Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

Top Contributors
someblokecalleddave said:
If your captain supports and likes spin, my first captain was an offie, a bloke called Neil Samwell, he was a legend, brilliant bloke and gave us spinners all a good go - it makes a big difference.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty lucky, I've been in the nets against a friend who played under-19's state cricket with Ben Hilfenhaus, he's incredibly knowledgable about the game but naturally not being a leg spinner, there's only so much info he can give me. He'll be my captain next year as we're going to start a whole new team, I've got a group of 13 mates and we're gonna enter ourselves in 4th division cricket, just to see how we go :) He's a massive advocate for spinners though, he, himself doesn't bowl though.
I will purchase the book next payday for my kindle, thanks heaps again Dave!
 
SLA said:
Anyone asking for advice on their action, remember: you have to tell us what the actual problem is otherwise we can't help. Its like saying "my car is broken, how do I fix it?" and us saying "replace the clutch" when the problem is that it won't start. You need to tell us whether you get your length wrong, or your line wrong, or the ball doesn't turn, or you bowl too slowly, or you can't bowl a googly. Once we know the problem we can look for potential underlying causes and try and help find a solution. Everyone's action is different, if you just look to "fix" an action without knowing exactly why you are doing it, 99% of the time things will get worse, not better.
Click to expand...
 
Tudeski said:
Hey guys, totally new to these forums, but have been on Bigfooty for about 6 years.
Wouldn't allow me to post a new thread, but I'd love some help with technique if possible, I'll put some better videos up late.
I'm extremely new to cricket, I've never played a game before, but I have always grown up watching it and playing both Rugby League and Union. I wish to quit rugby next summer and play club cricket instead.
I have the same wrist spin technique as Zimbabwean, Paul Strang, in the sense that I hold the ball like below and instead of delivering with my wrist tilting right to left it goes from front to back:
bpbleggie.png


Here's some sample videos from my phone, I apologise about the quality, I'll make a better effort next time. It's just something I decided to do whilst practicing.
The camera is halfway up the stumps.

Click to expand...

As long as you have the ability to land your leg- and topspinner where you want you can be very dangerous as a leggie so you don't necessarily need a wrong 'un even though it will generate a couple of extra wickets.
What worked for me last season was bowling an off-spinner in stead of a wrong 'un so maybe you can try that as well.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Here's a link I found via Stuart Macgills google page...

http://www.alloutcricket.com/blogs/sundries/on-the-stump-the-potential-pitfalls-of-mystery-spin
Click to expand...

It's a good article and makes a very good point about overdoing it with your 'other ball', Mushtaq Ahmed did it with the googly, Saqain with the doosra and Ashwin does it now aith the carrom ball, but I'm not too sure whether Ajantha is in the same boat. The fact is that none of Ajantha's deliveries ever spun very much except on helpful pitches, his endless variations were a survival necessity not a young kids obsession with something new. His decline came not because he overdid it but because batsmen (well, some of them) realized that none of those deliveries actually do very much, from there all you have to do is play the length and smash the bad ones.
 
Mystery spinners have been enlivening the game for 100 years. If you can bowl a good wrong'un then there is no logical reason why you can't mix it up 50:50 with your stock ball.

I have seen game theory analysis into how a goalkeeper should mix up diving left and right, I would love to see a game theoretical analysis of how a spinner should distribute his variations.

Maybe if I get a bit of time over the summer I will do it myself!
 
SLA said:
Mystery spinners have been enlivening the game for 100 years. If you can bowl a good wrong'un then there is no logical reason why you can't mix it up 50:50 with your stock ball.

I have seen game theory analysis into how a goalkeeper should mix up diving left and right, I would love to see a game theoretical analysis of how a spinner should distribute his variations.

Maybe if I get a bit of time over the summer I will do it myself!
Click to expand...

Yeah be good to see, even a link to the football version might be useful?

In the meantime have a look at this. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...spin-renaissance/story-e6frey50-1226585375002
Looks like Stuart might be taken up the Terry Jenners role as we've been speculating for some time now!

374492-stuart-macgill.jpg
 
From http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/current/story/587733.html ...

Shane Warne had a bowl in the MCG nets on Tuesday. At 43, he is slim and fit, but he has plenty of rust to shed over the next couple of months, before his first match as captain of the Melbourne Stars. Even the greatest legspinner the game has seen was unable to land his first ball, a full toss. As Warne has been saying ever since his retirement, spin bowling is damn hard. Spinners need to be treated with patience.

Some good reading for spinners, especially the younger kids and anyone that's involved in developing spin bowlers.
 
I have been practicing in the indoor nets for 4 hours each weekend since I last posted on here with my teams. It is going really well. My stock ball is taking a lot of wickets in all varieties - bowled, lbw, stumpings, edges and so on. My stock ball has the seam like this \\ so it has good dip with turn, which I think is a dangerous combo and I am not so fussed about having a big side-spinning leg break (which I find almost impossible to deliver although I think a few come out by accident rather than design). I have added a wrong un which comes out as acceptable only 40-50% of the time at the moment, but I am slowly developing it and might give it a whirl in a match if the situation allows. I have not had a problem with googly syndrome and always finish a session with my leg break. The top spinner I have is okay, I find it harder to control the line than with my stock ball and am going to pay more attention to it going into my first season as a spinner.

I'm not so fussed about developing spin for the moment as 2/3 variations is all I need at first, and am going to work wholly on accuracy going into the season. The outdoor net is open at the local club now and it's nearly always empty for me to bowl in. The carpet there is very thin so the ball doesn't turn so much but I am still getting turn. I will try and post more videos soon.
 
Darth Spin said:
I have been practicing in the indoor nets for 4 hours each weekend since I last posted on here with my teams. It is going really well. My stock ball is taking a lot of wickets in all varieties - bowled, lbw, stumpings, edges and so on. My stock ball has the seam like this \\ so it has good dip with turn, which I think is a dangerous combo and I am not so fussed about having a big side-spinning leg break (which I find almost impossible to deliver although I think a few come out by accident rather than design). I have added a wrong un which comes out as acceptable only 40-50% of the time at the moment, but I am slowly developing it and might give it a whirl in a match if the situation allows. I have not had a problem with googly syndrome and always finish a session with my leg break. The top spinner I have is okay, I find it harder to control the line than with my stock ball and am going to pay more attention to it going into my first season as a spinner.

I'm not so fussed about developing spin for the moment as 2/3 variations is all I need at first, and am going to work wholly on accuracy going into the season. The outdoor net is open at the local club now and it's nearly always empty for me to bowl in. The carpet there is very thin so the ball doesn't turn so much but I am still getting turn. I will try and post more videos soon.
Click to expand...

Sounds like it's going well Darth. I've been bowling okay in the nets so far this year. I'm changing tactics a little this year, looking to bowl more flippers and Top-Spinners. I read something just recently by Menno Gazendum on pitch vision and he was reiterating the need to be brave in the face of batsmen that go after you. I have a tendency to speed up my bowling in those situations and he was saying - hold your nerve and toss the ball up again above the eye-line and see if they go after you again, he says they might a few times, but at some point they're going to make a mistake. I tried it in my last net and it worked well - they do make mistakes and it makes them put the breaks on a little. Just takes a little nerve on our part as the bowler. What do you reckon - is this something you do?
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Sounds like it's going well Darth. I've been bowling okay in the nets so far this year. I'm changing tactics a little this year, looking to bowl more flippers and Top-Spinners. I read something just recently by Menno Gazendum on pitch vision and he was reiterating the need to be brave in the face of batsmen that go after you. I have a tendency to speed up my bowling in those situations and he was saying - hold your nerve and toss the ball up again above the eye-line and see if they go after you again, he says they might a few times, but at some point they're going to make a mistake. I tried it in my last net and it worked well - they do make mistakes and it makes them put the breaks on a little. Just takes a little nerve on our part as the bowler. What do you reckon - is this something you do?
Click to expand...

Hi Dave.

Yes, it's going well in general. I bowl my share of rank bad deliveries too but by and large when I concentrate properly I am happy with line, length and turn. One problem is it can take me an over or so to get in the zone, I want to eradicate that and bowl a good line/length from the start as it would be disastrous in a match I'd have thought. I think bowling slower to start off will help with that.

I fully agree with what you're saying about aggressive batsmen. In my opinion most club level batsmen stay on the back foot to leg spin, I'd say over 90% of them. There are only one or two batsmen in the teams I play for with the confidence and technique to go after me. When I first started leg spin last summer those two batsmen completely dominated me but now I can get them out, usually bowled or finding the edge when they attack. Even though they come down the wicket sometimes I still try to bowl full to them, as they put away anything slightly short with ease most times unless there is big turn/bounce. I'd also prefer to bowl too full than too short - a dipping full toss might still take a wicket such as a catch from a badly timed shot or sometimes it dips late and gets under or past the bat. On the other hand a short ball will usually get the treatment it deserves. So I'd always rather bowl too full than too short for all of these reasons.

Against the best batsmen I always try to get my biggest turning leg break going and then subtly adjust the line. I think fully concentrating on turning it big will help counter the tendancy to bowl too quickly, would you think?
 
Darth Spin said:
Hi Dave.

Yes, it's going well in general. I bowl my share of rank bad deliveries too but by and large when I concentrate properly I am happy with line, length and turn. One problem is it can take me an over or so to get in the zone, I want to eradicate that and bowl a good line/length from the start as it would be disastrous in a match I'd have thought. I think bowling slower to start off will help with that.

I fully agree with what you're saying about aggressive batsmen. In my opinion most club level batsmen stay on the back foot to leg spin, I'd say over 90% of them. There are only one or two batsmen in the teams I play for with the confidence and technique to go after me. When I first started leg spin last summer those two batsmen completely dominated me but now I can get them out, usually bowled or finding the edge when they attack. Even though they come down the wicket sometimes I still try to bowl full to them, as they put away anything slightly short with ease most times unless there is big turn/bounce. I'd also prefer to bowl too full than too short - a dipping full toss might still take a wicket such as a catch from a badly timed shot or sometimes it dips late and gets under or past the bat. On the other hand a short ball will usually get the treatment it deserves. So I'd always rather bowl too full than too short for all of these reasons.

Against the best batsmen I always try to get my biggest turning leg break going and then subtly adjust the line. I think fully concentrating on turning it big will help counter the tendancy to bowl too quickly, would you think?
Click to expand...

Darth, Sorry about being slow with the reply here, I did start to answer you, but got distracted by something going on within my family and my son closed down the reply! Around here, there seems to be very few wrist spinners, your lucky to find anyone else bowling it, although at our club there's three of us all bowling in different teams and one kid who bowls a whole mixture of both finger spin and wrist spin left armed. I often come up against very good batsmen that see me off or I just bowl really poorly on some days. I had a terrible season last year - unfit and suffering from an arm injury that persisted all season that I couldn't shake off. I don't think I'm consistent enough in my action and technique recently to put your idea into action and I find that if I try and turn the ball big, I often drag it down. I'm currently trying to simplyfy a lot of what I'm doing as it seems to be causing me problems. The last 4 weeks or so in practice seems to have gone well and the simplifying of what I do and not thinking about what I'm doing too much seems to be paying off. I had a really good season 3 years ago, before I started to try and tweak a lot of my action and this came from bowling a handful of variations. During the tweaking phase I tried to bowl Leg Breaks exclusively, but this year I'm going to go back to my variations focusing on having a back-spinning flipper, Googly and a Top-Spinner and see how it goes with my new run-up. But to be honest in the last two years I've gone into the start of a season optimistic in the same way and then had to bowl against first team players in a 3rd or 4th XI and been smashed which was pretty demoralising. Hopefully with the return of my variations I'll get a better start this year.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Darth, Sorry about being slow with the reply here, I did start to answer you, but got distracted by something going on within my family and my son closed down the reply! Around here, there seems to be very few wrist spinners, your lucky to find anyone else bowling it, although at our club there's three of us all bowling in different teams and one kid who bowls a whole mixture of both finger spin and wrist spin left armed. I often come up against very good batsmen that see me off or I just bowl really poorly on some days. I had a terrible season last year - unfit and suffering from an arm injury that persisted all season that I couldn't shake off. I don't think I'm consistent enough in my action and technique recently to put your idea into action and I find that if I try and turn the ball big, I often drag it down. I'm currently trying to simplyfy a lot of what I'm doing as it seems to be causing me problems. The last 4 weeks or so in practice seems to have gone well and the simplifying of what I do and not thinking about what I'm doing too much seems to be paying off. I had a really good season 3 years ago, before I started to try and tweak a lot of my action and this came from bowling a handful of variations. During the tweaking phase I tried to bowl Leg Breaks exclusively, but this year I'm going to go back to my variations focusing on having a back-spinning flipper, Googly and a Top-Spinner and see how it goes with my new run-up. But to be honest in the last two years I've gone into the start of a season optimistic in the same way and then had to bowl against first team players in a 3rd or 4th XI and been smashed which was pretty demoralising. Hopefully with the return of my variations I'll get a better start this year.
Click to expand...

Hi Dave, no worries and by the way I'm Martin. There are a few bowlers who bowl leg spin in my clubs but I don't think any of them are committed to it to the same extent as me and I think their bowling suffers for it. When I talk about how much I practice nobody seems particularly interested, I haven't met anyone with a real passion for it.

Good luck with your approach and I hope you have a good season too. I am quite nervous about the season, I hope I can replicate my best bowling from the nets but somehow I think it will be difficult when the pressure is on.

I had quite a frustrating net yesterday with two good batsmen. One of them bowls leg spin and off spin and every single ball he was giving me a running commentary, I was bowling too many full tosses and found his comments and advice every single ball really off-putting He even laid down a marker on leg stump when I prefer to bowl a middle or off stump line and that really annoyed me so I had to tell him to stop giving me advice. After that I settled down and bowled okay, and once he was in bat obviously the running commentary stopped and I was calmer. Although I was really annoyed with this guy it kind of helped as it made me realise how much I value practicing in solitude. So this evening I went back by myself and bowled for 2 hours. 1st hour was stock ball only and by the end I got it going really well. 2nd hour I went around the loop - leg break, top spinner, wrong un repeatedly. The success rate with my wrong un has shot up and I get it down the wicket much quicker now, it is more or less now a developed delivery. So I came away tonight much happier than yesterday. I am going to practice as many consecutive days as possible going into the season as I find it's the only way to maintain the same level of bowling.
 
How many overs do you guys get in a season? I get in somewhere around 150 I reckon.

Put up some stumps in my back garden, obviously its not as good as bowling on a proper pitch at an actual batsman, but I can go out there every day after work when the weather is like this and just bowl 20 balls or so.
 
I have no idea how many overs I'll be entrusted with. Nets has gone well so I'm expecting to be chucked the ball at some stage. I also had a great little spell bowling at my best at the Captain a few weeks ago which would have done no harm, I hope it stuck in his mind.
 
SLA said:
How many overs do you guys get in a season? I get in somewhere around 150 I reckon.

Put up some stumps in my back garden, obviously its not as good as bowling on a proper pitch at an actual batsman, but I can go out there every day after work when the weather is like this and just bowl 20 balls or so.
Click to expand...

I reckon if I'm lucky I'll get 10 games averaging around 3.5 overs per game based on recent performances. My last club which was a spinners paradise might have averaged around 6 overs a game. Similar to you SLA I have a patch of grass in a little paddock 60 metres (if that) from my house, I roll it, cut it and maintain a wicket there and can go over there any time I wish and have a bowl. I have in the past spent hours over there bowling, but last year I tended to go over and bowl 40-60 balls and stop at that. Currently I'm feeling as though rest over the winter has done more good than bad and I may adopt a lesser approach to practicing to avoid injury.
 
Darth Spin said:
Hi Dave, no worries and by the way I'm Martin. There are a few bowlers who bowl leg spin in my clubs but I don't think any of them are committed to it to the same extent as me and I think their bowling suffers for it. When I talk about how much I practice nobody seems particularly interested, I haven't met anyone with a real passion for it.

Good luck with your approach and I hope you have a good season too. I am quite nervous about the season, I hope I can replicate my best bowling from the nets but somehow I think it will be difficult when the pressure is on.

I had quite a frustrating net yesterday with two good batsmen. One of them bowls leg spin and off spin and every single ball he was giving me a running commentary, I was bowling too many full tosses and found his comments and advice every single ball really off-putting He even laid down a marker on leg stump when I prefer to bowl a middle or off stump line and that really annoyed me so I had to tell him to stop giving me advice. After that I settled down and bowled okay, and once he was in bat obviously the running commentary stopped and I was calmer. Although I was really annoyed with this guy it kind of helped as it made me realise how much I value practicing in solitude. So this evening I went back by myself and bowled for 2 hours. 1st hour was stock ball only and by the end I got it going really well. 2nd hour I went around the loop - leg break, top spinner, wrong un repeatedly. The success rate with my wrong un has shot up and I get it down the wicket much quicker now, it is more or less now a developed delivery. So I came away tonight much happier than yesterday. I am going to practice as many consecutive days as possible going into the season as I find it's the only way to maintain the same level of bowling.
Click to expand...

Still too wet here to use the place we practice in and really I need to get some seed down and stay out of it and not use it for batting till the grass is established. But the knock abouts I have with my kids have been going well using windballs, my Googly is looking very good and I'm playing around with another flipper variation, which goes through the air with back-spin with the seam pointed to cover. I was originally trying to bowl a flipper with the flying saucer spin, but it broke like a big Leg Break, yesterday I had a proper look at it in good light and could see the seam presentation and how it was spinning. I'll keep using this and see how it comes along - but it looks like it's got potential.

The situation with the bloke in your ear, doesn't sound good or conducive with getting on with your bowling - is he a coach?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top