Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

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someblokecalleddave said:
You'll have to look at your figures and work out all your average and strike rate, it'll be interesting to compare them with your wrist spinning next year. So, what now, will you rest up for a while and do you do anything in the closed season (Aussie football, baseball) or will you keep at it and will the weather allow you to do so? As I recall a surfing mate of mine from Sydney said it avearges 10 or 11 degrees throughout the depths of your winter and gets a bit cloudy and grey a lot of the time, kind of an okay winter day here in the UK. What's with the knee - is that bad, or just a one off from the match? Hopefully it'll be your right knee and not your left? My right knees bad and I'm a bit worried about it in the longer term, I reckon my sprinting and out-running 17 year old days are over, I'll have to see how it goes. Hope yours isn't too bad.
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I just checked out my stats for 2 seasons in England and the last 2 here and they have the same strike rate of around 28 and an average of 15 in England and 20 in oz. I reckon my strike rate should improve but the average is bound to be higher.
I'm going to try and keep up the training over the off season. It gets harder when daylight saving ends but it stays warm enough to get down the nets over winter, it just takes commitment. Your mates pretty right about the weather here. A good clear winters day though is superb.
No football (Aussie rules) nowadays because of my knee. I snapped my ACL playing gaelic football in Ireland back in 2006. Had a full reconstruction at the start of 2008. Its ok for cricket and running in a straight line but any sharp changes in direction its no good. Its been sore the last few weeks just from all the cricket lately. It is my left knee. I cant brace it up properly bowling fast but its ok to brace up bowling spin.
I would have thought the right knee would be a worse injury because of the pressure it takes when landing. My injuries dont really affect my spin bowling though which is good. Do you think bowling it damaging your knee??
I was hoping to be in England for the start of the season over there but work, my Mrs getting pregnant again and visa delays mean I wont make it. It gives me a real chance though to build some consistancy and accuracy with my action over winter.
Now the seasons over Im determined to get the camera out and try and get some really good slow motion shots of my bowling. I'll have a crack this weekend and try and get a few up on youtube. I really want to capture the release if I can.
When is your first game??
It seems a waste that I am here living across the road from Collaroy beach at one end and North Narrabeen at the other and not into surfing like you Dave.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
As I recall a surfing mate of mine from Sydney said it avearges 10 or 11 degrees throughout the depths of your winter and gets a bit cloudy and grey a lot of the time, kind of an okay winter day here in the UK.
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that might be the sea temp around sydney but daytime winter air temp is usually around 17-20 celsius,, a bit colder if its overcast, but i am a bit north of sydney but i grow strawberries,tomatoes and chillies etc, all year round and we can bowl outdoors all winter no problem.
 
macca said:
that might be the sea temp around sydney but daytime winter air temp is usually around 17-20 celsius,, a bit colder if its overcast, but i am a bit north of sydney but i grow strawberries,tomatoes and chillies etc, all year round and we can bowl outdoors all winter no problem.
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Your right Macca 10-11 is nighttime temps. Waters more like 17 in winter, its warmer in than out half the time Dave
 
chippyben said:
I just checked out my stats for 2 seasons in England and the last 2 here and they have the same strike rate of around 28 and an average of 15 in England and 20 in oz. I reckon my strike rate should improve but the average is bound to be higher.
I'm going to try and keep up the training over the off season. It gets harder when daylight saving ends but it stays warm enough to get down the nets over winter, it just takes commitment. Your mates pretty right about the weather here. A good clear winters day though is superb.
No football (Aussie rules) nowadays because of my knee. I snapped my ACL playing gaelic football in Ireland back in 2006. Had a full reconstruction at the start of 2008. Its ok for cricket and running in a straight line but any sharp changes in direction its no good. Its been sore the last few weeks just from all the cricket lately. It is my left knee. I cant brace it up properly bowling fast but its ok to brace up bowling spin.
I would have thought the right knee would be a worse injury because of the pressure it takes when landing. My injuries dont really affect my spin bowling though which is good. Do you think bowling it damaging your knee??
I was hoping to be in England for the start of the season over there but work, my Mrs getting pregnant again and visa delays mean I wont make it. It gives me a real chance though to build some consistancy and accuracy with my action over winter.
Now the seasons over Im determined to get the camera out and try and get some really good slow motion shots of my bowling. I'll have a crack this weekend and try and get a few up on youtube. I really want to capture the release if I can.
When is your first game??
It seems a waste that I am here living across the road from Collaroy beach at one end and North Narrabeen at the other and not into surfing like you Dave.
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The knee issue seems to have come about over the winter, but was starting to niggle during the summer and seemed to be a result of hard running in the outfield rather than bowling. One of the pitches I play on undulates a lot so if you set off fast and you're watching the ball, you have to run assuming that the field is flat and then you run across a small dip, which then rises and your legs buckle underneath you and you can go flying, okay when you're young, but an olden like me it causes problems. I also had a nasty twist during the summer when as you mentioned I had to change direction fast and the spikes didn't grip and twisted one or other of my legs at the knee. I cant recall which leg though. I play badmintion on Sunday and I usually come through that okay, but it seems like its the initial shock coming out of the newly acquired bound and landing on the right foot with the foot ready angled to facilitate a rotation that's the issue. I did forget to strap the knee up last night and that probably didn't help. I reckon I'll have to take it easy for a couple of weeks and just do some gentle stretching to see what the outcome will be if I do that, but it's sore today - I'm having to limp everywhere, which is worrying.

Narrabeen, whoa - that's a shame, although I reckon that must get crowded there? I reckon if I lived where you are, I wouldn't have time for cricket, I'd be out before work and out after work and all weekend both days! But then when it's in your back garden it's a bit different, many blokes I know that live in Cornwall gave it up in their 30's.

Yeah It'll be good to see any vids you're able to shoot. I'm looking to do some for a bloke on youtube and I'm going to shoot them close up from behind by way of explaining the Flipper release.
 
played indoor last night. we batted first and lost a wicket in the first over, then the other opener was out 2nd over. i was in at number 5 by the 4th over! desperate to get some sort of total on the board so that id get some bowling overs, i played a decent innings. 17 runs off of 18 balls to steady the ship a little (plus i was leaving wides and getting us extras), the guy at the other end wasnt scoring any runs to support me so i got a bit cocky and tried to hit too many runs and got bowled by a full toss that was meant to be a yorker. decent innings though and got our total somewhere near defendable.

got to bowl one over in the end. they only need about 20 runs to win and hadnt lost a wicket (only retirements). had a left hand right hand combination to bowl at, and first ball was a no ball that went well over the batsmans head haha. i reeled it in for the next 5 though with 4 good line and length balls from round the wicket (to right and left handers) and one long hop. it was too easy for them though with no pressure at all. fancied a wicket and every ball looked possible to get one, but no such luck.

got indoor nets tonight and im really looking forward to it. my action has really snapped into place the last 2 weeks.
 
Jim, what you bowling this season? Have you reduced the number of variations that you're using in a game and when should we expect to see how and what you're bowling this year up on Youtube? I'm still toying with the idea of buying the slo-mo camera, but still can't justify paying £129.00 for one, just so that I can post videos up on Youtube.

While I'm asking Jim, what does everyone else have in their bag of tricks this season? I'm primarily working with Leg Break variations e.g. one that'll turn more than the other. But I'm bowling more conventional Top-Spinners this year, as they're help with the subtleties in getting a small Leg Break that dips more and a small Wrong Un. I've scrapped the Big Wrong Un. I'm still toying with the Off-Spinning Flipper as that gives me a ball that's a lot faster and it drifts and it pretty accurate.​
 
At present, I've got the full complement of leg breaks and thats all really. Nothing else is consistent as I haven't bowled more than a dozen of them since last season. I can bowl overspun, side-spun and backspun leg breaks on demand, something I didn't have control over last year, but do now. My consistency is still probably only 10% perfection, 50% acceptable, 30% bad balls and 10% boundary-fodder/wides. But thats based on almost no practice, so it should improve greatly in the next few weeks, and already has in the last 2.

In terms of variations I can physically bowl (irrespective of consistency), I've still got:

Top spinner
Overspun leg break
Side spun leg break
Back spun leg break
Zooter/Orthodox back spinner (depending on what you want to name it. I'm sticking with Zooter)
Slider 1 (fingers down the back of the ball)
Slider 2 (scrambled seam leg break)
Flipper
Off-spinning flipper
Off break
Murali style off-break/backspun googly (bowled it once, and its hard!!)

Of the above I plan on being able to bowl any of them when the situation calls for it. I'm not the sort of player that saves a variation for matches until I've perfected it in practice. I'll bowl anything in a match even if I have no confidence at all in it coming out right. Thats just the nature of my personality really. For example if the situation warrants a big turning wrong'un, I'll try to bowl the backspun googly or the off-spinning flipper, just because I have confidence that it will get me the wicket. If I land it then its probably a wicket, if I don't then it might go for 7 no-balls. On the other hand, I won't throw a variation up for the sake of it unless I see a purpose to it. If I can't devise a plan then I just stick to leg breaks (and vary the angle of spin to mix things up), likewise if I can't find any consistency then I do the same.

Being realistic, variations that are close to being match-ready based on last seasons development and early attempts this season are:

All 3 leg breaks
Top spinner
Zooter
Both sliders
Flipper
Off-spinning flipper

As far as videos go, I won't be able to get any until I get some solo practice. Indoor nets cost £24/hour and I'm reluctant to spend that kind of money for bowling practice (my time indoors is much better spent on batting as there is a bowling machine there and I really need the practice). And outdoor nets at my club haven't been put back up yet, although hopefully will in the next week or 2. As soon as the outdoor nets are up I'll be up there every spare second I have until the season begins. And videos will follow.

I may take my camcorder (as well as my speed radar) to my clubs pre-season net practice one week too. There are a few people interested in seeing themselves and their bowling speeds.
 
It's alright for leggies, because leg-spin is from the wrist to begin with there are various ways to release the ball whilst still disguising it to the batsman. If you change the angle of release just slightly you change from a a backspinner to a leggie, then to a topspinner, and then again to a googly. It's difficult to get a variation for me. However, I would like to think I can bowl (and yes, I am barging in on your topic, what of it? ;)):

Stock offspinner
Arm ball
quicker ball
backspinner
Variation à la Graeme Swann (pretty much goes straight on, but drifts a lot in the air)
A possible 'other one'.

I have, however, bowled chinaman in the nets quite a lot, and I have the ability to bowl:

Legspinner
Googly
Topspinner
Zooter (Pushed out the palm of the hand, I believe that is a zooter/slider? :S)
Backspinner
A decent enough quicker one
And of course an offspinner now and then.

I do feel for wrist-spinners though, it's an awfully hard art to master or to even understand. The margin for error is minimal, and if you bowl one bad over your skipper will no doubt fob you off to third man and come on to bowl his filthy half-tracker "off spinners" (an insult to MY art!) Whereas finger-spinners have an ability to go for either all-out accuracy or all-out maximum spin, and as it is seen as much more of a "traditional English skill" and every team seems to have one, there is much more trust in them.
 
Yeah most definitely, the finger spinners are in abundance and as accurate as hell. Their strength seems to be speed variation and the whether it's going to go straight or turn massively, they are my nemisis. Although a bloke in the nets last night threw one up that went the other way a tad.
 
I have to say, there aren't many 'good' finger spinners out there. I'm not even sure I'd class myself in that, although stats probably show otherwise... My side are lucky in that 2 of the bowling attack are finger spinners, one an offie and one (myself) a left arm orthodox, so that each spinner's stock ball turns opposite ways. Not enough good quality spinners as a whole, something that I, for one, am looking to rectify.
 
In England in 1934, Stan McCabe and Bill ORielly got to handle the very musket ball that killed Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. McCabe laughed and turned to ORielly and said " Dont show it to Clarrie, he'll want to bowl the bloody thing at us in the nets! "

Not just a comment on Grimmetts obsession with spinning any sphere at hand, but also his intense dislike for batsmen.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
The knee issue seems to have come about over the winter, but was starting to niggle during the summer and seemed to be a result of hard running in the outfield rather than bowling. One of the pitches I play on undulates a lot so if you set off fast and you're watching the ball, you have to run assuming that the field is flat and then you run across a small dip, which then rises and your legs buckle underneath you and you can go flying, okay when you're young, but an olden like me it causes problems. I also had a nasty twist during the summer when as you mentioned I had to change direction fast and the spikes didn't grip and twisted one or other of my legs at the knee. I cant recall which leg though. I play badmintion on Sunday and I usually come through that okay, but it seems like its the initial shock coming out of the newly acquired bound and landing on the right foot with the foot ready angled to facilitate a rotation that's the issue. I did forget to strap the knee up last night and that probably didn't help. I reckon I'll have to take it easy for a couple of weeks and just do some gentle stretching to see what the outcome will be if I do that, but it's sore today - I'm having to limp everywhere, which is worrying.

Narrabeen, whoa - that's a shame, although I reckon that must get crowded there? I reckon if I lived where you are, I wouldn't have time for cricket, I'd be out before work and out after work and all weekend both days! But then when it's in your back garden it's a bit different, many blokes I know that live in Cornwall gave it up in their 30's.

Yeah It'll be good to see any vids you're able to shoot. I'm looking to do some for a bloke on youtube and I'm going to shoot them close up from behind by way of explaining the Flipper release.
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I would have thought Badminton would be worse than bowling for the knee. All that lungeing stopping quickly and changes of direction. I guess that the repetition of bowling stresses the knee in the same way every ball though. My knee soreness came from bowling on a concrete run up at our nets that jars the knee.
If you were living here you would play cricket in summer and then surf all winter when the waves are better and the crowds are smaller.
I had a swim down in Cornwall one summer (Sennan Cove) and it was bloody freezing!!
 
Tumo said:
It's alright for leggies, because leg-spin is from the wrist to begin with there are various ways to release the ball whilst still disguising it to the batsman. If you change the angle of release just slightly you change from a a backspinner to a leggie, then to a topspinner, and then again to a googly. It's difficult to get a variation for me. However, I would like to think I can bowl (and yes, I am barging in on your topic, what of it? ;)):

Stock offspinner
Arm ball
quicker ball
backspinner
Variation à la Graeme Swann (pretty much goes straight on, but drifts a lot in the air)
A possible 'other one'.

I have, however, bowled chinaman in the nets quite a lot, and I have the ability to bowl:

Legspinner
Googly
Topspinner
Zooter (Pushed out the palm of the hand, I believe that is a zooter/slider? :S)
Backspinner
A decent enough quicker one
And of course an offspinner now and then.

I do feel for wrist-spinners though, it's an awfully hard art to master or to even understand. The margin for error is minimal, and if you bowl one bad over your skipper will no doubt fob you off to third man and come on to bowl his filthy half-tracker "off spinners" (an insult to MY art!) Whereas finger-spinners have an ability to go for either all-out accuracy or all-out maximum spin, and as it is seen as much more of a "traditional English skill" and every team seems to have one, there is much more trust in them.
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Being left arm orthodox must work well for you even if you dont have as many variations as a leggie simply because you natural ball goes away to a right hander. I imagine the better accuracy you have over a leg spinner lets you build up more pressure and gets you quite a few overs. Am I right?
 
macca said:
In England in 1934, Stan McCabe and Bill ORielly got to handle the very musket ball that killed Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. McCabe laughed and turned to ORielly and said " Dont show it to Clarrie, he'll want to bowl the bloody thing at us in the nets! "

Not just a comment on Grimmetts obsession with spinning any sphere at hand, but also his intense dislike for batsmen.
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I reckon you have to have a real dislike for batsman to be a good bowler. You have to want to hurt them and scare them bowling fast and you want to make them look like idiots when bowling spin. How dare they think they can stand at the other end with a lump of wood and think they have a chance against you!!! Give em nothing!
 
chippyben said:
Being left arm orthodox must work well for you even if you dont have as many variations as a leggie simply because you natural ball goes away to a right hander. I imagine the better accuracy you have over a leg spinner lets you build up more pressure and gets you quite a few overs. Am I right?
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Oh yes, it works well for me, but my natural length is (very annoyingly) a sweeping length, and I've always been taught to have just one man out, a deep square leg, so that's how I've always done it haha. Yeah I often get a bit of pressure built up, but once every few overs I'm also liable to bowl a short one, normally because it comes badly out of the hand. If I had a better keeper behind the sticks I'd have even more pressure, but our keeper is only young (until our old hand comes back from knee surgery) so we'll have to see how that goes.
 
net practice wasnt great last night for my bowling. struggled to find rhythm, and bowled at 3 of the best batsmen at the club (all first XI and generally top order). despite that, i still got them out numerous times, plus would probably have had them caught in the deep a few times as well. so reassuring seeing as i wasnt bowling that well and still got "wickets".

the highlight of the night was my 15 mins of batting! it seems i have expanded my range of shots nicely. ive gone from having my trusty sweep and an uncontrolled straight pull shot, to having pretty much the full range of shots from cut round to sweep, with a variety of drives!! considering i was facing the 3 best pace bowlers at the club, all going for it and swinging the ball, i only got out 2 or 3 times to them, and hit some cracking shots off them. i saved the sweep shot for spin, and hit a few decent ones. its looking promising for the outdoor season :D
 
chippyben said:
I reckon you have to have a real dislike for batsman to be a good bowler. You have to want to hurt them and scare them bowling fast and you want to make them look like idiots when bowling spin. How dare they think they can stand at the other end with a lump of wood and think they have a chance against you!!! Give em nothing!
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I'm liking this.
 
This is part of a conversation I'm having with a bloke on youtube and I've suggested he comes over here and joins in as he's making some interesting points about my bowling and Flippers............

hi mate

Hey dave, bit of an essay... for some reason i cant post on the video and you seem to have taken the comment function off your blog. here are a few morsels for thought.
Yeah, you’re right because of anonymous and offensive remarks I turned the function off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lnPdotmVkU&feature=related shows at 2.40 benaud talking about how the ball is forced out spinning around its own axis and skids on...
Although I’ve watched the Benaud vids (I think these are the ones Golden Arm ripped and uploaded) the description of Benuads Flipper kind of passed me by, but having looked at it again I can now see that it has some merit in that his approach is quite unlike anyone else’s. The back-spinning Flipper I’ve always seen as being useful in that it lands on the seam giving it some grip potentially and causing the ball to lose pace possibly. It’s never crossed my mind to try and bowl it as described with a ‘Flying saucer’ approach, so that the ball lands on the smooth surface of the ball. But as Mike says below, landing on the smooth surface potentially means the ball is going to skid through more readily? So just this variation of the Flipper seems to be worth looking at to see how it goes?

I also bowl the backspinning flipper but it comes out as a faster darty delivery for me instead of what i want which is a flighted skiddy ball, hopefully if i get the benaud one sorted 100% it will be what im looking for in my variations.


This idea then takes the ‘Flying Saucer’ Flipper a step further in that it could be explored as a normal speed delivery to ascertain whether it would still ‘Skid through’ with less pace. This sounds more like the affect you’d probably get with an Orthodox Back Spinner or one of the other more obscure back-spinners, maybe the cross-seamed slider, with the built in variation of ball hitting or not hitting the seam.

I saw that you introduced the bound into your action, i'm also tweaking mine as i felt i wasn't getting consistently large turn and felt this is a technical fault of mine rather than anything else and i was mainly getting wickets from changing my flight and speed instead of turn off the pitch and catching an edge...
Yeah after years of not having a bound and people telling me to get it, I realized that through practicing with the Stand Start I might be able to bring it in to my bowling, with the help of my younger son and him telling me what I needed to do I worked on it in my living room over the winter and have been bringing it in bit by bit. The only thing is I’m having issues with my right knee possibly due to the fact that I’m landing the right foot out of the bound with my foot already sideways in order to get my body side on through the rotation. It may also be the increased impact after the pivot as I’m now moving forwards with a lot more speed in the ‘Follow through’. I’ve had to stop practicing at the minute for the foreseeable future and give the knee a rest and see if it gets better.

--Run up - i have a slow walked run up into my delivery stride so now am working on introducing more energy into it and making a conscious effort to keep the energy there. This worked well when i last netted on sun 6th and i got good turn, though it still wasn't consistent... i did get annoyed though as by the end of the session i was getting no turn and was bowling full length balls that were just being driven. I'm not sure if i was just knackered by the end :/ i will see when i net on thur.
I can say with the exception of the fact that I seem to have this knee issue, the impression I have of adding the bound to my bowling is that it hasn’t had any detrimental impact on my bowling at all, within minutes (Few balls) I had my accuracy and length on track and in three or four sessions it was beginning to yield very good results of which the most obvious was the increase in speed. So I’d say it is well worth exploring if it’s not something you’ve ever done and I’m sure you’ll have had like me, stacks of people saying ‘Your bowling needs to be more dynamic/faster’ etc.

--Pivot - I noticed that my left foot sometimes changes position when it lands so now i am making sure that it lands at more of an angle (if stumps to stumps was 0 degrees more towards 10 or 15 and making sure i get a lot of pivot as spin on the ball comes from pivot of the body) apart from with the googly which i land with a straight foot...
Pivot is something I’m working with (Or was till the knee issue). If you have a look at my recent vids, you’ll see that through the rotation, the foot stays pretty static, which I think then mean the rotation through the hips is weak or lacks the dynamism required to get extra turn off the wicket. I’ve been given some drills to do by Liz Ward who’s a bio-mechanist that contributes to these threads that will hopefully improve my pivot.

--Arm height - something i will look at actively doing on thursday is keeping a good arm height, and making sure its somewhere in the 45 to 60 degree bracket on release, as you restrict the spin you can get by having a more vertical arm...
--Where im bowling - i used to just bowl at the batsman without "aiming" and it used to work, but now im trying to bowl at an area on the floor and actually aiming at it to get more consistent...


Yeah, I think your accuracy will come with constant practice, all of the pros talk about putting the hours in to get it right. From the reading that I’ve done it’s notable how much both Peter Philpott and Clarrie Grimmett talk about the necessary hours that you have to put in to get the results. Grimmett in particular was noted to practice for hours, but then at the point that he decided that he’d stop he’d then set himself the task of bowling 4 balls one after another onto a target the size of a handkerchief before finally stopping.

What annoys me is i bowl regularly with two very good leggies who both get lots of rip on the ball and large turn off the pitch with no obvious differences in the way we bowl. I think the subtle differences really do make a massive difference! Sometimes i can bowl similar deliveries but not 100% of the time. so i think if i get my technique sorted i'll be able to bowl consistently large turners.
Absolutely! There’ll be some key issue that you’ve yet to address, that is holding you back. We’ve all realized on here, that this is so complex and difficult and without having Terry Jenner standing in the umpires position telling you what you’re doing wrong you’re looking at 4 + years of hard graft to suss it all out. How old are these other leggies and how good are they? What kind of accuracy do they have and have they been coached and do they offer you any advice?

Some thought, from looking at your new action is that your arm is very vertical and not in that 45 to 60 angle i mentioned, maybe try lowering your arm slightly and see what results you get? it would also be interesting to see what you make of the benaud flipper as i find its pretty hard to get right! maybe if you have some spare time you can try things out and let me know what you think of both the flipper and lowering your arm?
With so many other things I’m working with at the minute….. Pivot, New action and honing it, Top-Spinner, and accuracy I’m cautious about adding lowering the arm to that list, but the idea of the Flying Saucer Flipper looks like something I could work with and get results with quite quickly, so I reckon I’ll give that a go.

finally http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-iWMqyd-T4&feature=related at 00.40 warne bowls a flipper but i cant tell if its the benaud one or the backspinning one but it keeps beautifully low...
Yeah you can’t see, but from what I’ve seen over the years he bowls them in a variety of ways, so going on your idea of the ‘Flying Saucer’ and the fact that it could potentially keep really low, you may be right?
 
ok, so you convinced me, seems to be some good info here. i'm primarily a leg spinner, but my batting is now at a level good enough that i consider myself to be an all rounder and i may open for my uni 2nds as an experiment by our society captain. hopefully i can help with input from both sides of the coin as you seem to be lacking input from batsmen and i may be able to help with what i know and what i've learned from my team mates. i also play for 2 teams, 1 uni and 1 club; both of which have very good batsmen and so i develop my bowling from what gives them trouble, i also have the benefit of bowling regularly with two leggies who are very good (and a few more who are inconsistent), but not too helpful with where i've gone wrong when i stray from bowling well.

Mike
 
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