Videos and Links

Ye - not having some sort of spin community in the UK is something that bugged me when I was younger. Being a leg spinner at a club is a lonely existence! I'm based in Croydon at the moment.

I've set up this meetup group anyway, in the hope that I can get something going in London:

http://www.meetup.com/Leg-Spin-Bowling-UK/

Could be used for organising nets elsewhere in the Uk though. Do you think it's worth starting a new thread about the idea?
Might be, start one up on here. I've joined your meetup thing and I may be able to come along to the one in January, but it's a bit expensive, I can get the same deal with a bowling machine for £36 out here in Essex, but in the short term I'm up for it.
 
Ye - not having some sort of spin community in the UK is something that bugged me when I was younger. Being a leg spinner at a club is a lonely existence! I'm based in Croydon at the moment.

I've set up this meetup group anyway, in the hope that I can get something going in London:

http://www.meetup.com/Leg-Spin-Bowling-UK/

Could be used for organising nets elsewhere in the Uk though. Do you think it's worth starting a new thread about the idea?
Chris are you from London?
 


If you skip to the 1 minute mark you can see a slo-mo of the wonderful Doug Wright who is often mentioned in leg spin histories as a purveyor of fast unplayable leg breaks. He could have been an English Tiger O'Reilly if he'd been picked for more international games. Jack Pollard devotes a whole chapter in worlds greatest leg spin bowlers to him called Stepping Over Puddles, a reference to his unique run up. Its such a good cricket book, covering lots of bowlers that don't usually get a mention. I can't think of many others I've enjoyed as much apart from Frith's The Slow Men. Highly recommend picking it up if you've never read it.
 


If you skip to the 1 minute mark you can see a slo-mo of the wonderful Doug Wright who is often mentioned in leg spin histories as a purveyor of fast unplayable leg breaks. He could have been an English Tiger O'Reilly if he'd been picked for more international games. Jack Pollard devotes a whole chapter in worlds greatest leg spin bowlers to him called Stepping Over Puddles, a reference to his unique run up. Its such a good cricket book, covering lots of bowlers that don't usually get a mention. I can't think of many others I've enjoyed as much apart from Frith's The Slow Men. Highly recommend picking it up if you've never read it.

Good footage for 47, there's much newer stuff which isn't half as good as this.
 


Here's an interesting one I've come across, obviously its a glorious innings by Sobers who was part of the wrist spinners club himself but also if you skip to 4.30 you will see Terry Jenner bowling, I'd never seen him bowl off a full run up in a game before and his action was different to how I imagined it would be. Flight is lovely though, very lavish. There's also plenty of O'Keefe bowling but I've never been keen on him as a bowler personally. Horrible action! Probably not seeing them at their best here being walloped by king cricket but intriguing nonetheless.
 








I finally got round to uploading the rest of this tape of MCC masterclass 1994, there is another tape but thats all batting which i will do eventually. This one has the leg spin with Benaud I already edited and uploaded a while ago but this full version has off spin with ray illingworth and left arm spin with bishan bedi. Just for good measure there's also fast bowling with dennis lillee, wicket keeping with alan knott and slips catching with viv richards. Enjoy!
 


Here's a video that had slipped me by, I'd only seen the 'absolute clinker' wicket before. V nice bosie to deceive Andy flower who was a bloody good player of spin.
 
It was on for an hour last night, I watched about 20 minutes before the phone rang. Mostly pretty good, although Ian Ward asked some dumb leading questions, for example "which should be the first variation a young spinner learns, the googly or the flipper?" To which the answer should have been "neither, they should learn the topspinner and the slider, along with variations in pace"

Warne also banged on about switching from around to over the wicket to confuse the batsmen, which is something I've never really understood. Batsmen aren't that stupid, they know you're switching and just adjust their guards accordingly.

I liked the piece about setting the fields, mainly because he set very similar fields to the ones I would recommend, so clearly he knows what he's talking about at least a little bit.

One bit I definitely disagreed with was his claim that you should bowl at "whatever speed allows you to get the most spin". That's clearly nonsense - we have a lad in our club who generates huge spin, but bowls so slowly that every ball gets absolutely smashed by even mediocre batsmen.

What he should have said was that a successful spin bowler needs enough spin to beat the edge and enough pace to pin the batsman in his crease. In reality, most spin bowlers worry too much about the former and not enough about the latter. They want to see the glory ball rip square from back of a length even if it doesn't take a wicket, not the full, quick ball that invites the drive and then turns just enough to get the miss-hit. For bowlers like this, spin bowling is just a vanity project - its like quick bowlers who are only interested in bowling bouncers rather than pitching the ball up and getting nicks.
 
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Warne also banged on about switching from around to over the wicket to confuse the batsmen, which is something I've never really understood. Batsmen aren't that stupid, they know you're switching and just adjust their guards accordingly.

His point wasn't that going round the wicket confused the batsman.

He said that if you plan on going round the wicket then first bowl a delivery or two from really wide on the crease over the wicket to get the batsman used to the ball coming from that wide angle. Then when you switch to coming around the wicket bowl the first ball from really wide on the crease to really exaggerate the change in angle. Don't bowl from next to the stumps over the wicket then close to the stumps when you come round.
 
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