Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

[highesteem1]

I have a question for you legspinners: In this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4x3QWQC6Tc

At 3:50, Brad Hogg bowls Ganguly with a quick, straight delivery, which is described by the commentator as a flipper. It's a delivery he regularly gets wickets with. Could you have a look at tell me whether you think it is a flipper or (as I suspect) something else entirely?

Thanks

Rightly picked one...

It is not a flipper rather top spin from back of hand at 93.3 KPh (see 3:40) where the back of hand is directing towards batsman. If u see it carefully u may notice the ball also leaving the left handed batsman ( mild varient of chinaman with lot of top spin) hitting the off stamp.... may be Ganguly foxed n tried to play it as top spin (expecting it around middle st) keeping the bat inside of the ball but it leaves him n took away his off stamp

by the way a good one

 

[SLA]

Rightly picked one...

It is not a flipper rather top spin from back of hand at 93.3 KPh (see 3:40) where the back of hand is directing towards batsman. If u see it carefully u may notice the ball also leaving the left handed batsman ( mild varient of chinaman with lot of top spin) hitting the off stamp.... may be Ganguly foxed n tried to play it as top spin (expecting it around middle st) keeping the bat inside of the ball but it leaves him n took away his off stamp

by the way a good one

Thanks HE.

That was my analysis too - it looks like a quick, flat topspinner to me. Looking through the rest of that video, it seems like he bowls this delivery a lot and with plenty of success, and it almost constantly gets mislabeled as a flipper - as in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DETWjxTuSyI (where there is actually a heated argument about it in the comments).

.

any thoughts on this Dave?

 

[someblokecalleddave]

I have a question for you legspinners: In this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4x3QWQC6Tc

At 3:50, Brad Hogg bowls Ganguly with a quick, straight delivery, which is described by the commentator as a flipper. It's a delivery he regularly gets wickets with. Could you have a look at tell me whether you think it is a flipper or (as I suspect) something else entirely?

Thanks

Hmmm, it does rush on a bit and it breaks to the right and it comes out of the back of the hand using the a Flipper grip and he's a Chinaman (If the uninitiated are reading this they wont have a clue)! My money is on a the Wrong Wrong Un, which is a flipper variation. If you look very carefully you will note that the thumb is used, so I reckon it's a Flipper.

I

 

[SLA]

Hmmm, it does rush on a bit and it breaks to the right and it comes out of the back of the hand using the a Flipper grip and he's a Chinaman (If the uninitiated are reading this they wont have a clue)! My money is on a the Wrong Wrong Un, which is a flipper variation. If you look very carefully you will note that the thumb is used, so I reckon it's a Flipper.

I

It comes out with topspin though, yeah, so its not an orthodox flipper ala Shane Warne.

So you reckon its basically a topspinner but with the thumb used along with the fingers?

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Yeah you're right it does come out with top spin, its difficult sitting here without a ball - hold on I'll go and get one........................... I'm going to have to look at it again...........

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Yeah you're right it does come out with top spin, its difficult sitting here without a ball - hold on I'll go and get one........................... I'm going to have to look at it again...........

Looking at it again it just looks like he's bowling a Wrong Un which would break to left - so for the ball to then break to the right he's doing something a bit tricky and that's kind of alluded to with the use of the thumb - suggesting he's bowling some kind of a Flipper. The more I read about Flippers, the more I see that they have more akin to the techniques of the Finger Spinner and that perhaps it's wrong to catergorise them into the different clear cut definitions. Maybe it's better to see the definitions of the standard approaches as starting points and therefore when you see these kinds of deliveries that don't conform to the basic definitions, just accept that they may be pretty unique to individuals - perhaps this is Hoggs 'Secret Ball'? The other problem with youtube is the frame rate and it's pretty difficult to see at which point he starts to twist his finger and thumb to impart the speed. If you bowl out of the back of the hand with the wrist cocked backwards doing the click of the fingers (RH) you produce anti-clockwise spin, if you do it a fraction of a second later with the cocked wrist unfurled you get off-spin - clockwise rotation, somewhere in between with a slight change in the wrist angle you'll get top-spin and this all happens in a frame or two.

 

[macca]

Hmmm, it does rush on a bit and it breaks to the right and it comes out of the back of the hand using the a Flipper grip and he's a Chinaman (If the uninitiated are reading this they wont have a clue)! My money is on a the Wrong Wrong Un, which is a flipper variation. If you look very carefully you will note that the thumb is used, so I reckon it's a Flipper.

I

Yeah i cant see it good enough to tell but if you reckon he is using the thumb and (2nd finger as well you reckon?) than it is one of the flippers. I cant pick up the seam rotation on my crappy screen either.

 

[funk192]

Yeah i cant see it good enough to tell but if you reckon he is using the thumb and (2nd finger as well you reckon?) than it is one of the flippers. I cant pick up the seam rotation on my crappy screen either.

Your right about not being able to pick up the rotation of ball, there is just not enough detail. But I've uploaded a frame by frame picture, and if you look at 5th to 6th frame, you can kind of see the middle finger run down the backside of the seam. It's hard to tell what the thumb and index finger is actually doing because the thumb is obscured by the ball and the index finger is a blur in the 6th and 7th frames. Also look at how in frames 4 to 5 the last 2 finger start pulling down preparing for the "flipper". This is what leads me to beleive that the seam position is probably around pointing towards slips, but with back spin. More detail is needed in these slowmo's. I guess that's what you get on youtube, especially that it's limited to 30fps.

edit: then again, it could be the wrong wrongun with the seam pointing in the opposite ot what I said, I have bowled these before but It goes down leg side most of the time.

edit2: but at release the wrist turns front on? Is that possible to do with the wrong-wrongun?

edit3: It almost looks like he squeezes it through the index and middle finger, but hard to tell because it's blurred.

I removed my comments for the other video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DETWjxTuSyI because you can't actually see the frames individually from the really bad quality/encode of the video. There are 2 frames mixed together at release showing 2 balls in different positions and also through the entire video, and looking like he has 6 fingers, but in saying that the delivery looks identical to the one in these frames I posted. I'm still not convinced it has overspin because of the bad frame separation, we need a much clearer video.

In these 2 frames below I tried to mark the outline of the hand fingers and thumb as best as I can. I can't tell what the thumb & index finger is doing exactly, but you can see that the middle finger does indeed run down the back side of the ball. In the 2nd frame the middle finger is ghosted 3 times, which I have coloured blue to pink to yellow, showing the finger motion. In the 2nd frame I'm fairly sure that's the index finger I have marked with the bigger question mark with the black outline, as in the next frame after that in the original sequence as it's not a dark patch on the pitch.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Your right about not being able to pick up the rotation of ball, there is just not enough detail. But I've uploaded a frame by frame picture, and if you look at 5th to 6th frame, you can kind of see the middle finger run down the backside of the seam. It's hard to tell what the thumb and index finger is actually doing because the thumb is obscured by the ball and the index finger is a blur in the 6th and 7th frames. Also look at how in frames 4 to 5 the last 2 finger start pulling down preparing for the "flipper". This is what leads me to beleive that the seam position is probably around pointing towards slips, but with back spin. More detail is needed in these slowmo's. I guess that's what you get on youtube, especially that it's limited to 30fps.

edit: then again, it could be the wrong wrongun with the seam pointing in the opposite ot what I said, I have bowled these before but It goes down leg side most of the time.

edit2: but at release the wrist turns front on? Is that possible to do with the wrong-wrongun?

edit3: It almost looks like he squeezes it through the index and middle finger, but hard to tell because it's blurred.

I removed my comments for the other video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DETWjxTuSyI because you can't actually see the frames individually from the really bad quality/encode of the video. There are 2 frames mixed together at release showing 2 balls in different positions and also through the entire video, and looking like he has 6 fingers, but in saying that the delivery looks identical to the one in these frames I posted. I'm still not convinced it has overspin because of the bad frame separation, we need a much clearer video.

Looking at these frames it looks different again. I haven't got photoshop at the moment om my computer otherwise I'd flip the pictures so they'd be right handed and I might be able to make more sense of it. My brain can't handle trying to decipher whats going on with Chinamen deliveries, they're all arse about face!!! Looking at it, it may even be a bog standard finger spinners Top Spinner!

 

[funk192]

Looking at these frames it looks different again. I haven't got photoshop at the moment om my computer otherwise I'd flip the pictures so they'd be right handed and I might be able to make more sense of it. My brain can't handle trying to decipher whats going on with Chinamen deliveries, they're all arse about face!!! Looking at it, it may even be a bog standard finger spinners Top Spinner!

Here, I reversed the image so it's easier for us right handers to picture. I only used mspaint I guess that's another reason that makes left arm wrist spin so dangerous.

 

[SLA]

Looking at these frames it looks different again. I haven't got photoshop at the moment om my computer otherwise I'd flip the pictures so they'd be right handed and I might be able to make more sense of it. My brain can't handle trying to decipher whats going on with Chinamen deliveries, they're all arse about face!!! Looking at it, it may even be a bog standard finger spinners Top Spinner!

good pics there. It looks to me like he is holding the ball with his first two fingers and thumb, with his third and fourth fingers tucked in out of the way. The thumb isn't actually doing anything more than stabilising the ball. The 2nd finger clearly rolls over the ball.

Its basically a regulation leggie's topspinner spun off the 2nd finger rather than the 3rd.

 

[funk192]

Its basically a regulation leggie's topspinner spun off the 2nd finger rather than the 3rd.

If it was a top spinner spun by the 2nd finger wouldn't the 2nd finger be in front of the ball not in view in the 5th frame, or 2nd frame from the pictures with the outline? It looks to me like tip of the 2nd finger has been run down behind the seam, kind of curled up at the same time if you know what I mean.

 

[Tumo]

I was going to suggest that it's just a top-spinner, but bowled fuller and quicker?

 

[funk192]

I just made an animated gif, and I think it's finally clearer as to what the 1st and 2nd fingers are doing.

If you watch closely you see the ball kind of get squeezed through the 1st and 2nd fingers or given a bit of side spin dragging the 1st and 2nd fingers. Both 1st and 2nd fingers do the same thing. Well that's what it looks like to me know.

edit: I have retraced the 2 frames to what I now beleive the fingers are doing to as best as I can see in the above animated gif.

Here are the new traces below:

The middle finger has some motion blur which I have coloured in pink.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Blimey that's impressive! Maybe the middle fingers blurred because it's doing the Flipper click? I reckon it's a Flipper now!

 

[funk192]

Blimey that's impressive! Maybe the middle fingers blurred because it's doing the Flipper click? I reckon it's a Flipper now!

If that is indeed the case then I think Brad Hogg's flipper is much better in disguise than Warne's is, because with Warne's flipper his index finger seems to stay straight for a longer duration. Whereas Brad Hogg's fingers close all the way making it look more like a normal delivery.

 

[SLA]

I just made an animated gif, and I think it's finally clearer as to what the 1st and 2nd fingers are doing.

If you watch closely you see the ball kind of get squeezed through the 1st and 2nd fingers or given a bit of side spin dragging the 1st and 2nd fingers. Both 1st and 2nd fingers do the same thing. Well that's what it looks like to me know.

edit: I have retraced the 2 frames to what I now beleive the fingers are doing to as best as I can see in the above animated gif.

Here are the new traces below:

The middle finger has some motion blur which I have coloured in pink.

No I think the middle finger is rolling down the front of the ball. It's a bit blurry I admit. I think the finger action (and the topspin on the ball) is easier to see on the first video where he bowls it a few times.

Its honestly not a particularly unusual delivery this - I can bowl it myself.

 

[funk192]

No I think the middle finger is rolling down the front of the ball. It's a bit blurry I admit. I think the finger action (and the topspin on the ball) is easier to see on the first video where he bowls it a few times.

Hmm. Then I guess those missing frames in between are what shows the topspin with the middle finger running over the front of ball. I just don't know enough about video cameras to know if it's possible to have that middle finger leave a blur behind the ball(in front when looking at it from the cameras point of view) when it's supposed to have gone over the top & front of the ball(behind the cameras view). Is it ???

 

[someblokecalleddave]

I don't think it matters that much anymore, I'm more interested in what SLA has done with the pic's and the way he's filled in the gaps! I'm thinking if I could do some vids using my camera he maybe able to do the same with my images by way of illustrating these deliveries using GIFs - if he's up for it that is?

 

[highesteem1]

1. Back hand bowling without closing fingers (I mean only extending fingers towards sky) will give lot of flight (loopy one) with much slower than 93.3 KMh.

2. Now…. when u try to do back hand bowling at the end of delivery closing of middle finger will be more than index bcoz due to over rotation of wrist, the clinching of fingers will be restricted more for index than mid> ring> little. That’s why mid finger slipped earlier from the loading position towards ring finger. Hence the blurred pics are there due to quick folding of mid than index. See in 1,2,3, frame posted by funk showing ring finger, as wrist is getting extended in back hand position the ring/ ltle finger gets closed earlier. As mid F is closing towards palm is faster than index F, the ball is leaving the left handed batsman a typical chinaman bowl with top spin.

3. As both of Index/ mid fingers pulling the seam of the ball towards batsman, there is enormous top spin.

4. See this frame 2/3 ( @ funk), back of hand is towards 2nd, 3rd slip. Hence ball is definitely leaving Lt handed batsman

5. See....Ball was over-pitched (3.36/37 frame) >>>> batsman like Ganguly (one of the better one against spin) hurriedly had gone back foot >>>> still ball hits on TOP (upper one third) of the off stump. This is only possible if there is sufficient amount of TOP SPIN. Bcoz flipper creates back spin and low bounce.

7. @funk….questioned “If it was a top spinner spun by the 2nd finger wouldn't the 2nd finger be in front of the ball not in view in the 5th frame, or 2nd frame from the pictures with the outline?”

Justification: all prev frames are showing extension of wrist with sufficient 2nd/ 3rd fingers role for revoluting the ball for top spin

Another important aspect need to be considered …IS IT POSSIBLE to do flick of fingers (by Mid n Thumb) while doing extension of wrist while bowling from BACK HAND position in a flow??? Please try it yourself and see the results