Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

[Leggy88]

On a personal note, I've been playing winter cricket and have fallen to the dark(er) side.

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A large contributor has been playing on wet syntho which is hopeless for spin. But I've also just been enjoying it and I feel like I personally have more potential with it. Still love bowling some spin in the nets though lol.

Looking good. You going to bowl pace in the summer or is this just a winter thing?

 

[doc8176]

For sure. Key is not to force it, but there are some factors you can change to pivot more and it won't cross the line into overpivoting. Like if he was to just try pivoting more as his action is now, that would be overpivoting, but if he got up on his front toe more and really bowled over his front leg, getting a lotttt of energy through it, he would pivot more naturally. the key is to keep the pivot natural.

I was always under the impression that leg spinners pivot around their front leg, off spinners pivot over their front leg and fast bowlers "pivot" through their front leg.

 

[zjitu]

For sure. Key is not to force it, but there are some factors you can change to pivot more and it won't cross the line into overpivoting. Like if he was to just try pivoting more as his action is now, that would be overpivoting, but if he got up on his front toe more and really bowled over his front leg, getting a lotttt of energy through it, he would pivot more naturally. the key is to keep the pivot natural.

So, I should be more on toes for the front foot. I always had it planted. I will try that in net. What about the sling of the right foot? Should I force it to be more straight?

 

[doc8176]

Looking good. You going to bowl pace in the summer or is this just a winter thing?

Probably through summer yeah, just got a few consistency issues in my release atm, but other than that my natural length is better suited for pace and my wrist mobility from bowling spin means I can swing it both ways. I hit 115kmh recently and I've got plenty to work on so yeah.

 

[doc8176]

So, I should be more on toes for the front foot. I always had it planted. I will try that in net. What about the sling of the right foot? Should I force it to be more straight?

You can either land on your toes or land flat-footed and then roll onto your toes, but you definitely don't want to be heel-striking

 

[zjitu]

Btw, where should the shinny side sit in your hand? I saw warne shining a side all the time. What’s the benefit of shinny side for the spin bowler? Drift?

 

[Leggy88]

I was always under the impression that leg spinners pivot around their front leg, off spinners pivot over their front leg and fast bowlers "pivot" through their front leg.

Oops. What I meant by "over" the front foot was putting a lot of force into it, really driving all your bodyweight into the front leg. Then the pivoting 'around' the front leg will come easily.

 

[Leggy88]

Btw, where should the shinny side sit in your hand? I saw warne shining a side all the time. What’s the benefit of shinny side for the spin bowler? Drift?

The shiny side will be the side with less air resistance and thus it will drift to the side with most air resistance, the rough side. So hold the rough side so it would swing into the batsman.

 

[Fleetwood]

Well done for posting. Some beautiful deliveries there and really nice action on the ball. I think the main thing I noticed is your delivery stride is very long. You see it as the heel hits the ground first. The long delivery stride length makes it harder to keep your momentum through the crease and also to get hip to shoulder separation which is one of the ways of getting pace on the ball. The whole body has to do a huge pivot around the front foot which is where the back leg kick comes from.

A coach once told me that your weight going forward should be such that the heel of the front foot need never touch the ground, and only the balls of the foot. That can be very hard to achieve, and I am not sure that it’s strictly necessary. But I have been trying for a few years now to run up with my weight and my head going forward and a shorter delivery stride. It feels to me like I can attack the crease more.

Thanks very much for this - I hadn't even thought of this as a possibility! I'm definitely not maintaining momentum through the crease, approaching the crease faster makes no difference to the delivery speed. I'll try to keep an eye on this

 

[Fleetwood]

It looks like you’re almost pausing when your bowling arm is pointing down during your action. It looks like it might be locking your shoulder up a bit because you’re relying on that shoulder to generate all that pace.

When you’re loading up, try and get that hand right at eye level and probably in-line with your back shoulder, and then almost slam your hand directly downwards instead of pushing it outwards in a circle.

Because of how centripetal force works, this sudden change in the length of your “lever” aka arm, forces it to accelerate much quicker than your shoulder will ever be able to by doing the full circle.

Like I said you slam it straight downwards and then allow your shoulder to finish that circle into your release point.

I’m not sure how flexible your shoulders are, if they aren’t I’d be careful because it does require your arm to be able to cleanly rotate around. If your shoulders are stiff or you can’t do that you could injure yourself.

I’d also recommend try this with a traditional seam up fast bowlers grip at first just to get a feel for the straight line you should be making and the downwards motion of your hand.

This was advice I was given that probably broke me through from a bad E grade bowler to being a part of our B and C grade squads.

This is really helpful ,and I think very relevant to my bowling. How long did it take you to get used to doing this?

 

[doc8176]

This is really helpful ,and I think very relevant to my bowling. How long did it take you to get used to doing this?

A bit, the hardest part is stopping yourself from naturally pushing your hand outwards after your load up, as it is the natural path your hand takes.

I actually learnt this from the singular personal coaching session I’ve ever had. I don’t remember much of it tbh but I think I recall holding a weight in my non bowling hand and it helped with the muscle memory and motion.

I guess the added weight forces your hand to go down instead of pushing outwards.

 

[doc8176]

This is really helpful ,and I think very relevant to my bowling. How long did it take you to get used to doing this?

I’d also recommend considering what I also said about the rotation of your bowling arm. I think I remember noticing that when I rewatched your video after sending that whole message you just quoted.

Although I don’t think you were as bad in that aspect as the original person I was messaging (sorry I forgot your username lol).

Looking back on your videos, even though your actions seem to have similar issues, I think your arm is mostly fine. Your action is maybe just a bit “desynchronised”.

It looks like your left foot lands way before your left arm goes down. They should pretty much go up and down at the same time as each other.

This pretty much applies for your back foot and bowling arm in load up (back leg goes up as your hand goes into load up), front foot “landing” (front arm and front foot go up and down in sync), and follow through (back leg and bowling arm “come through” at the same time).

I’ve been told by a lot of people that bowling is a very unnatural thing, because people are made to walk in an alternating pattern (left arm and right leg go up at the same time etc). Practice makes perfect lol.

This is the one thing I’ll credit myself for being mostly very good at for bowling, other than my front arm coming down a bit early at times.

 

[doc8176]

The shiny side will be the side with less air resistance and thus it will drift to the side with most air resistance, the rough side. So hold the rough side so it would swing into the batsman.

Agree with this, but I have found that if you have a natural tilt of the seam you're better off trying to land on the rough side of the ball regardless of if that's the inside of outside. Might get more turn and it keeps the ball better for the quicks.

 

[Bobble_Fell_Off]

A bit, the hardest part is stopping yourself from naturally pushing your hand outwards after your load up, as it is the natural path your hand takes.

I actually learnt this from the singular personal coaching session I’ve ever had. I don’t remember much of it tbh but I think I recall holding a weight in my non bowling hand and it helped with the muscle memory and motion.

I guess the added weight forces your hand to go down instead of pushing outwards.

So to clarify, if it's the bowling arm that needs to go straight down, how did holding a wheigh in the other hand help?

I've seen drills where a bowler holds a cone in their non-bowling hand to act as a visual aid to ensure the arm comes down in line with the target.

 

[doc8176]

So to clarify, if it's the bowling arm that needs to go straight down, how did holding a wheigh in the other hand help?

I've seen drills where a bowler holds a cone in their non-bowling hand to act as a visual aid to ensure the arm comes down in line with the target.

Whoops sorry it was my bowling hand

 

[SomeblokecalledDave.]

Looking good. You going to bowl pace in the summer or is this just a winter thing?

 

[SomeblokecalledDave.]

Well done for posting. Some beautiful deliveries there and really nice action on the ball. I think the main thing I noticed is your delivery stride is very long. You see it as the heel hits the ground first. The long delivery stride length makes it harder to keep your momentum through the crease and also to get hip to shoulder separation which is one of the ways of getting pace on the ball. The whole body has to do a huge pivot around the front foot which is where the back leg kick comes from.

A coach once told me that your weight going forward should be such that the heel of the front foot need never touch the ground, and only the balls of the foot. That can be very hard to achieve, and I am not sure that it’s strictly necessary. But I have been trying for a few years now to run up with my weight and my head going forward and a shorter delivery stride. It feels to me like I can attack the crease more.

Looks fine if it works and it seems to be working here in practice. Did notice that every delivery was a no-ball?... foot way over the line, might not seem an issue in the nets, but if you keep doing it, it may become an issue in a match as it might just end up being how you bowl I'd address that as soon as possible. I've moved away from the notion of perfect bowling actions and ultra-tweaking every aspect of what you do, so the arm behind the back - not bothered by that. I do agree with the follow through knee not going out and around and would suggest the knee going forwards and through. (Look at MacGills video on youtube)

 

[Bobble_Fell_Off]

Hello again spinners I imagine it's been a tough summer so far for my fellow uk-based leggies, not too many dry pitches to be found in all this rain.

Latest from me - definitely making progress in the nets, I've recently lengthened/sped up my run which I think has improved my accuracy. Looking back at footage from today (link here, filmed from a dynamic new angle), the back leg is still swinging out a bit especially on the big wides. I'm also still bowling a fair few accidental top spinners/googlies, as D doc8176 pointed out, my bowling arm elbow is often pointing in the wrong direction when I'm not consciously keeping it facing the ground.

I've also started doing this pre-gather manuvre where I push both hands up to the sky, not sure why but it feels comfortable - let me know if this is completely messing up my action!

 

[SomeblokecalledDave.]

Hello again spinners I imagine it's been a tough summer so far for my fellow uk-based leggies, not too many dry pitches to be found in all this rain.

Latest from me - definitely making progress in the nets, I've recently lengthened/sped up my run which I think has improved my accuracy. Looking back at footage from today (link here, filmed from a dynamic new angle), the back leg is still swinging out a bit especially on the big wides. I'm also still bowling a fair few accidental top spinners/googlies, as D doc8176 pointed out, my bowling arm elbow is often pointing in the wrong direction when I'm not consciously keeping it facing the ground.

I've also started doing this pre-gather manuvre where I push both hands up to the sky, not sure why but it feels comfortable - let me know if this is completely messing up my action!

My season's been OK so far. I'm in a really strong team and we've won every game with the exception of one as far as I can recall. Not many wickets in comparison to last year, but a high proportion of good wickets - set batsmen that the seamers haven't been able to deal with. I've taken wickets with slip catches and stumpings and been bowling a lot more Leg-Breaks and Top-spinner than last year which has been satisfying. Anyway, your vid... What did you bowl previously and what kind of a run up did you have, because, currently this one looks 'Strained' like you're not wholly comfortable with it? I think you need to be 100% happy with your approach and run-up before you can start focusing on anything that follows. What do you reckon - what's your reflection?

 

[Bobble_Fell_Off]

My season's been OK so far. I'm in a really strong team and we've won every game with the exception of one as far as I can recall. Not many wickets in comparison to last year, but a high proportion of good wickets - set batsmen that the seamers haven't been able to deal with. I've taken wickets with slip catches and stumpings and been bowling a lot more Leg-Breaks and Top-spinner than last year which has been satisfying. Anyway, your vid... What did you bowl previously and what kind of a run up did you have, because, currently this one looks 'Strained' like you're not wholly comfortable with it? I think you need to be 100% happy with your approach and run-up before you can start focusing on anything that follows. What do you reckon - what's your reflection?

Glad to hear you've been going well Dave, and very pleased to hear you've been keeping the seamers from taking all the glory.

On the run up, before I was just sort of strolling in off a few paces. I started doing more of a run the other week and found the extra momentum was helping me keep moving the the right direction and avoiding the dreaded falling over to my left. Well spotted that I'm not fully comfortable with it, but in all honesty I've never had a run up that really felt smooth or comfortable. I was hoping that after some more practice I might be able to feel my way through some adjustments and get the timing down, but any advice is very helpful. Smooth and Rythmic are not easy things to consciously develop.