Spin Lizard
Active Member
hahaha "Yes Percy, they were all backspinners....say, if you're washing your whites, could you do these while you're at it? Thanks buddy."
Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)
- Thread starter Richard the Third
- Start date
someblokecalleddave
Well-Known Member
Okay, so let's say that some of us are more sceptical than others about the realities of some of these deliveries and that some of us will never believe that they're possible, unless of course they see it in hi def slow mo? It's a bit like Moon landings and UFO's... there are believers and non-believers? We're never going to see any footage that conclusively brings the naysayers on-side with the believers in the short term, because as others have pointed out, the technology is relatively new. Maybe, the believers are the cricket romantics, but we're here and we have an opinion and we approach our cricket in a different way?
I love those old accounts of how one delivery was passed on to another, I love the fact that Warne was full of bull**** and had the world in the palm of his hand, I love the notion that people may have colluded with him to weave a web of total confusion. Despite what the naysayers say, the Philpott description is valid. I hope kids and blokes read the account and try it... I can't do it, I can do it standing still, but with a bowling action I can't. But then again, I can't bowl a big leg break. But my sons have weird arms, they can flex their arms and twist them in ways I could never dream of and who knows people with their physique who practice day in day out, may be able to get their arms and wrist round to do the thing as described by Philpott? The romantics/dreamers/mugs that do try it, probably will never be able to do it, but in trying it, they're going to get their wrist round so far, they might come up with something that is a bit special and that might only be down to the belief that the description and delivery is real?
It's been said, that wrist spinners are a special breed of people. No-one else on this forum in any of its forms writes as much as we do. Maybe we're obsessive, maybe there's something about the way we're wired that makes us believe that the impossible is possible? All of the wrist spinners I know, are a little odd in some way, our learning process is mental in comparison to other disciplines in cricket, we get carted all round the pitch and are given just a few overs each week and yet we keep coming back believing that one day it'll come together. We keep trying and we keep learning, we have failures and it seems we have a delivery amongst our potential repertoire that is allegedly a fraud. But I don't think we care, it's been given to us by one of our greatest exponents and it comes from the land of spin. Not only that, it has that mystery aspect of sounding possible whilst seeming physically impossible - it has all the attributes that appeal to us as wrist spinners and I love that. I reckon some of us might spend years trying to bowl Flippers, wrong uns, and the OBS and maybe one day when our knees or our rotator cuffs give up on us, people will remember us say (Same thing that Warne says he'd like to be remembered for) "He never gave up". It might be that in years and years time the naysayers will still be here, mocking us, but we'll be able to say - boy, didn't we have some fun trying to bowl this stuff and on some days that ball may have come out as a big leg break or might have skidded through as one of those bastardised "Sliders" and got us a wicket or two.
I love those old accounts of how one delivery was passed on to another, I love the fact that Warne was full of bull**** and had the world in the palm of his hand, I love the notion that people may have colluded with him to weave a web of total confusion. Despite what the naysayers say, the Philpott description is valid. I hope kids and blokes read the account and try it... I can't do it, I can do it standing still, but with a bowling action I can't. But then again, I can't bowl a big leg break. But my sons have weird arms, they can flex their arms and twist them in ways I could never dream of and who knows people with their physique who practice day in day out, may be able to get their arms and wrist round to do the thing as described by Philpott? The romantics/dreamers/mugs that do try it, probably will never be able to do it, but in trying it, they're going to get their wrist round so far, they might come up with something that is a bit special and that might only be down to the belief that the description and delivery is real?
It's been said, that wrist spinners are a special breed of people. No-one else on this forum in any of its forms writes as much as we do. Maybe we're obsessive, maybe there's something about the way we're wired that makes us believe that the impossible is possible? All of the wrist spinners I know, are a little odd in some way, our learning process is mental in comparison to other disciplines in cricket, we get carted all round the pitch and are given just a few overs each week and yet we keep coming back believing that one day it'll come together. We keep trying and we keep learning, we have failures and it seems we have a delivery amongst our potential repertoire that is allegedly a fraud. But I don't think we care, it's been given to us by one of our greatest exponents and it comes from the land of spin. Not only that, it has that mystery aspect of sounding possible whilst seeming physically impossible - it has all the attributes that appeal to us as wrist spinners and I love that. I reckon some of us might spend years trying to bowl Flippers, wrong uns, and the OBS and maybe one day when our knees or our rotator cuffs give up on us, people will remember us say (Same thing that Warne says he'd like to be remembered for) "He never gave up". It might be that in years and years time the naysayers will still be here, mocking us, but we'll be able to say - boy, didn't we have some fun trying to bowl this stuff and on some days that ball may have come out as a big leg break or might have skidded through as one of those bastardised "Sliders" and got us a wicket or two.
macca
Active Member
I suggest we take an approach like SETI ,the Search for Extra Terrestial Intelligence, where a bunch of eggheads with nothing better to do in their spare time try and tune into alien daytime television.
We could call it SLOB, the Search for Legspinners Orthodox Backspinner. We can divide the task amongst us all and monitor every ball bowled in the world that is televised and you never know, in a few centuries we might actually make contact with Philpotts space oddity.
Spin Lizard, can you be a lounge lizard as well and start off by reviewing all the youtube footage again? You never know we might have missed something.Thanks mate
Spin Lizard
Active Member
I'm on board with SLOB.
Spin Lizard
Active Member
Preliminary report: There is some talk that an individual identifying as "Robocop" may be in posession of the circus balls delivery.
<more to come>
<more to come>
macca
Active Member
Thanks I knew i could count on you.
Thanks also to the generosity of SLA, so confident is he in the non-existence of such an impossibility that he has offered the extraordinary amount of I million English pounds (equivalent to about $20AUD) to anyone who can bowl the anomaly known as the orthodox backspinner.
Spin Lizard
Active Member
Dave, I admire your passion for the spin, and don't wish to be a nay-sayer. Certainly nothing new was ever invented by thinking it was impossible. I just question the point of your search for the OBS.
I'm not 100% on how this legspinners clock works (I'm left arm orthodox myself) but how I think about the angles is 'looking down' on a ball spun with perfect seam. Perfect leg-break is 10:30, perfect wrong-un is 2:30. Thats a difference of 3 'hours' or 90°
You are talking about spinning a ball with a 'legspin action' at 6.....fourandahalf hours or 135° difference from a legbreak, with the wrist/fingers now working in the opposite direction to the movement of your arm.
Any batsman with anything approaching eyesight is going to see what you are doing, if you are able to contort yourself thus.
Now, I can understand the quest for spin in and of itself. I once popped my shoulder sitting on my bed trying to bowl doosras against the wall. I'm still trying to get my wrist around the doosra in the nets. But the point of it all isn't to be able to tell anyone that I can do it, or show them that I can do it.
The point is to deceive the bloke batting against me on a Saturday afternoon, and get his wicket.
Because batsmen are %#&!s and getting them out is our job as bowlers.
I'm not 100% on how this legspinners clock works (I'm left arm orthodox myself) but how I think about the angles is 'looking down' on a ball spun with perfect seam. Perfect leg-break is 10:30, perfect wrong-un is 2:30. Thats a difference of 3 'hours' or 90°
You are talking about spinning a ball with a 'legspin action' at 6.....fourandahalf hours or 135° difference from a legbreak, with the wrist/fingers now working in the opposite direction to the movement of your arm.
Any batsman with anything approaching eyesight is going to see what you are doing, if you are able to contort yourself thus.
Now, I can understand the quest for spin in and of itself. I once popped my shoulder sitting on my bed trying to bowl doosras against the wall. I'm still trying to get my wrist around the doosra in the nets. But the point of it all isn't to be able to tell anyone that I can do it, or show them that I can do it.
The point is to deceive the bloke batting against me on a Saturday afternoon, and get his wicket.
Because batsmen are %#&!s and getting them out is our job as bowlers.
macca
Active Member
SLOB has assigned you a special task due to your location in Wellington. That is of course the home of Dr Brian Wilkins. chemist and author of 'the bowlers art'. He claims to have an actual photo of a backspinner, in captivity ,as it were, on those axis spoke gismos he uses to demonstate the different spins.
Ask him what he means by this on page 156 in his chapter on legspin in 'the bowlers art. 'The only backspinning legspinner and inswinger in the group' Why is the photo (I) missing? Anyone ever noticed that? Could it be part of a wider antipodean plot? After all Wellington is and always has been a hotbed of spin bowling deviancy.
I love the part in "bowlers art" where he reckons he tracked down the actual old cricket book in a Wellington public library he believes Grimmett saw a photo of Walter Meades grip in and worked out his flipper. It was still on the shelves he reckons! Sounds like the good people of Wellington need some new books.
Darth Spin
Active Member
I had a good net today. I'm on a mission to prove to macca that an Englishman can spin with his wrist. Didn't bowl a single OBS.
Darth Spin
Active Member
It hurts my wrist when I do an OBS flick hand to hand. I want no further part in it, in fact the concept offends me.
macca
Active Member
A few could spin with the wrist they just had trouble landing them on the pitch. Admit it "english legspinner" is as nonsensical a contradiction as 'backspinning topspinner"
macca
Active Member
Surely the princely sum of 1 million English pounds (roughly $20 aussie bucks) on offer by SLA for an example of the backspinner is a temptation?
Spin Lizard
Active Member
S.L.O.B. REPORT
notes:
-unorthodox grip
-backflip is not backspin
-South African 'Test quality' spinners? wtf?
The search continues...
notes:
-unorthodox grip
-backflip is not backspin
-South African 'Test quality' spinners? wtf?
The search continues...
macca
Active Member
S.L.O.B. REPORT
notes:
-unorthodox grip
-backflip is not backspin
-South African 'Test quality' spinners? wtf?
The search continues...
I agree that's not it and SLA would not pay out his million quid on that but I like your idea of eliminating the bizarre actions starting at the top. We all suspect Philpotts ball will look pretty stupid if ever possible to replicate in the real world so this might be a quick way to find it.
Darth Spin
Active Member
I'm getting the hang of this, man. I'm telling yer.
Darth Spin
Active Member
Some things are worth more than pounds and pence.
Cleanprophet
Active Member
That's not the point. The point is that 99% of people simply could not impart enough backspin to even try it on a batter. Those who could would be able to deceive a lot of batters in same way that a wrong un can deceive a batter. But it is a very moot point either way.
A very good leg spinning delivery will do for you against every batter. It's only the very best who may have a technique that copes well. Then, you try something different. It's like watching Mitchell Johnson against AB de Villiers. The quicker ball does for 95% of batters, but Johnson saw de Villiers coping quite well and opted for the slower ball, which did the trick.
Really, a legspinner only needs to operate between side-spin and top-spin with varying amounts of flight and pace.
Spin Lizard
Active Member
So is the 'wrong wrongun' a flipper clicked thingy bowled from wrongun wrist position? I've always wondered about that.
macca
Active Member
Yeah Grimmetts double bluff ball. Looked like a wrongun but was a legbreak.