Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

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Cleanprophet said:
And that is, fundamentally, the key point: is it any good? I'm sure it is possible to bowl this backspinner in a more disguised way then I can do it. The footage of Jenner bowling it is very grainy and not at all clear, but you can see that at the take back point his wrist is not cocked at all.

It is easy to get caught up in all these variations. Effectively there is the side-spinner, leg-spinner, top-spinner, wrong un (1), wrong un (2), slider, zooter, back-spinning flipper and the top-spinner flipper. The reason Warne was such a good leg spinner was because his leg spinner was so good (with plenty of drift, dip, turn and bounce) and, most importantly, very accurate. He did bowl the flipper really well early on in his career, but for the most part he focused on varying between side-spin and top-spin for his entire career. The variations can be a distraction, even if they are interesting.
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Forget the "zooter", that was Warne going for psych-out.

Warne gives the same rundown of deliveries as his coach Jenner (funnily enough!) interspersed with footage of Test batsmen falling prey to them, to give you an idea of their effectiveness. Admittedly this isn't printed in a book, but surely the greatest leg-spinner of all time knows what he is preaching? You be the judge. (slider @ 6:40 if thats all you're interested in)



And you are right about Warne relying on side-to-top spin for most of his career, although the slider featured significantly also.
 
Spin Lizard said:
Forget the "zooter", that was Warne going for psych-out.

Warne gives the same rundown of deliveries as his coach Jenner (funnily enough!) interspersed with footage of Test batsmen falling prey to them, to give you an idea of their effectiveness. Admittedly this isn't printed in a book, but surely the greatest leg-spinner of all time knows what he is preaching? You be the judge. (slider @ 6:40 if thats all you're interested in)



And you are right about Warne relying on side-to-top spin for most of his career, although the slider featured significantly also.
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Well, classic Warne, says one thing, yet in the match he does another.
 
macca said:
I think if you look at demo richie does here of the doug ring ball , it is not the philpott/jenner/simpson mythical backspinner. Just the old fashioned straightone or what we call a slider these days.

Philpott must have went round the loop in his head as well as his wrist because if you read all his works and coaching manuals he convinced himself and others that Benaud's "sliding topspinner" ( Benauds description from 1969) was a pure backspinner.

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Even poor old Richie gets confused between a topspinner and a backspinner.

I think a generation of coaches used "topspinner" as a synonym for "straight ball" because that was the first straight ball they were taught.

But as you say, at least he is able to give an accurate description of what happens when the ball comes out of the hand, unlike a lot of people.
 
The Edge Of Willow said:
I have bowled the OBS with a leg-spin grip couple of times. The vital aspect is the position of the wrist and the flick, so you can avoid putting so much side-spin on the ball that it turns (it is difficult, if not impossible, to get a pure backspin with a leg spin grip though). After trying it for a net session or two, I felt bowled the side-spinner too regularly, so I didn't bother with the delivery any more. I had a far more consistent straight one with either the flipper or just pushing the ball out of the first of the hand.
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That is the key thing. Is it any good? Do you need it? From my little trials of it in the nets, I am finding that the ball is coming out with sidespin most of the time. I don't think one has come out with 100% backspin. The best I've manahed is 50/50 backspin/sidespin. But why bother with all this messing around when you have the flipper?

I bowl a sort of an off-spinning flipper and the simple reason I bowl that is that I struggle to bowl the wrong un.
 
macca said:
I think if you look at demo richie does here of the doug ring ball , it is not the philpott/jenner/simpson mythical backspinner. Just the old fashioned straightone or what we call a slider these days.

Philpott must have went round the loop in his head as well as his wrist because if you read all his works and coaching manuals he convinced himself and others that Benaud's "sliding topspinner" ( Benauds description from 1969) was a pure backspinner.
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It's only in the last 15-20 years that technology has improved enough that you can actually video an action and watch it back in slow motion - so you can see the release clearly. I am sure that many, many bowlers were in the strong belief they were doing something, when in fact they were not. I've been there several times. I've been totally convinced that I am bowling with my hand/wrist in a certain position and yet the video shows otherwise.

Effectively, Richie is just describing the ball now often known as the slider. Which is just a ball that slides out of the front of the hand with very little spin. It is more effective than the flipper because it is easier to bowl and harder to pick.

SLA said:
Well, classic Warne, says one thing, yet in the match he does another.
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I've just watched again a bit Warne did on UK TV about 7-8 months ago where he talks about his slider. The ball he mentioned in the past as the zooter is the backspinner (the one Jenner calls the slider on that BBC clip), but I've not seen any footage of him bowling it in matches or even in any of the many leg spin masterclasses he has done - which says it all really. The thing he did 7-8 months ago he said this ball that slides out of the front of his hand was the only new delivery he ever worked on during his career and used in matches. What he said was that he used to "shout his mouth off all the time" and when asked if most of it was bluff, he replied: "all of it was bluff, apart from this one delivery". It came about because with damage he had to his spinner finger and his shoulder surgery the flipper wasn't something he could bowl as well anymore. When playing County Cricket, he found gripping the Duke bowl (because of lacre on the seam) in the cold and wet April difficult. He tried to bowl a big spinning sidespinner and instead the ball slide out of the front of his hand with very, very little sidespin. It decieved the batter so much that he spent the whole of that season working on and perfecting it.
 
Anywho, enough of real and imaginary deliveries.

I haven't posted any match updates recently as I've been injured, forget what it is called but basically the tissue connecting to the heel on the sole of my foot has become inflamed. The bad news is that my fitness is rock bottom but the good news is that injuries and zero fitness actually improves my bowling.

Called in as a fill in for our 3rd XI one hour before the start of play on Saturday on the proviso that I would stand at first slip and talk nonsense all day, little did I know was that I would be asked to bowl. The biggest shock was that I could and was asked to bowl, kind of, and the second shock was how dead lower grade wickets are (it's been a while). Ended up bowling 14 overs taking 2 for 35. First wicket was a classic set up with mid-on brought in a little bit and then a top spinner put on middle stump, batsman takes bait tries to go over mid on but ends up popping it straight to him. The second wicket was against a decent player who has obviously dropped down the grades as he's got older, wasn't picking the googly which was a cue to bring out a few of the other variations. I eventually got him with a slider, the look on his face when he pushed toward mid off but was hit square on the shins in front of middle was priceless, my Hadlee-esque appeal I believe also added to it (no Michael Whitney style escape for that batsman!). Overall it was great to just bowl again without any pressure on me plus the ground (however small it is) is in a great location, 70m from the beach (which I got hit onto, once), after the game we had a BBQ and a few drinks at their clubroom by the beach looking across the bay to Wellington. The English guy in the side said this is why he came to NZ, and that day I could see why as well.

Playing 3rds means I haven't played any games with the protege, he finally got taken to 3 weeks ago (18-2-108-1) although he apparently had a few back pad LBWs not given (he'll learn that he has to get them out twice sometimes). The good news is that I was approached by the 1sts captain who said they want to give him a go this season providing he gets a little more turn on his leg break. The 1sts have a good defensive spinner already, they need someone who is not out and out attacking but at least turning it enough to make the opposition nervous. Set to work getting him to be slightly more side one and really feeling his left side 'brace' when he pivots, he managed to take this on very quickly so much so that he is back to his wicket taking ways but with more venom to his deliveries. 12-4-30-5 shows that the work has paid off, at one point he had 4 wickets for one run! A missile of a drive which hit his right foot hampered him after the 4 wickets but he came back after that to take the classic leg break wicket, bet the forward defence with spin and took the off bail...great stuff. At the practice just been the 1sts captain came out to do some passive batting against him while he was doing target practice, I think he's impressed with the improvement so here's hoping he gets his chance soon!
 
Spin Lizard said:
Didn't you watch the clip I posted for you, Cleanprophet?
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I did. That's not the backspinner. I don't know whether Jenner was trying to show him the slider/backspinner or what. But Warne even shows how the ball comes out of the back (with the palm of the hand facing the batter, as he says) and it comes out with the seam sideways and with very little spin.

You have to be weary of these videos and how the person displays the spin. Even though he is displaying the seam so that it faces the camera, you need to look at the direction he is moving his hand in and what he is saying. He is not spinning the ball towards the camera, he is spinning to his left and saying that the palm will face the batter. This is what we all know as the modern version of the slider. It can get confusing when you see Jenner showing a slider/backspinner where the palm faces the off-side and not the batter and then you have Warne saying this is a delivery Jenner has been teaching him and he shows a delivery that is very different and has no backspin at all.
 
Cleanprophet said:
It can get confusing when you see Jenner showing a slider/backspinner where the palm faces the off-side and not the batter and then you have Warne saying this is a delivery Jenner has been teaching him and he shows a delivery that is very different and has no backspin at all.
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They are one and the same. The slider.

The zooter is Warne bluff.
 
I think this is my point, there are 1,000 different contradictory explanations out there of every type of ball conceivable, complete with cock and bull stories about who showed it to who on what train journey and who invented it after an apple fell on their head etc etc.

Its all just nonsense. There is nothing new under the sun. The victorians specialised at flicking and flipping and probably invented more deliveries than we know about today. The only genuine spin bowling inventions of the 20th century were Bosanquet's googly, and - possibly - Saqlain's doosra, although both had probably previously been bowled underarm, so its debatable whether either really counts.

As for reliable info on who bowls what and how, the only trustworthy source is to watch the slo-mo footage and freeze frames of what bowlers actually bowl in games. Everything else is just so confused and convoluted that its impossible to tell who's mugging off who.
 
SLA said:
I think this is my point, there are 1,000 different contradictory explanations out there of every type of ball conceivable, complete with cock and bull stories about who showed it to who on what train journey and who invented it after an apple fell on their head etc etc.

Its all just nonsense. There is nothing new under the sun. The victorians specialised at flicking and flipping and probably invented more deliveries than we know about today. The only genuine spin bowling inventions of the 20th century were Bosanquet's googly, and - possibly - Saqlain's doosra, although both had probably previously been bowled underarm, so its debatable whether either really counts.

As for reliable info on who bowls what and how, the only trustworthy source is to watch the slo-mo footage and freeze frames of what bowlers actually bowl in games. Everything else is just so confused and convoluted that its impossible to tell who's mugging off who.
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Yeah it's all just nonsense, those tricky, flicky, clicky victorians invented everything bowlable, and the guys like Bosanquet, Grimmett and Iverson who worked out how to do it overarm at the elite level by their own experimentation are just cock and bull stories made up to sell copies of Wisden.

"There is nothing new under the sun" I dont know about that cliche, I prefer Mark Twain "History doesn't repeat, it rhymes"
 
You have to laugh when he says the hardest thing about trying to bowl it is actually being able to bowl it. Cleanprophet found that out the other day.
 
Description of the "zooter": When it bounces, "it will still 'hold up' on the pitch and shoot through lower."

It must be a genuinely miraculous ball to do two diametrically opposite things at once. It both holds up and shoots through simultaneously. WOW!
 
Spin Lizard said:
the backspin holds it up, the topspin makes it shoot through.
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lol. Perhaps the secret is to bowl two balls at once, one with topspin, one with backspin? If I remember correctly, Wally Shuter-Smith invented this delivery while sitting on the dunny in 1957, then explained it to Terry Terrier whilst on a boat to antarctica using a snowball to demonstrate the grip. It is one of the 375 known deliveries that Shane Warne bowled in the Manchester Test of 1993. Its sometimes known as the upspinning downshooter or the reverse fingered slipper.
 
Spin Lizard said:
They are one and the same. The slider.

The zooter is Warne bluff.
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They are one and the same if you believe that a side-spinner and a leg spinner are one and the same. Same action, but different wrist position. As I explained, Jenner says the idea is to flick the wrist so that your thumb faces back towards you with the palm of your hand facing the off-side. Warne is showing a smaller flick which leaves the thumb pointing to the off-side and the palm facing the ground/batter. The difference, in theory, is that one imparts a little bit of side-spin and the other imparts backspin. Jenner called this backspinner a slider. But many bowlers (Warne included) refer to this ball out of the front of the hand as the slider. They are different deliveries.

Warne bluffed so much that he may have called described the slider as the zooter. It's tricky to tell because he often moves the ball around in his hand as he describes the delivery and it isn't clear at all in which direction he is suggesting the balls spins. From what I've seen, he has only ever shown and described the ball coming out of the front of the hand. The only footage I've seen of anyone showing a backspinning action is that one Jenner did for the BBC, where you clearly see him suggesting that the hand flicks back towards the bowler and imparts backspin. I've never seen a close up of this release in genuine action. It would be nice to see it and put all this to bed once and for all.
 
So Jenner, Warne's mentor, describes a "legbreak gone wrong", a delivery called the slider. And Warne describes a different delivery, also called the slider (but doesn't describe Jenner's slider). And they both behave remarkably like a ball that Ring showed Benaud in 1953, with an apple, on the train to Bristol:
Looking like a legbreak, but with a bit of backspin, skidding through.
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OLSGUSDS - the orthodox legspin grip upspinning downshooter. Otherwise known as the reverse-fingered slipper, or the Philpott circus ball.

Legspin theory is just so complicated and tricky, I'm glad I bowl left arm spin.
 
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Cleanprophet said:
They are one and the same if you believe that a side-spinner and a leg spinner are one and the same. Same action, but different wrist position. As I explained, Jenner says the idea is to flick the wrist so that your thumb faces back towards you with the palm of your hand facing the off-side. Warne is showing a smaller flick which leaves the thumb pointing to the off-side and the palm facing the ground/batter. The difference, in theory, is that one imparts a little bit of side-spin and the other imparts backspin. Jenner called this backspinner a slider. But many bowlers (Warne included) refer to this ball out of the front of the hand as the slider. They are different deliveries.

Warne bluffed so much that he may have called described the slider as the zooter. It's tricky to tell because he often moves the ball around in his hand as he describes the delivery and it isn't clear at all in which direction he is suggesting the balls spins. From what I've seen, he has only ever shown and described the ball coming out of the front of the hand. The only footage I've seen of anyone showing a backspinning action is that one Jenner did for the BBC, where you clearly see him suggesting that the hand flicks back towards the bowler and imparts backspin. I've never seen a close up of this release in genuine action. It would be nice to see it and put all this to bed once and for all.
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Shouldn't you back in wrongun school mate.

That Jenner backspin demo was just him having a joke. At that stage Terry was being paid big bucks by the English to coach legspin and being paid secret bucks by the Aussies to spread as much disinformation as possible. That is how you ended up with Borthwick bowling legspin on the SCG for England when he wouldn't make my sons club team.

Jenner had to keep inventing nonsense to justify the huge amounts of money he was extracting every English summer as he was being paid to find crickets equivalent of the abominable snowman, an Englishman that could bowl Legspin. He knew it was an impossible task but gladly accepted the cash. Remember he was a convicted fraudster who went to gaol.
 
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