Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

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someblokecalleddave said:
Yeah in this vid, the pivot is weak and the leg doesn't come up and through. There's a lot of work to be done, I've basically got to re-learn a load of stuff and I'm starting from ground zero almost.
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I think there is an important issue here. What I think you are doing is trying to pivot before the ball is released. This would be a big mistake, and I don't care who has said otherwise. It's a cannonball / canoe type situation.

Really the pivot is not important in and of itself. What it is important is powering through the release with your left heel fully grounded. Then once you have released the ball, you have all this rotation going on, it has to go somewhere so the comfortable way to deal with it is to go up on the toe and pivot.

What I suspect you are doing is unweighting the heel early to initiate the pivot, then as you bowl there's little grounding, then once you have released the ball there's not much rotational energy going on - but I think you are wanting to pivot, so what is happening instead is that you have created this monster lean to the left, and you steer yourself into pivoting with your bowling arm as you fall over.

Plausible?

To check your pivoting I suggest a little one step fully round arm practice. Bowling fully round arm it should be intuitive that you rotate with the left heel planted, bowl, and then pivot on the follow-through and a simple matter to get the form of it.

It looks good from the arm up - some nice turn.
 
leftie600 said:
Like where that action is going, bit of Mushtaq Ahmed to it.

I've got some advice below which you should take a grain of salt as all bowling actions are unique.

One comment, which repeats what Cleanprophet has said, try to follow through at your target. There's a couple of reasons for this:
  • Spin - When you fall away from your right to your left your bowling arm compensates by slightly coming through at an angle that favours topspin over legspin.
  • Accuracy - Let's say your perfect follow through goes at 20 degrees (where 0 degrees is toward your target), how do you actually know when you are going at 20 degrees? By following through at your target you have a point of reference you can consistently look to when bowling. By following through at an undefined target you are completely reliant on it just feeling good.
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Spin - yep I bowl with more over-spin generally and I'm okay with that for the moment.
Follow through. 2 thoughts on that. (a). I might be exaggerating it because I'm automatically thinking about the next ball behind me and there may be a bit of heading left to get the next ball. I think when I bowl in matches I follow through straighter, not entirely sure though. (b). Generally I don't think about the follow through and it may be something to work on later if someone was to say 'Mate when you're bowling you don't follow through properly - you veer off'. But as yet in a game situation that's never happened.

I'm devising a plan at the moment with several stages, I'll give it some thought and post it up later, but what I don't want to be doing is running in with it in mind that I've got to do a, b, c and d. I'm going to approach it a stage at a time. I think the next step is to get more side on out of the bound. It seems that when I go through the action without a ball in my hand and therefore totally unconcerned about the outcome - my bowling action is very different; feeling far more dynamic and explosive. I may have to video it and have a look, what I do know is as soon as the ball is in my hand the action is very different.:confused:
 
boogiespinner said:
I think there is an important issue here. What I think you are doing is trying to pivot before the ball is released. This would be a big mistake, and I don't care who has said otherwise. It's a cannonball / canoe type situation.

Really the pivot is not important in and of itself. What it is important is powering through the release with your left heel fully grounded. Then once you have released the ball, you have all this rotation going on, it has to go somewhere so the comfortable way to deal with it is to go up on the toe and pivot.

What I suspect you are doing is unweighting the heel early to initiate the pivot, then as you bowl there's little grounding, then once you have released the ball there's not much rotational energy going on - but I think you are wanting to pivot, so what is happening instead is that you have created this monster lean to the left, and you steer yourself into pivoting with your bowling arm as you fall over.

Plausible?

To check your pivoting I suggest a little one step fully round arm practice. Bowling fully round arm it should be intuitive that you rotate with the left heel planted, bowl, and then pivot on the follow-through and a simple matter to get the form of it.

It looks good from the arm up - some nice turn.
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Again this is one of those issues that I've not had this year - I've just been bowling and whether I pivot or not has been there in my mind, the outcome prior to the Achilles injury was always really good. You're right in that if I think about it, it then suddenly becomes an issue and that timing aspect is obviously crucial. The around the wicket vid has edited deliveries where I tried this and all of the balls went 4-5' wide of the legside, so if I think about and try and incorporate the pivot and getting up on the toes it does go very wrong. It's very different though when I bowl off of 1 step a la' Jenner or use the stand-start - far better with improvement with spin when I get up on the toe in the pivot, but doing so off of one step or a stand start is so much easier regards timing.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Again this is one of those issues that I've not had this year - I've just been bowling and whether I pivot or not has been there in my mind, the outcome prior to the Achilles injury was always really good. You're right in that if I think about it, it then suddenly becomes an issue and that timing aspect is obviously crucial. The around the wicket vid has edited deliveries where I tried this and all of the balls went 4-5' wide of the legside, so if I think about and try and incorporate the pivot and getting up on the toes it does go very wrong. It's very different though when I bowl off of 1 step a la' Jenner or use the stand-start - far better with improvement with spin when I get up on the toe in the pivot, but doing so off of one step or a stand start is so much easier regards timing.
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yes - and I'm still learning how to keep form after including a run-up. It's not easy.

I do suggest this alternative way of thinking about it though. Instead of thinking 'pivot', think 'screw the front foot into the ground'. Imagine that your front foot is tightening a giant screw :) This is how you generate the rotational force. Pushing the ground one way makes your body go the other! Then after release you can just allow yourself to pivot - there is nothing to be forced there, it should feel very natural.

I hope this helps
 
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boogiespinner said:
yes - and I'm still learning how to keep form after including a run-up. It's not easy.

I do suggest this alternative way of thinking about it though. Instead of thinking 'pivot', think 'screw the front foot into the ground'. Imagine that your front foot is tightening a giant screw :) This is how you generate the rotational force. Pushing the ground one way makes your body go the other! Then after release you can just allow yourself to pivot - there is nothing to be forced there, it should feel very natural.

I hope this helps
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It may do when I get to that part. As I said earlier I've got a plan. Basically I'm building the action step by step and I have to repeat what I said earlier without any real coach watching and commenting I don't know whether the order is the right order or whether there should be a 'Correct' sequence to work with if any at all. So basically...

Stage 1; Hone the 3 step and bound run up. Don't deviate, don't change, don't revert back to anything else, it feels right, it's the results of the method suggested in the McGrath video. This is how I bowl from now on, not shorter, not longer, always 3 steps and then the bound. That then becomes the basis from which everything else builds upon - the foundation as such.

At the moment with all of the work that I've been doing (I've just come in from videoing 200 + deliveries) it is definitely coming together and feels totally as though I'm on the right track.

Stage 2: Having watched last nights video I uploaded and taking on board everything you've all been saying I've decided that the first building block to add to my new 'Sound' foundation is the leading arm. It looked at it and it looked weak and wrong and someone else made a similar point. So just now, I was back at the ground and bowled 200 + balls with the new action with the only other focus of attention being the leading arm. I tried doing a number of things, but the thing that resonated and seemed to work was a bit of advice in the Beau Casson video (I think)? He advises reaching out and up and that seemed to work, so hopefully later on when I've edited the videos, this addition to the new approach to the crease might be apparent. It seemed to be because I bowled a lot better today, but that may be in part to just more bowling and a gradual increase in fitness over the last 4 days of bowling?
 
200 + balls and another hour of bowling today working with that leading arm specifically and I'm here...

There's tons of other stuff that can be commented on, I thought the movement through the crease looked particularly weak as others had mentioned, especially if you see it from another angle (Coming later). But I had a look at Mushtaq Ahmed's bowling after Leftie made the comparison and his action through the crease is very different to the dynamism you see in Warne or MacGills bowling.
In this video all I tried to do was reach forwards and upwards and there seemed to be some benefit, it'll be interesting to hear what you all say.
 
I just threw a few balls down in the nets, not very focused and it came out like that.

However I did try my own analogy of screwing the front foot into the ground (clockwise), and found that it invariably produces a pivot, just as night follows day.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
I don't want to be doing is running in with it in mind that I've got to do a, b, c and d.
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Absolutely. It does more harm than good to try and have 3 or 4 things in mind when bowling, even at a relaxed pace. You can end up doing none of them quite as you want to. Better to do just the one and get it right.

someblokecalleddave said:
It seems that when I go through the action without a ball in my hand and therefore totally unconcerned about the outcome - my bowling action is very different; feeling far more dynamic and explosive.
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Yeah, that was more or less the same for me too and, I imagine, most people. I kept my wrist cocked and flicked it open with more energy when the ball wasn't in my hand. It's probably largely psychological. Without the ball and any target, you will be fully relaxed. Introduce the ball and a target and you instantly change things. I suppose the aim is to try and replicate that relaxation when bowling the ball. Easier said than done of course, but at least you know how relaxed you need to feel to bowl as you really need to.

As for that follow through. Just to make sure, put the balls to your right (that's where I always put them), in case you are following through with the thoughts of collecting the next ball to go again. Also, to me, it almost looks as if you are trying to put the ball there rather than bowl it there and that's why that bowling arm comes right the way around, almost like a bit of an exaggerated follow through that takes your arm to the left and the body follows - as opposed to the arm moving there because of the force generated in the action, if that makes any sense?
 
Cleanprophet said:
Absolutely. It does more harm than good to try and have 3 or 4 things in mind when bowling, even at a relaxed pace. You can end up doing none of them quite as you want to. Better to do just the one and get it right.



Yeah, that was more or less the same for me too and, I imagine, most people. I kept my wrist cocked and flicked it open with more energy when the ball wasn't in my hand. It's probably largely psychological. Without the ball and any target, you will be fully relaxed. Introduce the ball and a target and you instantly change things. I suppose the aim is to try and replicate that relaxation when bowling the ball. Easier said than done of course, but at least you know how relaxed you need to feel to bowl as you really need to.

As for that follow through. Just to make sure, put the balls to your right (that's where I always put them), in case you are following through with the thoughts of collecting the next ball to go again. Also, to me, it almost looks as if you are trying to put the ball there rather than bowl it there and that's why that bowling arm comes right the way around, almost like a bit of an exaggerated follow through that takes your arm to the left and the body follows - as opposed to the arm moving there because of the force generated in the action, if that makes any sense?
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It does make sense, but I think I fade to the left when I bowl in games having videoed myself again today. Going straighter is the 3rd thing I'll work on that once I've got the arm thing sorted a bit more.
 
boogiespinner said:
um, just so that after bowling the right arm comes to rest by the right hip, where it would normally hang

just watching footage of Mushtaq, there are similarities with your action Dave! he has that lean to the left going on.
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Isn't bringing the arm down to the right wholly unorthodox, wouldn't you normally bring it across the body with it ending up going past your left hip?
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Isn't bringing the arm down to the right wholly unorthodox, wouldn't you normally bring it across the body with it ending up going past your left hip?
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I've seen some seam bowlers bowl like that. You can do that as a seam bowler because you will aim to have a vertical arm and bring that arm down completely straight. For a spin bowler, it isn't possible unless you only want to bowl topspin/backspin. Imparting any sidespin will automatically send the bowling arm over towards the opposite hip.
 
Just saw this video you posted Dave:



That ball on 0.20 is easily the pick of the bunch. Interestingly, your arm is more vertical for that delivery than any of the rest. Apart from anything else, that inconsistency in arm position will produce inconsistency in accuracy (unless it is fully intentional). I also suspect that the more vertical arm will help you produce more energy at the target.
 
Cleanprophet said:
Just saw this video you posted Dave:



That ball on 0.20 is easily the pick of the bunch. Interestingly, your arm is more vertical for that delivery than any of the rest. Apart from anything else, that inconsistency in arm position will produce inconsistency in accuracy (unless it is fully intentional). I also suspect that the more vertical arm will help you produce more energy at the target.
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There's several other videos, looking at this one this is one of the last 2 clips and I think I'm bowling over-spun leggies and possibly flippers, because there's a few that keep really low and are hitting the tripod because they're straight which might explain the inconsistency in arm position? I'll have to edit the others and get 'em uploaded. I've also found some Frank Farrington vids of his wickets, it'll be interesting to see what you think of his bowling - so I may up-load those as well. (Frank plays in the 2nd XI and is one of the biggest wicket takers at the club and he's only 15 and bowls Leg breaks).
 
I'm just working on the next vid, but I'm also writing a post on my blog at the moment so have been looking at the bowling figures and my first outing with this approach in the first spell of 4 overs I did okay- 4-1-4-0 a promising start. The 2nd spell wasn't so good, but it wasn't any good for any of our bowlers, the local version of AB Deviliers was at the crease and I ended up with 8-1-32-0. Next vid is out of focus I shot it in manual focus and screwed up somewhere, but you can see what's going on, some nice bowling if I don't say so myself! Might not be uploaded till tomorrow sometime though.
 
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