i know i write some long posts, but this one has ended up a little ridiculous. ive got to post it in 2 installments because ive reached the 1 post character limit 
Chippyben, a few things that jumped out at me from looking at the new videos...
you lean to the left too much. its not necessarily a bend to the left though, your entire stance leans over. id say thats a balance issue. if you watch where you land your front foot, it steps across a fair amount. youre trying to get very side on, but having seen your original videos you are naturally a more front-on bowler. i think that trying to get so side on, in combination with the front foot placement and a long front stride, means that you lose balance and fall away to the left. maybe try taking less of a front stride and stepping across less and see if that helps. you look a fairly well built bloke, but theres also every possibility your core isnt strong enough and its failing to support the rest of your body. im not a small guy, although quite scrawny, and my core is pretty awful. so dont rule it out.
your bowling arm is very high, youre always going to struggle for side spin with such a high action, but you should find overspin easy, and a top spinner and googly variation should come more naturally. but it might restrict you in future. on the other hand though, if you can do away with the leaning to the left then your arm will naturally become a bit rounder. and also it may only be so high because of balance in the first place.
you over rotate at the end of the action, and you rotate too late at the start of the action. in the videos shot from behind the first delivery has a decent rotation, your timing isnt bad, you seem to get the weight forward early, and your hip and shoulder alignment look decent. the lower body still lags behind a little i think. but you have a massive over rotation at the end of the action, hence your feet hitting into each other. youre over compensating. on the 2nd delivery your lower body lags miles behind, the upper body runs away on its own and then the legs catch up afterwards. this will set you up for injuries for sure, it was the root cause of all my injury niggles. the fix was/is a lot more complicated though. you need to focus on driving your hips through the action, which is harder than it sounds, and will result in your weight being a lot more forward in the action at the point of release. you should be up onto your front toes before the ball leaves the hand, and then you should rotate through on the toes. you also need to focus on staying more upright (as mentioned above). the 2 will complement each other. worry less about the "leg drive" because its basically irrelevant. you cant just push off from the back foot and magically fix everything, if you actually focus on the back foot then you will more likely get it all wrong because it has to be instinctive. imagine Brett Lee pounding in to bowl a 95mph delivery. he has a massive leg drive, but do you think he has time to think about it at the speed he is travelling? it happens because his core technique is solid, fix the basics before trying to tag that on to the back of your action. i know doctortran preaches endlessly about the leg drive, and its probably an important feature of a bowling action, but its not something you can add on. its something that comes about naturally through perfecting the technique elsewhere. driving the leg at present isnt going to help any of the other problems, if anything it will highlight them more. you dont need to add more power, you need better technique, which will result in more power anyway. i made the mistake of trying to artificially bowl faster last year and ended up going backwards by about 3 months in my development. going back to basics and slowing things down resulted in the same bowling speed, spin and power with much less effort, and now im building the effort back in and the results are excellent.
i dont think your front leg braces enough. you take a BIG front stride, to the point that you land on your toes as you have observed. your hips dont drive through, your upper body does. the foot comes back down to flat. you release the ball with your weight back on your heel, your leg very bent and still flexing slightly, and your upper body bending at the hips to delivery the ball. THEN, you drive your back leg through which you are consciously trying to add on to the action, and the natural momentum brings the hips through too late, and then your weight goes up onto the toes as you over-rotate to finish. that sequence needs to be more like front stride, hips and upper body driving through in unison. up onto toes with a more upright trunk as you release the ball. the hips and upper body continue to drive through, the hips and shoulders are aligned so that the lower body rotates in unison with the upper body over the toes, and then rotate to finish.
the above is all pretty harsh and critical, more so than i intended it to sound lol. your action is making improvements in certain areas, but ultimately it isnt progressing forwards, its going sideways (almost literally lol). i think you are maybe focussing too much on creating the perfect action, rather than just developing what youve already got. youre trying to add more pace and power before sorting the basics. basically trying to run before you can walk. and as someone else that already tried that, i cant stress enough how frustrated this is going to leave you in about 3-6 months time when your consistency drops away (if it is ever there to begin with) and you cant find any kind of rhythm from session to session, especially if you get injured in the meantime!
the first thing i would recommend is to go and see a sports therapist. it was literally the most useful £35 ive ever spent on anything cricket related. 90% of the problems in my action can be partly attributed to physical deficiencies which i am now working on in the gym and in my bowling practice. of course there is no substitute for good technique, which i am working on equally as hard, but technique is always going to be limited by your physical capacity, and in my case i have a worryingly weak core and thus my balance and rotation in my action are almost impossible to perfect without strengthening the muscles that control them. there were also a couple of areas which left "untreated" (my treatment is a gym resistance program) could have resulted in career ending injuries somewhere down the line. i have some fairly major muscle imbalances as a direct result of my bowling action. and unless i fix those imbalances its going to be rather difficult to have a balanced action. and thus you end up in a vicious cycle.
then the next thing i would say is to work on one thing at a time, and to keep the action as uncomplicated as possible. you have to realise here that theres every possibility your bowling will go down the toilet for a few months, and it may ruin your season. its for the greater good though. i started out bowling off of 1 step, without actually releasing the ball 90% of the time. i would just go through the action in slow motion, observing everything. id do this 3 or 4 times without releasing the ball, then id release the ball at about 70% speed, not caring where it landed, just trying to ensure that everything was aligned and balanced and doing what it should be (as an indicator of how useful this was, even though i was putting no focus into where the ball went or what it did, more often than not it would land on middle stump on a good length, drift in big and turn away bigger!!). i did that for 2 or 3 sessions without really bowling a proper delivery, apart from a few overs at the end to see if it had helped. i progressed very quickly though because i recognised the problems i had. then i would start my sessions this way, and just build up to a 3 step approach. as soon as i bowled a couple of balls wrong id go back to basics again, just building up all the time, trying to force the muscles to remember their role. eventually after maybe 3-4 weeks of a few 2-3 hour sessions per week i felt i was back to bowling at the same intensity as before, but with a much more solid basic technique. i played a couple of matches in between as it was near the end of the season and just kept things simple, and bowled the best i ever had. then it got to indoor season last month and i played really well in the first pair of matches, despite being a little rusty. my action comes back fairly naturally now. if i was able to make time to practice 2-3 times a week (weather is no longer permitting in the UK and indoor practice costs big money) like i do during the summer then id probably be doing even better. the prospects for next season are looking fantastic.
continued in the next post....
Chippyben, a few things that jumped out at me from looking at the new videos...
you lean to the left too much. its not necessarily a bend to the left though, your entire stance leans over. id say thats a balance issue. if you watch where you land your front foot, it steps across a fair amount. youre trying to get very side on, but having seen your original videos you are naturally a more front-on bowler. i think that trying to get so side on, in combination with the front foot placement and a long front stride, means that you lose balance and fall away to the left. maybe try taking less of a front stride and stepping across less and see if that helps. you look a fairly well built bloke, but theres also every possibility your core isnt strong enough and its failing to support the rest of your body. im not a small guy, although quite scrawny, and my core is pretty awful. so dont rule it out.
your bowling arm is very high, youre always going to struggle for side spin with such a high action, but you should find overspin easy, and a top spinner and googly variation should come more naturally. but it might restrict you in future. on the other hand though, if you can do away with the leaning to the left then your arm will naturally become a bit rounder. and also it may only be so high because of balance in the first place.
you over rotate at the end of the action, and you rotate too late at the start of the action. in the videos shot from behind the first delivery has a decent rotation, your timing isnt bad, you seem to get the weight forward early, and your hip and shoulder alignment look decent. the lower body still lags behind a little i think. but you have a massive over rotation at the end of the action, hence your feet hitting into each other. youre over compensating. on the 2nd delivery your lower body lags miles behind, the upper body runs away on its own and then the legs catch up afterwards. this will set you up for injuries for sure, it was the root cause of all my injury niggles. the fix was/is a lot more complicated though. you need to focus on driving your hips through the action, which is harder than it sounds, and will result in your weight being a lot more forward in the action at the point of release. you should be up onto your front toes before the ball leaves the hand, and then you should rotate through on the toes. you also need to focus on staying more upright (as mentioned above). the 2 will complement each other. worry less about the "leg drive" because its basically irrelevant. you cant just push off from the back foot and magically fix everything, if you actually focus on the back foot then you will more likely get it all wrong because it has to be instinctive. imagine Brett Lee pounding in to bowl a 95mph delivery. he has a massive leg drive, but do you think he has time to think about it at the speed he is travelling? it happens because his core technique is solid, fix the basics before trying to tag that on to the back of your action. i know doctortran preaches endlessly about the leg drive, and its probably an important feature of a bowling action, but its not something you can add on. its something that comes about naturally through perfecting the technique elsewhere. driving the leg at present isnt going to help any of the other problems, if anything it will highlight them more. you dont need to add more power, you need better technique, which will result in more power anyway. i made the mistake of trying to artificially bowl faster last year and ended up going backwards by about 3 months in my development. going back to basics and slowing things down resulted in the same bowling speed, spin and power with much less effort, and now im building the effort back in and the results are excellent.
i dont think your front leg braces enough. you take a BIG front stride, to the point that you land on your toes as you have observed. your hips dont drive through, your upper body does. the foot comes back down to flat. you release the ball with your weight back on your heel, your leg very bent and still flexing slightly, and your upper body bending at the hips to delivery the ball. THEN, you drive your back leg through which you are consciously trying to add on to the action, and the natural momentum brings the hips through too late, and then your weight goes up onto the toes as you over-rotate to finish. that sequence needs to be more like front stride, hips and upper body driving through in unison. up onto toes with a more upright trunk as you release the ball. the hips and upper body continue to drive through, the hips and shoulders are aligned so that the lower body rotates in unison with the upper body over the toes, and then rotate to finish.
the above is all pretty harsh and critical, more so than i intended it to sound lol. your action is making improvements in certain areas, but ultimately it isnt progressing forwards, its going sideways (almost literally lol). i think you are maybe focussing too much on creating the perfect action, rather than just developing what youve already got. youre trying to add more pace and power before sorting the basics. basically trying to run before you can walk. and as someone else that already tried that, i cant stress enough how frustrated this is going to leave you in about 3-6 months time when your consistency drops away (if it is ever there to begin with) and you cant find any kind of rhythm from session to session, especially if you get injured in the meantime!
the first thing i would recommend is to go and see a sports therapist. it was literally the most useful £35 ive ever spent on anything cricket related. 90% of the problems in my action can be partly attributed to physical deficiencies which i am now working on in the gym and in my bowling practice. of course there is no substitute for good technique, which i am working on equally as hard, but technique is always going to be limited by your physical capacity, and in my case i have a worryingly weak core and thus my balance and rotation in my action are almost impossible to perfect without strengthening the muscles that control them. there were also a couple of areas which left "untreated" (my treatment is a gym resistance program) could have resulted in career ending injuries somewhere down the line. i have some fairly major muscle imbalances as a direct result of my bowling action. and unless i fix those imbalances its going to be rather difficult to have a balanced action. and thus you end up in a vicious cycle.
then the next thing i would say is to work on one thing at a time, and to keep the action as uncomplicated as possible. you have to realise here that theres every possibility your bowling will go down the toilet for a few months, and it may ruin your season. its for the greater good though. i started out bowling off of 1 step, without actually releasing the ball 90% of the time. i would just go through the action in slow motion, observing everything. id do this 3 or 4 times without releasing the ball, then id release the ball at about 70% speed, not caring where it landed, just trying to ensure that everything was aligned and balanced and doing what it should be (as an indicator of how useful this was, even though i was putting no focus into where the ball went or what it did, more often than not it would land on middle stump on a good length, drift in big and turn away bigger!!). i did that for 2 or 3 sessions without really bowling a proper delivery, apart from a few overs at the end to see if it had helped. i progressed very quickly though because i recognised the problems i had. then i would start my sessions this way, and just build up to a 3 step approach. as soon as i bowled a couple of balls wrong id go back to basics again, just building up all the time, trying to force the muscles to remember their role. eventually after maybe 3-4 weeks of a few 2-3 hour sessions per week i felt i was back to bowling at the same intensity as before, but with a much more solid basic technique. i played a couple of matches in between as it was near the end of the season and just kept things simple, and bowled the best i ever had. then it got to indoor season last month and i played really well in the first pair of matches, despite being a little rusty. my action comes back fairly naturally now. if i was able to make time to practice 2-3 times a week (weather is no longer permitting in the UK and indoor practice costs big money) like i do during the summer then id probably be doing even better. the prospects for next season are looking fantastic.
continued in the next post....
