Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

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shahidpak said:
Whats your problem ? Australia plays cricket at international level and you think you gonna get us at every sports ! Come here and we will make you run away like a donkey to australia! Idiot
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That's better than your first effort at sledging, but keep practising. I dont think it translates all that well, and the french are notorious for their complete lack of wit and humour so taking that into account, not a bad effort.
 
macca said:
I'd get a game if we ever played a half-arsed country like france. And to make it fair we could go a round of Frances national sport, running backwards with a white flag, surrender I think it's called.
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It was fielding in a t20 match at the end of last season. Big Brutus on their team thick edged one into the stratosphere and yours truly was under it (I dropped it). I went to accident & emergency that night and the doc said it wasn't broken, but I'm not sure about that. It hasn't set well at all and the wrist was injured too. I had a bat in the nets the other week and afterwards the finger was all red and bruised and the pain traveled right up my left arm and spread to the abdomen/chest. Was sore for a few days.
 
I can't tell who is being serious anymore, myself included.

shahidpak, that could be the name for the delivery you invent, the stinky-cheese-eater break? the ball that no batsman can get near...
 
macca said:
That's better than your first effort at sledging, but keep practising. I dont think it translates all that well, and the french are notorious for their complete lack of wit and humour so taking that into account, not a bad effort.
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I don't take your shit as humour
 
Another return to the bowling crease despite doctor's advice to rest for a long time due to a heel injury. The weather in Wellington has not been good since the end of the Indian test, so much so that the FC game here last week was washed out, this meant a lot of the pitches going around were seam friendly. Thankfully for me seam friendly translated into 'sticky' as the day progressed. Hobbling in I was able to get some extravagant turn which meant the batsmen didn't dare leave their crease, by the end of the day they resorted to kicking anything that wasn't pitched on the stumps due to the fear. Our seamers had given their best but they didn't make the most of the conditions and leaked runs while we were a bowler short with our fast bowling all-rounder in A&E after a ball sneaked through his grill while we were batting. With the all-rounder out and no 12th man within driving distance we had to have a our 60yo scorer going from fine leg to backward square all day!

Given the pitch conditions and defensive batting (against me) it was perfect to unleash the OBS and the in-swinging leg break (bowled just for macca, this is 1/2 way between the OBS and a leg break). The first wicket was their opener who was well set after passing 50, beat him a few times with big leg breaks, made him nervous with a googly and an in inswinger before getting him LBW to a slider when he attempted a very panicky sweep. The second was very sweet. Bowled a few in-swinging leg breaks outside leg which made the batsmen think I couldn't bowl him around his legs (the in-swinging legbreak spins less than a legbreak) and therefore he could sweep when he was comfortable, I followed these inswingers with a traditional in-drifting legbreak which hit the footmarks, defeated the attempted sweep and had the ball spin back onto middle and off around his legs! I'm pretty sure there was a noise complaint issued after my celebration. Finished the day with 11-6-6-2, although I didn't get many wickets this is the best I've bowled all season. I'm starting to think I'm in the Ryan Harris group of bowlers (better when injured).

The protege finally got his call up but didn't get to bowl due to the aforementioned conditions, the 1sts game became a seamers shoot out which our team lost. Unfortunately he's not in the 1sts next week due to what can only be described as paranoia by the captain who is pinning his hopes on a long batting line up and spin bowling all-rounders to help them get back into a game they are now a long way behind in. The good news for him is that he's got a good spinning pitch to bowl on next week against a team I've already scared the bejesus out of for him.
 
Spin Lizard said:
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.
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It's described clearly by Philpott in his book wrist spin bowling and by all account several people have been able to bowl it. I can't. I love the idea of it being possible and I want to believe that it is possible and people have bowled it at first class level, but it does seem physically impossible to me, but as I said I can't even bowl a big leg break! That aside, I have a mate who unfortunately has just moved to New York to work so wont be playing cricket this summer, but he bowled a back-spinner as his stock ball and as far as I could discern with the naked eye and in conversation with him, the technique he used was the wrist-spinners grip, with is wrist turned around so far that his action was akin to a Karate chop action at the point of release. At which point he claimed he released the ball with back-spin using the conventional release method, whether he rolled it out of the fingers or flicked it - I don't know? 100% confirmation would only ever be possible with the use of hi-def/high speed cameras. But as I said to the naked eye and as far as he was concerned it was an OBS as described by Philpott. He bowled it as his stock ball.

At club level, most batsman don't even know what any of these deliveries are, they know leg breaks and off-breaks, they might be able to tell you that the ball spins with back-spin sometimes. But I've played with blokes that watch the ball from the hand and who've played cricket all their lives, but when presented with my bowling have said they haven't got a clue what I'm doing as I've got some many variations. I guess if you've got a main ball and a standard couple of variations, it might be the case that opening bats and middle order bats might be able to read the ball to some extent if they've got years of experience, but in my experience at club level most of them can't discern a leg break from a wrong un. But it may be the calibre of cricket I play. I live in the S/E of England which in comparison with the midlands and northern England, is pretty barren with regards cricket.

My OBS mate two seasons ago, using his OBS 90% of the time was the bowler in our district that took the most wickets.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
At club level, most batsman don't even know what any of these deliveries are, they know leg breaks and off-breaks, they might be able to tell you that the ball spins with back-spin sometimes.
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After I bowled my first OBS in the game on Saturday I overheard the umpire and non-striker talking:

NS - "What was that?"
Umpire - "Not too sure but it looked like it came in a little bit"
NS - "Must be his googly then"

I managed to suppress my smile long enough to get through the over.
 
Darth Spin said:
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.
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Give it a go, the worst thing that can happen is your come up with a massive leg break or a square turning leg break that's got a bit of back spin to it, one of my flippers does that.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Give it a go, the worst thing that can happen is your come up with a massive leg break or a square turning leg break that's got a bit of back spin to it, one of my flippers does that.
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I tried it once and a top spinner came out. Riddle me that. Don't think I'm cut out for it.

I agree that English club players can't pick wrist spin at all. I bowled only a handful of wrong uns last summer, ten at most, none were picked and two got wickets. At nets there are only a couple of batsmen who pick me from the hand and that's because I've bowled at them tonnes of times one on one. The rest are guessing.
 
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leftie600 said:
Unfortunately he's not in the 1sts next week due to what can only be described as paranoia by the captain who is pinning his hopes on a long batting line up and spin bowling all-rounders to help them get back into a game they are now a long way behind in.
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That's too bad. I went off that captain a bit when you posted they were not giving the protege a go until he got a bit more spin. That sounded like he was looking for excuses not to play him.
 
Darth Spin said:
I tried it once and a top spinner came out. Riddle me that.
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I reckon you might have invented a new delivery! You might have gone another 180 degrees anti-clockwise around from backspinner and somehow had your thumb facing the batsman:D. I will call it an upside down top spinner but to you must go the honour of actually naming your creation.

Wonder why Philpott didn't think of that? :)
 
macca said:
I reckon you might have invented a new delivery! You might have gone another 180 degrees anti-clockwise around from backspinner and somehow had your thumb facing the batsman:D. I will call it an upside down top spinner but to you must go the honour of actually naming your creation.

Wonder why Philpott didn't think of that? :)
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I'll go with "Unorthodox Front Overspinner", or UFO for short.
 
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