Consistent And Repeatable Action - Spin Bowling.

someblokecalleddave

Well-Known Member
8 Years into my wrist spin journey and only now have I realised the importance of this. My run up over the years has changed so many times. Initially focusing on the 8 step Shane Warne approach, I did that, but the bowled off the wrong foot with a skip like Titch Freeman. The skip took all of the zip out of any prospect of having any "Explosive energy" through the crease and in the end I realised I needed to confront this as an issue if I was going to bowl more than 4 overs before being told "Have a blow Dave".


I turned to my younger son Joe to help me and within hours I had the basics in place and then over several sessions I converted. Having converted, I was still utterly lost as to whether to bowl off of 8 steps, run-in fast like MacGill and a 100 other options. On here loads of people were facing the same problems in different ways, loads have tried bowling like Warne - me included, then someone pointed out that Warne being the freak that he is, combined with his physique was probably not the best template for your bowling.


In the meantime I had different levels of success, with the implementation of different approaches. It seemed these worked for a while and then for some reason or other something changed or I wanted more of something - speed, turn, dip, flight etc and so the experimentation went on.


At the end of last year, I decided that I was just going to ignore all the advice and just run in the way that felt right and bowl. It worked to some extent, but my two sons said "Dad your bowling action is crap, you look a mess when you bowl". I videoed it and they were right it was rubbish and inconsistent. At the start of this season I came in with two methods... (1). A slower Jenner-esque approach and (2). A slightly more energetic approach with a bit of a bound. A very experienced player for the first time in almost 7 years gave me some advice - basically "Mate, don't step in and bowl, use your short run up as you get more zip off the wicket" He was right, over the next 4 or 5 matches I played in I bowled some of the best spells ever against good batsmen in some instances and took a load of wickets. Then I damaged my Achilles (Strain).


This injury forced me to re-think my action through the crease and the approach to the crease. In the short term the solution was to bowl "Jenner-esque" off of a step or two, but trying to put a lot more revs on the ball. It worked to some extent, but I wasn't taking wickets and my line and length was inconsistent, something was wrong. I videoed myself again and the footage was bad - all sorts of problems, but the main thing was I was bowling too 'Front on' not getting side-on through the crease.


So step one was to get back to getting side on. I got round this by ensuring that I was looking down the wicket -over my shoulder - looking around my leading arm. Straight away, immediate results, 2 wickets in a game, going for only 3 an over and being used for 13 overs. But during the game I was still wholly unsure about whether to come off of 4 steps, 6 steps or to include a bound and it just felt crap.


On SKY here in the UK, there's been a documentary about McGrath & in the documentary he explains how he worked out his run-up and discusses how it was conceived. The basics are – you run until you feel rhythmic and are able to enter your bowling stride and action feeling comfortable. He says do this on an open field (outfield) marking your start and get someone to mark your landing point out of the bound. Do it 10 or more times to check the length and consistency and take the average length and that’s your run-up. It's here


If you asked me what my run up consists of – or how long it is, until today I couldn’t have given you an answer. In matches, I stutter, stop, try different lengths and look like a complete pillock and then bowl off 2 steps of late, but without a bound and with collapsed pivot leg. It had to stop!


This morning, I videoed how I bowled yesterday – 40 balls, I then videoed an attempt at bowling ‘naturally’. I then compared the two and came up with a plan. I knew I wanted 3 outcomes…

(1). More speed, so I had to do more than walk-in.

(2). More energy and dynamism – I needed to bound.

(3). Get side-on.


Stage 1. On a flat paved area I marked a starting point and very quickly discovered it was important to start off with either my left or right leg leading. I went for the left leg leading, so came off the right foot from my mark.


Stage 2. In the short term, three steps seemed sufficient before I performed the bound into the side-on ‘Landing’ position, set up for stride into the rotation stage.

At this point all those things that happen at that stage were un-important, what mattered was…

Steady your self at your mark, lead with the correct foot consistently – initially this was hard, it’s not something I’ve ever done and initially I found myself doing the stuttering thing, or going with the wrong foot. I just had to just keep repeating the same lead with the left foot.

Having got that right – the three steps felt fairly natural leading into the bound. The whole action being utterly new then felt different through the crease and initially the results didn’t look that promising, but by the 3rd or 4th ball there was a significant improvement. I then, over an afternoon in three sessions bowled 400 + plus balls. By which time I’d measured the distance from my mark to the stumps as being 8’6” and this worked pretty well.


For the moment, there are other issues – I don’t seem to be able to spin the ball as hard at will, but I noticed when I was more relaxed, everything came together including drift so bounce and massive turn. The more obvious short term effect was massively improved accuracy with regards line and length and more speed in comparison with yesterdays ‘Jenner-esque’ step in and bowl.


But in the short term I seem to have developed a consistent method which now gives me the basis on which to address other issues one by one methodically. So over the coming 2 weeks (No game next week for me) I’m going to work with this and hone it, so that it is my approach to the crease not Jenner’s, Warne’s or MacGill's, but mine!
 
Last edited:
Hallelujah!!! :D
I know it's dumb how I seem to not get things and focus on all sorts of other aspects and go all around the houses in order to get there. It's frustrating in hindsight, but I guess I enjoy the journey of discovery!? Retrospectively, I can't see what could have been said in order for me to see the bigger picture earlier, for all I know it may be in the Peter Philpott book or Grimmett's book, but I missed it if it's in there, or it wasn't what I wanted to read at the time maybe? It wasn't until the McGrath video that the penny dropped - just his explanation of how you establish your run up, with the emphasis on 'Your' run up and then the fact that he basically said his success came from keeping it dead simple and doing the same thing.
 
It is not 'dumb' at all Dave... no two people are the same and no two people learn the same. There is similar, but not 'the same'.

To be honest, you were/are a man on a mission and no matter how many times you would have come across the concept of 'individuality', it would have gone over your head until you bled, sweated and cried your way to this epiphany... we just needed to wait for you to get there... just as long as you did not leap out of your bath in the altogether, running through the streets of Essex shouting 'eureka', no harm done but a new horizon ahead!! :D

ALWAYS keep it simple...
 
It is not 'dumb' at all Dave... no two people are the same and no two people learn the same. There is similar, but not 'the same'.

To be honest, you were/are a man on a mission and no matter how many times you would have come across the concept of 'individuality', it would have gone over your head until you bled, sweated and cried your way to this epiphany... we just needed to wait for you to get there... just as long as you did not leap out of your bath in the altogether, running through the streets of Essex shouting 'eureka', no harm done but a new horizon ahead!! :D

ALWAYS keep it simple...
The bloody rains stopping me from getting out there and practicing it at the moment which is frustrating. I'm now worried about my Gluteous medius and whether it'll be able to sustain the rise up onto the toe, so have been walking to and from work - power walking, getting some use out of my legs. Get those muscles working properly!
 
This is great Dave and I will be copying your advice - I've never measured a run-up.

But there's one thing you allude to which seems a compromise. You say with the Jenner-esque approach you were attempting to spin the ball more, but it's implied that's not the case now you are running in.

I like that you were trying to spin as hard as possible. That seems, to me, the primary endeavour. It doesn't surprise me that you were having trouble with control - that's the difficult thing about this lark. Can you not keep working on that too? Maybe the practice you were putting in with that was sinking in.
 
This is great Dave and I will be copying your advice - I've never measured a run-up.

But there's one thing you allude to which seems a compromise. You say with the Jenner-esque approach you were attempting to spin the ball more, but it's implied that's not the case now you are running in.

I like that you were trying to spin as hard as possible. That seems, to me, the primary endeavour. It doesn't surprise me that you were having trouble with control - that's the difficult thing about this lark. Can you not keep working on that too? Maybe the practice you were putting in with that was sinking in.
Yeah there's some work to with it yet, I'm hoping the rain will clear up. Being a completely new approach I'm sure there's aspects of it that need to fall into place. Of the 400 or deliveries I managed to get through at the weekend, towards the later 150 or so, the whole thing was feeling looser and more relaxed - it was evident that the looser and more fluid I was the better the result and a few came out with vicious spin with seemingly no effort. It was hard at the start - it was on par with the change I made from the skip technique to the bound technique. Even towards the end of the 400 deliveries, I still was having to stand at my mark and tell myself lead with the left foot. One telling thing that I noticed was that the action was so consistent that it started to produce perfectly placed worn patches - that has never happened!
 
Same for me I stuttered in my run up for more than half of the season and about a month ago I changed my run up to a more natural and comfortable run up.
 
Yeah I like that. I think I said elsewhere that when I was in Derbyshire last weekend I put in a lot of practice. One session 3 hours and blokes that were playing while I was in the nets said the next day that they were mighty impressed with my fitness and dedication. I got to bowl today in a game, I'm writing the blog post for it at the moment and I've got another game tomorrow. But it went okay and I stuck with it although there was the temptation to go back to the bigger spinning 1 step approach especially when their big hitters were running my figures! Ended up going for 4 an over with no wickets.
 
I worked out a short run-up while the opening bowlers were on today, just six paces altogether, 5m... result was no 'stuttering' and I was certainly looking for my marker at the start of the overs. :)
Same with me, but I bowled badly yesterday after all the work and then had to resort to the Terry Jenner-esque one step approach and got it all back on track. Which was disappointing. I think there's a lot of work to be done over the winter on tarmac with hockey balls for me.
 
I've heard people, especially the coaches on pitchvision talk about the bowling arm circle with leg spinners and how Terry Jenner encouraged Shane Warne to incorporate it into his bowling. However, I don't actually understand the purpose of it, I'm hoping you can help me understand what spin bowlers achieve from using it.
 
I've heard people, especially the coaches on pitchvision talk about the bowling arm circle with leg spinners and how Terry Jenner encouraged Shane Warne to incorporate it into his bowling. However, I don't actually understand the purpose of it, I'm hoping you can help me understand what spin bowlers achieve from using it.

Mark Garaway claims and I reckon there is some truth in that the full rotation of the bowling arm helps to generate more over-spin and therefore dip. Probably if combined with a vertical arm or a near vertical arm when attempting to present the seam upright in the style of a classic top-spinner or a very small turning Leg Break. Have a look at the video here of me practicing with and without a ball in my hand running up to the start of the season here in England. I'm not getting it right when the balls in my hand at the moment, but the action becomes very different when I've not got the ball. Note how my arm comes over and ends up at my pocket as Garaway says. In fact my arm goes further without the ball. But then look at it with the ball... It doesn't complete the full circle in the first slo-mo sequence it ends up in front of my body and I abruptly stop. I think it's this aspect of the action you need to avoid, a smooth fluid movement with the arm coming right through is the desired affect and helps put more spin on the ball by my reckoning.
 
Back
Top