Wrist Spin Bowling

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Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

EOW & Macca this is slightly off topic - I'm trying to find the name of one of your fast bowlers who has a peculiar bowling action. He's one of the internationals either a one day or test standard player, but he has this weird leg action in his jump where the back leg seems to dangle as he leaps? He's a blonde bloke who normally has his hair shaved short and he's been around at that level in the last two years - do you know who I mean?
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I agree eow about being able to change your action. It was advice like that in the book that made people rubbish it. Bradman thought a lot of his stuff in the book was ridiculous, but the book is a total wind-up and if you dont get the humour it is confusing.There must be people still alive in Australia ( and India ,England and South Africa where he gave "demonstrations" that sound like modern day spin clinics ?) that were coahed by grimmett. I am no grimmett expert it would be good if one stumbled on this and gave us an insight into his coaching method for kids. You might be able to find the book in a library eow it used to be in nearly every surburban australian library when i was a kid. The copy in the national library is a white glove deal, i think it might be autographed because it sounds like its in the rare book collection.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

dave, on the flipper thing i am no expert on that either, i have forgotten a lot of what i did find out when the last flipper craze swept the country. We can excuse grimmett for taking so long bacause he has to conceive the idea ( through study of lawn and table tennis, and spinning the ball, any ball) than work out how to put backspin on a cricket ball, than how to deliver it, he is working on 4 possible deliveries, the gipper for example may have been an evolutionary deadend that he thought might lead somewhere but wasted two years on.plus he would have wanted total control of the delivery.
On Benaud and his 4 years, he always ends the story by saying " bruce told me it would take 4 years to bowl and ************ me if it didn't" i think he may have been open to the powers of suggestion, if dooland told him 4 months maybe it would have taken that long! but i do know if i practised for 400 years i could never bowl it in a test match. Some people can squeeze them out after being shown, quite quickly, some bowlers just give up and say" too hard". it is an" icing on the cake ball" and leggies should be getting lots of wickets with their stock ball and topspinners. Grimmett says drying up the runs comes first, wickets follow.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

dave by the way have you checked out mycricketguru.com.au. that looks like the way to ask peter philpott questions and upload videos for him to appraise.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Thank you macca for giving us such an insight into grimmetts psyche. He sounds a bit bitter probably as he was given a chance to play top level at a late age when he felt he was so superior to other leg spinners that were playing shield cricket. His persuasion of being so superior/competitive underlies what a champion he was. Someone else would have felt inferior due to his age, build, hair loss, but not the champion grimmett. I think he played test cricket till he was 47 before bradman pulled the plug on him. Even O'Reiily bemoaned his absence in the 1938 ashes.

As regards the flipper i get the length ok but the line tends to go outside offstump, but admittedly I only practice once a week now , and only 1 ball of every 60 would be a flipper. It also tends to move like an offbreak but keeps low.

Dave did you try the flipper like Kaneria with the thumb under and 4 fingers on the upper part of the ball like the link i had posted a couple of weeks ago.

As regards maccas site i think we feel too overawed to send any of our clips lest we hear a clap of thunder from the master. But if the administration could arrange an interview for big cricket(hint,hint), as there is on Pakcricket with Musthaq Ahmed, that would be great.

Here is an article of our newest hero or antihero. I am sure they will take him to the uk in summer. The pom (why do they call you so),will have no clue on how to play him. Cricinfo - Pity the poor leggie
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Pommies - Why are British people called poms? | Notes and Queries | guardian.co.uk there's a bunch of explanations here - I always thought it was to do with the Pomegranite story.

No I've not tried that variation and I'm unlikely to as it seems impossible and I've really got to focus on the the leg break. Interestingly I've just been looking around the mycricketguru website on Macca's suggestion and seen the article relating to little kids and getting them started with ball games and he mentions absolute focus there. I've just had the crappiest net session ever where I just bowled a heap of pies nothing went right and I can only put it down to the fact that recently I've not been practicing in the way intensive way that I normally do and I'm losing it. I've also been doing upper body exercises and I might be getting physically stronger and this means it's affecting my bowling possibly? Whatever it is - it's bad so I've got to get some hours in bowling on my own soon.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Sadspinner, your flipper sounds like mine, half the time i get a backspinning offbreak with no speed that can be no-balled or deadballed. I have just read grimmetts second book written in 1948 after he retired and it is much better book than "on taking wickets" he devotes a whole chapter to the flipper (and gipper) and shows how to correct yours and my problem with bowling it properly! I will quote from the book next post.
dave will be interested to know he named his gipper his 'wrong wrongun'. not as catchy as gipper. He says he bowled it occassionally, it did decieve the batsman but was too slow off the pitch to worry good ones.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Yep that sounds about right with the Gipper. What's this new book called?

In the meantime from my main blog the despair goes on

Friday, March 27, 2009
Frustration
Laid in bed last night going back to the Leg break, it might be that I'm being too hard on myself, but I can't see why I can't consistently bowl a good or big leg break? It may be that if I put in some more practice I'll get the small leg break back and that'll be okay, but thinking about it I reckon my small leg break is more akin to a leg cutter than a spinning leg break. Last night in the kitchen doing what the master (Peter Philpott) recommends - flicking the ball, giving it a big rip everything I do is right, the ball turns big - massively in fact and with a lot of concentration but admittedly an awkward jerky action I can bowl it over a short distance. But then if I try and get it down a wicket it then goes very wrong and turns into a wrong un! I did declare that I'd given up on trying to bowl a biggun, but I feel that I shouldn't give up on bowling a good leg break using a obvious flick. Weirdly and worryingly my captain Neil was watching me bowl and he was saying that he'd swear that as I was bowling and releasing the ball it was a Leg Break but then when it pitched it was a Wrong Un - whereas I was bowling a Top Spinner.

I think the answer would be to bowl over ever increasing distances to someone else as it's this approach that has produced the most dramatic results in the past, but I just can't get anyone to do it with me.

In the short term I'll go back to my small leg breaks and recover them, but in the meantime I'll go back to spinning the ball completely unaware of what it is I'm doing that is so wrong to make the ball turn completely the wrong way. Gutted.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Sounds like your wrist position has gone all wrong Dave. I focus on making sure the front of your hand is pointing somewhere between the batsmen and leg-slip(I think I have exaggerated this slightly. I am not sure though I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact location of the fielding positions. I have erred on the side of the leg-break.) before you release.
someblokecalleddave said:
Weirdly and worryingly my captain Neil was watching me bowl and he was saying that he'd swear that as I was bowling and releasing the ball it was a Leg Break but then when it pitched it was a Wrong Un - whereas I was bowling a Top Spinner.
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I do the opposite when I try to bowl a top-spinner it almost always turns slightly towards the slips. Generally the only way I can bowl a straight top-spinner is to attempt a wrong'un.

And congrats on having the best disguised wrong'un ever.;)
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Yeah I'm almost certain that's the issue and it sounds easy in principle but it's a problem with my Neuropathway - my brains been totally re-wired to think that to bowl is to googly. I know that somehow it's there to be had again (The legbreak) and with some work I'll get it back and I have a plan....
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Anybody here know anything about legspin and indoor cricket, any experiences or tips?
dave the second book , his third I think, is called "Grimmett on Cricket. a Practical Guide"" it covers batting as well. The chapters on bowling go into more detail than the first book and there are more and better photos. my copy has the original jacket with a photo of grimmett in full cry. Most people who didn't know he was one of the, if not the greatest bowler of all time would think "who is this skinny little piechucker and whats with the cap and longsleeves?". Everyone says its to hide his baldness and protect his eyes and arms from the sun. I think the cap is to shield his eyes and make it impossible for the batsmen to see what he is aiming at and the sleeves conceal as much of his wrists as possible like a conjurer does. I dont know if I came up with this theory or maybe I heard it before and have forgotten. Greg Mathews copied the cap and the sleeves thing in the 80's, I will have to find out why.
If you cant find a copy of his books, by the looks of tha national library of australia website you can buy photocopied reproductions of the books or select chapters. In benauds autobio " my spin on cricket" he says his legspinning dad, leo, used " on taking wickets" as a coaching manual for the young ritchie.
The second book is written after retirement when he begins to drop his reknowned secretiveness about his bowling. Plate 13 shows his flipper at release perfectly. The chapter " my mystery ball and other wronguns" starts by him claiming to have invented the iverson/gleeson delivery first and he wishes the young iverson all the best with it! i didn't know that. Probably if you look at his chapter on offspin he invented the doosra too!
He describes that having worked out how to get backspin with his thumb and fingers that quote"...to apply this kind of spin to overarm bowling was difficult however, it was comparatively easy to get the spin in this way but extremely difficult to bowl a ball that made pace off the pitch; and I had long decided that it was useless to bowl any ball that did not gain pace from the pitch, except as a variation. I discovered that the position of the hand at the moment of release is what I had to concentrate on. As I spun the ball the hand had to be pointing to the left across to cover. The wrist had to be bent and the ball allowed to leave over the top of the hand, the back of which was facing the batsman. However the real problem was to propel the ball and at the same time synchronize the spinning of it with the moment of release The hand had to be in exactly the right position, because even the slightest deviation caused the ball to leave the pitch slowly..." he writes how he spent 12 years, summer and winter, working on all this. One of Warnes first coaches Jack Potter said he showed Warne the flipper and one week later he could bowl it!
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

dave , on the pommy thing, it must be hard for people from other parts of the world to comprehend that in oz to call an englishman " an old pommy ************** " is an extreme compliment and if a brit calls me a 'theiving convict **************' I get quite chuffed and patriotic at the remark. I remember a few old diggers going on about this pommy ************** at the pub one night and this yank butted in and said " yeah i hate the limey bastards too" and the aussies let the yank know that we can call them bastards but to not him!
A former australian prime minister said " We Australians and English know each other so well there is no need to be too tactful"
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

sadspinner said:
Is this the wrist position for the big one. Instinctively looking at hthis I would have thought it to be a topspinner which it definitely is not if you look at the seam. Any advice/opinions http://content.cricinfo.com/ausveng/...ge/272040.html
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A bit hard to tell because of the angle of the shot and because he hasn't fully rotated around yet. I would say that it is an over-spun leg break, but I'm not 100% sure. It is certainly a ball which is turning towards the slips of a right handed batsmen.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Macca, yeah I know where you're coming from with the Aussie/Brit thing and I completely agree that the 'Seppo' doesn't quite have the right to join in the Anglo/Australian banter and that there is a point of ettiquette there to follow that anyone else might not quite get because of it's subtleties! One of the things that you blokes have done over the last 25 years or so that I didn't get and was put out by was changing your Aussie Pound for an Aussie Dollar - what next the Stars and Stripes replacing the Union flag on your National Flag!!!!!
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

The Edge Of Willow;341700 said:
A bit hard to tell because of the angle of the shot and because he hasn't fully rotated around yet. I would say that it is an over-spun leg break, but I'm not 100% sure. It is certainly a ball which is turning towards the slips of a right handed batsmen.
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EOW the link doesn't work - post it up again or maybe the title of the article on the web page?
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Had a session yesterday.I tried to hold the ball VERY loosely nearly with the tips of the fingers. I was not too worried about accuracy. Somehow a few balls really spun. About three pitched about 2 feet outside the leg stump and turned well beyond the off stump. Others were bowled with the same action but did not spin so much. I also tried to use more power from the shoulder. the seam seemed to be pointed towards second or third slip. I got this idea about the light grip by seeing Macgills deliveries.He seems to take the first finger off the ball sometimes when bowling. I suspect the ones that turned really hit the seam while others hit the leather and did not turn much. Also tried some googlies but they tend to pitch on leg or outside and move further out ie a wide.

Problems are many .I tend to drift too wide of leg stump,the ball seems to loop too high in the air well above eye level.Maybe I should try to concentrate less on using the spinning finger as this seems to make me spin the ball too high.

The link is Cricinfo - Terry Jenner watches Shane Warne bowl in the nets
I wonder what you think
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I've blown the picture up on my blog Wrist Spin Bowling

Yeah that grip is definitely erring towards the unorthodox, but it's got some potential and worth a look at I reckon - could be useful to me. Looking at it - it looks as though it's going to work as you say with putting spin on it that's make it turn like a bit leg break? But if you hold the ball like this it feels as though you're going to have to have biggish hands/fingers? I found there may be some mileage in putting the ball into the hand using the normal 2 up 2 down grip and then twisting the ball round so that the finger runs along the seam as in this shot, but I was rained off and couldn't really have a good look at it.

The thumb position is odd as well, it looks as though it's tucked in. When I first had a look at the image I initially thought it was a Top spinner but it's obviously not.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

sadspinner;341794 said:
Problems are many .I tend to drift too wide of leg stump,the ball seems to loop too high in the air well above eye level.Maybe I should try to concentrate less on using the spinning finger as this seems to make me spin the ball too high.

The link is Cricinfo - Terry Jenner watches Shane Warne bowl in the nets
I wonder what you think
Click to expand...


Maybe with your loopier delivery try and push the ball through faster as that'll surely make the trajectory flatter?
 
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