i wanted to when i was fresh at the start of a spell, my problem became fitness and losing the 'tightness' of my action after about 8 overs or so, which resulted in the odd short pitched delivery. I recall having a season without bowling a single wide! But herein i believe lies your 'secret' to bowling well, finding a grip, action, and general pace through the crease and sticking to it, then doing exactly that action over and over again with minor modifications as needed. I found that i'd experiment, but i always had a 'fall back' bowling action that i knew i could bowl with, it would happen without needing to think about it, muscle memory i think is what they call it.

And finally i did have a quick peek around other cricket forums, they seem to be mainly focused on current events and don't have dedicated spin bowling threads like bigcricket does. I wouldn't worry about it mate, most of the guys are probably out there bowling as we speak!
 
I had a quick look through some of your videos dave, i notice you're always experimenting with a bunch of different deliveries. Can i suggest just bowling stock legspin for a while, without trying to spin it too much? I found that the spin came in time not overnight or due to an 'epiphany' of technique, once i was repeating the same action over and over i got a bit more 'in touch' with the release and was able to impart further spin once i had the repeatable controllable action.
 
parbs1980 said:
I had a quick look through some of your videos dave, i notice you're always experimenting with a bunch of different deliveries. Can i suggest just bowling stock legspin for a while, without trying to spin it too much? I found that the spin came in time not overnight or due to an 'epiphany' of technique, once i was repeating the same action over and over i got a bit more 'in touch' with the release and was able to impart further spin once i had the repeatable controllable action.
Click to expand...

Generally 90% of my time is dedicated to the Leg Break, but I'm caught up with this idea that to Spin it hard is the main aspect of what you do. I've always gone at this from the perspective of line and length first, with spin and the spinning it hard as the ultimate goal. Without being 100% sure my feeling is that I'm a 'Roller' rather than a flicker of the ball and if I bowl with my rolling action I generally do okay, but from a purists perspective that's not good, so I'm always looking to bowl with a flick and that's where it all comes undone. I've currently got 3 ways of releasing the ball and each has differing outcomes.

1. My conventional method (Suspected of being a 'Roll') I do okay with generally.
2. Cocked wrist method which I've done well with recently but massively inconsistent, but when it comes out right looks very promising.
3. Cocked wrist with massive flick as above, but so loopy and slow it's ineffective.

I generally practice with all three of these -just bowling Leg Breaks, but I'm getting no-where and it feels like I'm going backwards at the minute which is really frustrating.

The videos kind of give a mis-representation of what I do. I am a 90% leg break man!
 
Another tough game this weekend - Folded out for 146 after being in a strong position 102/2. So when it came to defending that total it was all hell breaking loose. Opening bowlers didn't get a breakthrough until 8 over . score was already 38 by then. and the one down batsmen basically took apart our bowling, attacking our left arm orthodox, me (the leggie ) and offspinner for a lot of runs. With the score on 96, I put on a helmet and went to bat-pad for our offspinner and that flustered him so much that he holed out to deep midwicket. We tried to keep it tight with our two finger spinners and next few overs very few runs were leaked. Resulted in 1 run out. But the other opener was still playing sensibly. With score on 124, I gambled and brought myself on. (My first two overs had gone for 18 runs already). But, this over was beautiful. I bowled a little slowly - not finishing my action completely, but getting brilliant dip and drift. The opener who was on 40 came forward to defend, ball drifts towards leg, bat follows, but turn takes the outside edge, caught at slip. New batsman in -game on. Next over, brought the medium pacer in and restricted the runs, and score was 129 when I started my fourth over. First ball, the batsman steps out, gets a waist high full toss that he hits straight to short midwicket- 18 runs to defend and 5 wickets to get. Their wicket keeper comes in, I move the long on to the edge of boundary and bowl a top spinner, half tracker really, but he top edges it straight to where the long on fielder was - Unfortunately, the fielder runs in, misjudges, puts up one hand, drops the catch and lets it roll away to the boundary - deflated the rest of the over goes for 2 more runs and 12 runs to defend. 5 to get. Next over - the medium pacer restricts to 2 runs and I get another crack at it. My fifth over - batsmen takes power play and puts first ball away for a 2. Second ball a full toss, overhead catch at cover - dropped. 6 to get, and a little deflated I bowl a full toss over the head that is hit away for 2 more runs. 3 to defend.
I gave myself a mental slap and bowled the next one - beautiful loop, the batsman drawn out of the crease to hit it over me, beaten in flight and stumped. 3 runs to defend and 4 wickets to get. They send in a leftie - to whom I bowl wide of off, turning back a mile - he let the two remaining balls go. We decided to gamble on our left arm orthodox bowler- unfortunately gave away the 3 remaining runs and match was up. My analysis 5-0-32-3. But, I felt like I could rip the entire batting order out, I only needed to 10 more runs to bowl at. Gutted at the end. ( Even worse because I was the sixth man out at 144. the last four wickets in our innings contributed 1 run and I knew we should have won it, but let it slip yet again)
 
Took a week off to let the advice from Ray sink in, combined with a bit of shadow bowling in front of the mirror. Starting to feel like i have some good control now that i have my front arm directing my weight forwards towards the batsman - nice drift and spin, without trying to turn it too hard. Looking forward to the winter being over already!
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Nothing much to report myself. Missed out on an eventually rained off game on Saturday. I desperately wanted to play but my car had died on us and I was in the midst of getting it to a garage when the call came and had to turn it down. The upside of that is that my knee ligament is still sore from my stupid stunt whilst on holiday http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NRx7UFLHLI&feature=related and not playing means that it gets a little more of a rest.

Frustrated that I didn't play I needed to bowl and couldn't in the paddock as it's wet and we're rolling it and getting it ready for the next batch of nice weather, so instead I went over to the deserted tennis courts and bowled in there. Initially bowled crap (my kids are smashing my bowling) and realised that the key component that is missing is the pace, so I had a go at bowling with the bound. I bowled 18-20 balls and it was a massive improvement and I came away with the knee ligament still intact. So I'm looking to build up the strength in the thigh muscles and for the ligament to repair itself, so if I ease back into the bound, just bowling a few overs here and there, maybe by August I may be able to bowl again?
Click to expand...

hello Dave
sorry I haven't been regular on the forum - been watching live the WI vs Ind test matches!
How's your knee feeling now? have you been able to play this weekend?
as for me, I'm seeing a gradual improvement. although the big flickin' legbreak is elusive I get 1.5-2 stump-wide turn at times and mostly i'm on target mid-off stick without giving width.
Gutted I leaked winning runs for the opposition last Wed in a T20 :(even though i picked up 4 wickets.;)

btw, I wanted to get started on capturing my action at nets on video.

Btw, welcome to Parbs on getting back to bowling leggies again. I'm on my way back too, inspired by our bloke Dave's videos :)
well done to Thomas on the hattrick!! have you got any videos of your action?

I'd like capture my action on video too.. what kind of tripods do you need? any suggestions guys?
 
Spinoza said:
hello Dave
sorry I haven't been regular on the forum - been watching live the WI vs Ind test matches!
How's your knee feeling now? have you been able to play this weekend?
as for me, I'm seeing a gradual improvement. although the big flickin' legbreak is elusive I get 1.5-2 stump-wide turn at times and mostly i'm on target mid-off stick without giving width.
Gutted I leaked winning runs for the opposition last Wed in a T20 :(even though i picked up 4 wickets.;)

btw, I wanted to get started on capturing my action at nets on video.

Btw, welcome to Parbs on getting back to bowling leggies again. I'm on my way back too, inspired by our bloke Dave's videos :)
well done to Thomas on the hattrick!! have you got any videos of your action?

I'd like capture my action on video too.. what kind of tripods do you need? any suggestions guys?
Click to expand...

Spinoza, yeah you used to be on here back in the day or was you on 'Simplycricket'? Anyway tripods first - any old one really, if you're not serious about photography, but try and get one that extends up to eye -level. If it's a bit flimsy - hook a carrier bag with a brick in underneath the central section of the tripod and the weight will help to stabilize it. Other than that if you want to some serious height you'd be looking to pay in excess of £200 for a pro tripod in which case look at Gitzo, Manfrotto and Benbo brands - I used Benbo's and Manfrotto's.

Re my season, it's not really happening, but I'm not that fussed because of the knee. The more rest I get the more chance of it recovering, but I keep doing stupid things and re-injuring it (Skipping games this weekend didn't do it a lot of good), so I need to do something about it including not jumping! I've been at the beach all weekend and instead of sitting around doing nothing I've been bowling stump to stump with 6 balls and watching the seam through the air and I reckon I'm getting there. Leaking runs is an occupational hazard, but the 4 wickets is the key - what were your figures, strike rates are the ones you want to be impressive with - get hit for 16 an over, just as long as every over you take a wicket.
 
Yeah, it's all about wrist position at the release point. If you're more front on, you'll have to cock the wrist alot to achieve the correct release point. Getting side-on at release is quite important even if you approach from a front-on look eg. warnie. If you pause it when he releases the ball he's actually quite side-on, it's almost an illusion in his bowling action
 
parbs1980 said:
Yeah, it's all about wrist position at the release point. If you're more front on, you'll have to cock the wrist alot to achieve the correct release point. Getting side-on at release is quite important even if you approach from a front-on look eg. warnie. If you pause it when he releases the ball he's actually quite side-on, it's almost an illusion in his bowling action
Click to expand...

I think I moved away from the cocked wrist a couple of years ago because of the Googly Syndrome. If I bowled with what I thought was a cocked wrist the ball always came out as a Googly. I then changed my bowling action completely in order to recover my leg break. I've been going on about the fact that it takes ages to fully recover from the Googly Syndrome because your brain is totally re-wired. Maybe at last, two years down the line I have finally got my Leg Break back? Who knows - only time will tell, but the evidence this week and over the weekend looks very promising, I've been watching the ball through the air and the seam presentation has generally been spot on and I'm noticing an increase in the incidences of drift. Another aspect of the cocked wrist seems to be I'm able to bowl it faster too.
 
Sounds promising mate, i posted something earlier about getting used to the one release and then being able to spin it more in time - my exact experience from bowling leggies growing up. I actually removed the post because although i did figure a way to spin it more in time, i still didn't have quite the right release position to produce a huge legbreak (i was a bit like steve smith where i had the ball in my palm too much). Sounds like you've found the right wrist position for you - there couldnt be two more contrasting release positions than warne or macgill, yet both managed to spin it big
 
parbs1980 said:
Sounds promising mate, i posted something earlier about getting used to the one release and then being able to spin it more in time - my exact experience from bowling leggies growing up. I actually removed the post because although i did figure a way to spin it more in time, i still didn't have quite the right release position to produce a huge legbreak (i was a bit like steve smith where i had the ball in my palm too much). Sounds like you've found the right wrist position for you - there couldnt be two more contrasting release positions than warne or macgill, yet both managed to spin it big
Click to expand...

Someone on here (May have been you or I may have read it somewhere) mentioned that some people have a really 'Fingery' action, I tried that as well and that has potential too. But today I've gone back to a relaxed cocked wrist and it's worked well again. For the most part I bowl at stumps, but a bloke at my club has said he'll come over and join me in the paddock next week, so that'll be interesting to see how that works out. My older son of late has been playing me failry easily, but in the last week or so has struggled against me, so maybe it is coming together?
 
That's usually the sign for me that it's all coming together, batsmen having problems with stock deliveries. Sounds like the seam presentation is helping you get alot more loop and zip off the pitch - having seen your bowling action id say the more pronounced wrist will work well in the longrun, as long as you dont overdo it to the point that your wrist isnt actually doing any rotation around the release point! I'd like to see some video of this actually.. i've got my tripod ready to go as soon as the weather here gets good! bloody melbourne winter mate.. wet as a **************.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top