Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

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Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

in a friendly, you can usually get away with the leg side balls though !
Looking forward to tonight, 15x8ball over match with work. First time playing with them so I either should get a bowl, or I possibly wont. I dunno, depends if they are gonna stick with their regulars or just give me a chance!
perfect day here. Slight breeze blowing along the wicket, which will hopefully be in good condition as its a University of Cambridge wicket.
i'm drooling at this pitch!
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

GoldenArm;401668 said:
at long last I have uploaded the Richie Benaud coaching video:

The Top-Spinner: MCC Masterclass: Leg Spin with Richie Benaud
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I've watched it a couple of times now and although Benaud does not show the flipper or backspun slider in much detail (1994 he wasn't telling mcc all) his recipe for the wrongun is a good one.

If you can force your hand to face the ground at the end like benaud demos you will get your wrongun. I got my young bloke bowling his wrongun again by going over this clip with him.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

macca;402262 said:
I've watched it a couple of times now and although Benaud does not show the flipper or backspun slider in much detail (1994 he wasn't telling mcc all) his recipe for the wrongun is a good one.

If you can force your hand to face the ground at the end like benaud demos you will get your wrongun. I got my young bloke bowling his wrongun again by going over this clip with him.
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How did he get on with it - was he pretty accurate?
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

someblokecalleddave;402263 said:
How did he get on with it - was he pretty accurate?
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Not too bad with accuracy of length. Needs to get the right line though. Mainly working on being able to bowl the wrongun then the legbreak then the wrongun again etc. Dont want to get the dreaded wrongun syndrome
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

macca;402266 said:
Not too bad with accuracy of length. Needs to get the right line though. Mainly working on being able to bowl the wrongun then the legbreak then the wrongun again etc. Dont want to get the dreaded wrongun syndrome
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As a leggie who has recently got over(touching wood) this plague I can attest that it is no fun at all. I might've tried bowling a googly all of 10-12 times in the last one month of practice and I'm not really bothered that googly has lost the amount of turn it had. As long as I've got my leg break going and turning consistently big, I don't care. Now my googly just sort of slides in like an incutter of a seam bowler instead of really turning in.
But by clever use of angles at the crease, you can make it appear as if even a topspinner as a googly with turn and bounce.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

SteveyD;402261 said:
in a friendly, you can usually get away with the leg side balls though!
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i generally do get away with them on Sundays. i only went for 3 wides in 7 overs, despite 4 overs being almost entirely leg side! the problem isnt so much with extras, but that if im bowling leg side im not likely to get any wickets. i dont even pay any attention to the runs column, all i really care about is wickets for this season. its basically my first season of cricket, and my primary focus is on taking wickets since that is the primary role of a leg spinner. consistency and economy should come with time.

macca;402262 said:
I've watched it a couple of times now and although Benaud does not show the flipper or backspun slider in much detail (1994 he wasn't telling mcc all) his recipe for the wrongun is a good one.

If you can force your hand to face the ground at the end like benaud demos you will get your wrongun. I got my young bloke bowling his wrongun again by going over this clip with him.
Click to expand...

i hadnt made time to watch this video yet, i figured it would probably be mostly things ive already heard elsewhere. but this wrongun recipe sounds like it may prove helpful to me. im starting to find that the lack of a wrongun is a hinderance in certain situations. i can formulate good plans to most batsmen now, but its limiting when you cant really turn one the other way. there are lots of situations where it would be very useful. so i might try and dedicate some time to it. i think my leg break is imprinted into my muscle memory enough now that i can attempt the wrongun in small doses.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

blahh
Did one over in the 15x8ball over match today
Got hit for about 11, one dropped catch.
Was poor bowling, I had no rythm and just knew it. I was falling perilously into the situation of one action for follow through and bowl, where i just stop essentially and bowl on the wrong foot.
Following that I could not relax and made a couple of fielding errors
gash
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

macca;402266 said:
Not too bad with accuracy of length. Needs to get the right line though. Mainly working on being able to bowl the wrongun then the legbreak then the wrongun again etc. Dont want to get the dreaded wrongun syndrome
Click to expand...

Yeah I go through phases where I try and bowl like that - alternate Leg-Breaks and Wrong Uns. For some reason and I can't recall why it never seems to work out that well, I think the accuracy thing becomes an issue.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

Jim2109;402276 said:
i generally do get away with them on Sundays. i only went for 3 wides in 7 overs, despite 4 overs being almost entirely leg side! the problem isnt so much with extras, but that if im bowling leg side im not likely to get any wickets. i dont even pay any attention to the runs column, all i really care about is wickets for this season. its basically my first season of cricket, and my primary focus is on taking wickets since that is the primary role of a leg spinner. consistency and economy should come with time.



i hadnt made time to watch this video yet, i figured it would probably be mostly things ive already heard elsewhere. but this wrongun recipe sounds like it may prove helpful to me. im starting to find that the lack of a wrongun is a hinderance in certain situations. i can formulate good plans to most batsmen now, but its limiting when you cant really turn one the other way. there are lots of situations where it would be very useful. so i might try and dedicate some time to it. i think my leg break is imprinted into my muscle memory enough now that i can attempt the wrongun in small doses.
Click to expand...

I found it worked because benaud emphasized back of hand ending up facing the ground at the end rather than the batsman as you are about to release, earlier on in your delivery.

So you can bowl it by doing a normal legbreak and forcing that finish that seems to make the rest happen, like elbow pointing skyward and left shoulder dropping a bit, depending on your style.

Your bowling legline at the righties so the wrongun would perhaps not be quite as effective but it would come in very handy against lefties.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

Just watching your bloke Steve Smith on the tele here for the first time, 15 minutes left of the highlights, i'll be back............
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

someblokecalleddave;402416 said:
Just watching your bloke Steve Smith on the tele here for the first time, 15 minutes left of the highlights, i'll be back............
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Just seen this England v Australia: Australia face fight to save series | Cricket News | England v Australia 2010 | Cricinfo.com it seems Hauritz has gone home leaving Smith with the chance of a lifetime potentially? Will Punter trust him to be the solitary spinner or is there someone in the team that they'll bring in to replace Hauritz? The English commentators weren't very complimetary about Smith, but I reckon he did alright, getting Pieterson was probably very satisfying?
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

Macca I've just ordered Grimmett on cricket, got it for a decent price, but I can't get hold of the other book now for love nor money (TTB), it looks like this forum has created a demand for it and the book-sellers are searching for it on-line and possibly coming across these pages and as a consequence the price just seems to be going up and up, so much so you'll see that I'm avoiding using the title!
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

i'm looking for that same thing Dave, mighty hard to come by for less than 50 of the finest english pounds at the moment. i do know that the British Library has it if you want to make the trip and not have to pay for it! i bought taking wickets for 15 quid some time ago and the only copies i could see on ebay and amazon are now up in the £75-100 bracket!
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

i had a practice yesterday for a couple of hours. it started out with the usual complete lack of consistency, pretty much how i bowled in my last match (T20 last week), when i had figures of 3-0-30-1, although about half of those runs were fielding errors. the wicket was yet another clean bowled. i think the count for this season now is 5 or 6 clean bowled wickets, all of which have been the exact same delivery - pitching just outside leg stump with a little drift, turning back through the gate and taking off or middle stump. the leg stump line works perfectly if you can land it consistently. my issue is that i cant, only about 1 in 20 deliveries lands where i want it to at present. 10 land somewhere decent (of which maybe 2 or 3 will turn as intended, the rest either turn small or not at all), the other 9 are rank long hops, full tosses, or super wide.

so i was at the nets, wondering what on earth is wrong with my action, because for the first time since i started playing last year i actually have no idea what im doing wrong. as far as im concerned im attempting to do everything right, its just not coming together. so i plugged away for an hour with maybe 1 in 20 deliveries doing what i wanted it to do. i was mostly pitching the ball way too full, with the occasional horrendous drag down when i tried too hard. however that hour of rubbish was rewarded by about 10 mins of the best bowling ive ever produced!

3 things that i found. firstly, i was off of a very slow run up, taking it back to basics, probably the slowest ive walked in since the beginning of the year. lately ive been trying to run in more because it was working for me for a while, but lately its not. yet despite this, i somehow managed to hook up my overall action such that i genuinely exploded at the crease, and had to run about 5 steps beyond my action. not just a tagged on run, but i genuinely had that much momentum that it took 5 full running paces to stop!! i thought i had mastered exploding at the crease last year, but its only when you experience what i did yesterday that you realise what it truly must mean when someone like Warne says it.

the second aspect i discovered was the best weight transfer ive managed yet, from back to front. ending up with me bent over at the end of the delivery, but with my head still very upright and looking at the wicket, a complete upper AND lower body follow through, with a very high trailing leg. Liz Ward has told me several times from my videos that my upper and lower body actions are disjointed, with my legs trailing behind my upper body rotating. this along with my bad front foot placement is what has caused my "injuries", and she also wanted me to work on my "wind-up and coil".

i cant say that ive ever really grasped what is meant by wind up and coil. you often hear coaches and players talk about it with regards leg spin as well, sometimes indirectly. but whatever it is, im pretty sure i achieved it yesterday! my bowling became a lot more round arm, without any conscious effort on my part. for some reason thats just what my arm wanted to do. and i could feel a lot more energy coming from my shoulder, and my arm snapped a lot harder at the release point. its dangerous to start imagining what your action looks like in the 3rd person, because video has shown me that my perception is usually a long way off the reality. but if you watch the Shane Warne ball of the millenium video where he clean bowls Strauss with monster turn, im pretty sure my action was somewhere close to that. with the arm slightly lower, a really hard flick of the ball, a solid follow through, and massive turn. it is without a doubt the hardest ive ever spun a cricket ball, and the whole action just felt amazing. it was so fluid from start to finish, like one smooth action rather than the usual 3 or 4 clunky stages.

ive literally never turned a ball as big as a few of the deliveries i managed yesterday. i also achieved proper amounts of drift for the first time in months. ive drifted the ball small in matches, but not the same as i have previously achieved in nets. but yesterday i got a few to really move. with very late under-cutting drift, and then big low-bouncing turn. which is pretty much the classic big leg break. when the ball is doing that, i know i am bowling close to 100% of my ability.

however, after that 10-15 minute purple patch, i managed to lose it again. and the next hour was some of the worse bowling ive ever produced (with 9 out of 10 balls landing at least 3 feet wide on the leg side). and the incredibly frustrating part is that i have no idea what it was about those 15 mins that made my bowling so good. i cant pinpoint what i was doing differently. so i have no way of reproducing it on purpose, i just have to hope that it comes back to me in a match situation. which would be tonight!

i had a go at the wrong'un over 16 yards with no run up, using the Benaud method that was brought up on here the other day. its impossible to know if i genuinely managed it without video, but 2 out of 8 attempts definitely turned back in. only very slightly, slight enough that it could just have been the ball hitting the seam at an angle. but i reckon it may have been the first step towards me attaining a googly. i also managed a couple of awesome flippers in a row. they came out pretty much as seam deliveries, very flat and very fast, with in-swing and then turn in towards the stumps from just outside off. both of them hit off stump halfway up having pitched on a good length. one of them was the best flipper ive ever bowled, so im fairly confident about trying it again in a match. on the downside, i couldnt get the zooter working at all.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

Mind that Wrong Un Jim, you don't want to be getting too carried away with it? I wonder though if you had years of bowling in front of you whether it might be worth while forefeiting your leg break to focus on the wrong and get that mastered knowing full well that you might then take another year getting your Leg Break back?
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

someblokecalleddave;402564 said:
Macca I've just ordered Grimmett on cricket, got it for a decent price, but I can't get hold of the other book now for love nor money (TTB), it looks like this forum has created a demand for it and the book-sellers are searching for it on-line and possibly coming across these pages and as a consequence the price just seems to be going up and up, so much so you'll see that I'm avoiding using the title!
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You can get a photocopy of it here pretty cheap about $14.00AUD plus post https://www.nla.gov.au/apps/copiesdirect?source=cat&sourcevalue=926856

I cant find my copy right now, i know i was gonna send you a scanned one but i never got around to it. I will have a look again today.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

someblokecalleddave;402681 said:
Mind that Wrong Un Jim, you don't want to be getting too carried away with it? I wonder though if you had years of bowling in front of you whether it might be worth while forefeiting your leg break to focus on the wrong and get that mastered knowing full well that you might then take another year getting your Leg Break back?
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i only practiced it for 8 balls in 2 hours! i have no intentions of losing my leg break over it. the way i look at it is that i potentially have many years of bowling ahead of me, so id rather take 5 years mastering the wrong'un slowly than forfeit the leg break for even a week. without the leg break the wrong'un is essentially useless to me anyway. once i figure out how to get my arm into the right position then it will be the same as the flipper or the zooter for me. i can just throw one in every now and again and improve on it.

oddly enough, i bowled one yesterday in a match situation that turned back in about 6" without entirely trying to. we batted poorly and only scored 100 runs, and the other team got off to a good start. i came on in the 6th over because we desperately needed a wicket, and whilst im very expensive, i guess the captain thought i was most likely to get a breakthrough. i knew i couldnt afford to bowl any extras, and needed to stem the runs as best as possible, so i bowled very slowly to ensure accuracy. in hindsight i should have played my natural game, because the lack of pace made me easier to hit, and i ended up 2-0-24-0. we lost the game in 12 overs, and didnt take a single wicket. it was on the artificial pitch that i played on a few weeks ago and produced my best ever bowling. i had the ball turning and bouncing quite a bit yesterday, but the field setting was all wrong so i couldnt make use of it.

the captain wont let me change my field, ever. and he always sets it so that every fielder bar one is on the boundary rope, with one guy in at short mid-off. i got hit for 2 sixes, one of which cleared the rope (and the fielder) by a yard. 1% less contact and he would have been caught. the other six was off a legside long-hop to a lefty to the shortest boundary (literally about 30 yards). any other boundary and it would have been a single. then there were 2 balls that deceived the batsman and got skied, but dropped 20 yards short of fielders who shouldnt have been in the deep, but should have been on the single. and i think they scored off of all but 2 deliveries, because the single was always on offer. its almost impossible to attack a batsman when they can get off strike every delivery just by defending!!!

its no wonder all my dismissals in this competition are clean bowled, or caught on the rope.

but coming back to the wrong'un. i think because i was bowling unnaturally slow it meant that my arm/shoulder was coming through differently to how it normally would. so what was meant to be a heavily overspun (and accurate) leg break came out slightly as a wrong'un. i was scrambling the seam a lot (not on purpose) as well because its harder to impart spin when youre intent on line and length and my fingers kept dragging down the back of it. either way, the ball turned back in too much to have been random seam deviation, so it must have had off-spin on it to some extent.

i managed a slow flipper as well. it was weird, because it was flat and slow, but didnt drop short (a good indication of the magnus effect i guess). the batsman still got an easy single though, as with pretty much every delivery, no matter how well bowled it was! the flipper used to always fly down the leg side, but ive reigned it in now enough that im confident to bowl it full speed in match situations. im hoping i get a game this sunday because im likely to get some proper overs (5-8 usually) to try and create a decent spell. T20 is fun, but you barely get loose before your spell is finished, and i at least get to mostly set my own field on sundays.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

i had another big practice session yesterday for 2 hours. theres no match this sunday unfortunately, but that just means more time for practice. my brother was bored and came down and batted the whole time, but im getting to a stage now where im focussed enough that a batsman doesnt put me off (in fact its probably helpful). i was messing with my technique, and managed to get back to where i was last session. my action has evolved to now delivering full side spin with a more round arm action. i can vary the pace more comfortably, and im getting consistent huge turn and regularly finding the seam. my length is very consistent unless i drag the ball down, its only my line that wanders outside leg stump a bit too much at times. but im getting a lot more accurate on the good balls, i just need to remove the bad ones.

with regards bowling at a batsman and me thinking it may be helpful - i know roughly where a good line and length is. there are no hard and fast rules, and every batsman is different. but practicing endlessly just bowling onto a target (whether its a bit of looped rope, or a hoop, or a piece of carpet, etc) is only so helpful. once theres a batsman in front of you and no target on the pitch then that all falls apart. and likewise, you cant judge if that length is actually good or not if there isnt a bat swinging at the ball. what seems like it might be a good length, could actually be too full or too short to some batsmen. ive formed the opinion recently that bowling at imaginary targets is good technique practice, but not good match practice. the best match practice is against a batsman that wants technique practice (e.g. you dont particularly want a mindless slogger in the nets, you want someone that is going to treat it seriously, like a match).
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

macca;402693 said:
You can get a photocopy of it here pretty cheap about $14.00AUD plus post https://www.nla.gov.au/apps/copiesdirect?source=cat&sourcevalue=926856

I cant find my copy right now, i know i was gonna send you a scanned one but i never got around to it. I will have a look again today.
Click to expand...

The other thing is the Bob Woolmer book will have generated a lot of interest in the book too.
 
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