Its a great variation to have.
I mentioned the flying saucer delivery ages and ages ago, probably 18 months ago. At that time I hadn't seen the Benaud video about the "flying saucer" flipper, and I'm not convinced Benaud bowled it this way at all. But it has merit as a ball that skids through, I drew comparisons with Lasith Malinga as this is how he delivers the cricket ball quite often with his slingy pace action. Its extremely hard to bowl though, and I gave up on it because I couldn't get it consistent (not just in terms of where it landed, but I couldn't even get the seam out this way most of the time), and I don't see much merit for it as a variation.
However this method, whilst in your theory above may seem like a better way to bowl the genuine flipper, since the seam won't grip, sort of misses the whole point of the flipper delivery and why it is so effective....
The flipper is a delivery that leaves the hand with the batsman thinking "it looks like a leg break, but its got no flight, so it must be a drag down, I should play this off the back foot". Then before he knows it, the ball is faster, has carried through full (due to the magnus effect causing it to carry further in flight) and rapped him halfway up his pads on middle stump, or even worse clean bowled him, and he has no idea how.
The only way to achieve that deception is in flight, because off the pitch there a) isn't enough distance for the ball to do anything like that between pitching and reaching the bat, and b) it won't be able to suddenly lose bounce from trajectory, at best it might skid through maybe 1-2mph faster than it otherwise would have, but that isn't getting you a wicket. So you can't flight it up or it just doesn't work, the deception is in length and length only.
The flipper has to be hard backspun, and it doesn't much matter where the seam is or how it is rotating for the purposes of this, and that causes it to carry further in flight than it otherwise should (bearing in mind the batsman is expecting a long-hop leg break from the action). The bounce off the wicket makes little difference (it doesn't need to stay that low) since its LBW or bowled you're looking for, so it only needs to stay low enough to hit the stumps. If it lands on the seam then it will stay lower, but if it lands off seam then it will skid through slightly quicker. Either way the batsman is in trouble if he has played for a short delivery! It really doesn't matter if you bowl upright seam or scrambled seam in this regard.
The upright seam however has another useful purpose, in that it will swing like mad! I've got flippers to swing literally the width of the wicket at fairly low speeds, so much so that they can start on a leg stump line and end up being horrendous wides!! If you get the ball to drift/swing in (bearing in mind it still needs to hit the stumps for LBW or bowled to come into play, so you don't want too much) then you've got even more chance of beating the bat. And also the seam angle to achieve this will result in a little bit of leg break off the pitch as well, so it can drift in from off stump to middle and then straighten up slightly to get you an absolute plum LBW shout.
If you work on it a bit then you can also create the off-spinning flipper, and have 2 flippers that look absolutely identical (sometimes I can't even tell you which way its coming out until I see which way it turns as the difference in seam angle is that subtle!) but can turn slightly one way or the other off the pitch depending on which way the seam points (unless you get it dead straight in which case it won't break at all, but that is rare). So even if the batsman can pick your flipper, he can't possibly pick which of the 3 it is (straight, leg break, off break), and that subtle turn (probably 2-3 inches) is all it takes to find or beat the edge. My off-spinning flipper is causing everyone big problems in indoor nets at the moment
now the season is all but over we get to use the no2 turf wicket here over the next few weeks. we checked it out last night and it is pretty good. should spin like mad by the looks of it. cricket is a pretty cheap sport, you can use public nets and disused pitches for free
Yup, the new stand has changed the wind direction, resistance and some other stuff which is well over my head. It does, however, hoop round corners, having been there and watched the Nottinghamshire seamers bowl!
got a couple of hours in, it was sort of productive, but not great.on the subject of nets, I went down and helped with the groundwork yesterday at my club and as a result got to put the net back up! the weather was fantastic, felt more like July than mid-March, so a couple of hours later after some lunch I was back down there for the first practice of the season
the net surface is all covered in moss and was still pretty damp. literally the worse possible condition for leg spin bowling, and at first the ball was just skidding on and doing absolutely nothing, and I was thinking it was going to be one of those days. I span the ball out of my hand and just let it drop onto the surface, and even then it hardly moved! and it was really skiddy, even my slow medium pace seam up deliveries were knocking the stumps over!! so much so that I thought I must be in the high 60's minimum, but video suggests an average speed from release to stumps of 46mph, so I'm low 50's at best.
anyhow, I got on with it. started out bowling off the 1 step method and it was utterly awful. for some reason I am completely incapable of staying upright and/or rotating over my front foot. I literally couldn't do it, I have no idea why. it probably didn't help that I had spent 2 hours doing groundwork, dragging various heavy contraptions about by a piece of rope so my hands were tight and my arms were aching before I started. not sure if thats it or not though, but I didn't have a problem with the 1 step drill a few months back.
so I gave up on that after a while because it clearly wasn't helping. I played around with my run up and approach, and I'm constantly over-pitching, which at my clubs net means putting the ball on the roof all the time because its far too low! I figured I needed to get my weight forwards, but that killed my rhythm. so I started running in leaning forwards (which after I realised it worked I remembered was one of the key things I did at the end of last season when I got my action working awesomely) and that helped, I started remembering little bits about what had worked at the start of off-season and eventually I started hooking things up a bit. bowling reasonable pace, pitching on leg, turning past off, with decent consistency.
then I decided I needed to setup the video camera, which wasnt my proper one, just a GoPro clamped to middle stump on 60fps mode (so still very capable of slow motion), and after that I didn't really bowl another great delivery all afternoon haha! I need to watch the video back to see if there are any at all, I think there might be 2, but it wasn't very productive. there won't be any video going online.
It isn't light enough in the evenings (plus the sun sets behind the nets) so I think outdoor nets are weekends only at present (weather pending), maybe an occasional afternoon if I can find time. my action has a LONG way to go though if its going to be consistent for the start of the season, which is probably about 3-4 weeks now.