Googly Syndrome

[someblokecalleddave]

Googly Syndrome

I'm convinced I coined the phrase 'Googly Syndrome' and if you look it up on the internet most - if not all of the references to it link to my blogs or this forum. I'm looking forward to the day when I first hear it used by a TV commentator!

So what is the Googly Syndrome?

Serious commentators on the subject of Wrist Spin - Grimmett, Philpott, Jenner, Benaud and Warne all refer to it, in that they advise that when you turn to learning the Googly (Wrong Un) you do so with an awareness that you run the risk of losing your leg break. The don't go as far as giving it a name as I have done, but they warn that you should practice it in short periods, going back to your Leg Break frequently to check to see if it's still working okay.

One of the great bowlers and I can't remember which one, or it may even be Woolmer, claims that the Googly is an easier and far more natural way to bowl a ball over-arm. Therefore if you start out with the Googly or you over-do the Googly when you start to learn it, your muscle memory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory ) is programmed to bowl in that way. If you already had a Leg Break, too much work with the Googly will suit your bodies neural processes and a new neural map will be drawn up over-writing to a great degree the neural processes for the Leg Break. My own observations having had the 'Googly Syndrome' and just observing human behaviour is that much of the time we and our bodies will have a tendency to adapt to easier conditions or options. So in bowling the Googly the new neural map is readily drawn up and you often find that you produce an amazingly good googly that is faster and turns far more readily.

The Leg Break, our stock ball on the other hand is a difficult ball to bowl but as wrist spinners we're encouraged and told that is the action that we must learn first. The motor learning involved in bowling the leg break is very complex and subject to far more complex neural processes, hence the difficulties that most of us have in getting the basics mastered. So the body/brain it seems when subjected to the process of learning the Googly quickly adapts to it and over-writes all the work we did trying to bowl leg breaks.

So, if like me you've gone through the process of learning the Googly to the detriment of your Leg Break, you'll find that you can no longer bowl a leg break and no matter how hard you try the ball will just spin away to the off-side. Here's the answer.

How to recover your leg break

1. You've got to stop bowling the Googly. Don't worry, when you come back to it in a couple of months it'll still be there, remember it's the natural option of the 2 methods and you know how to bowl it now.
2. Only attempt leg breaks.
3. Bowl the leg break by over-exaggerating the wrist position. Turn the wrist so that it feels like you are going to bowl with a Karate Chop action. You need to physically set your arm and wrist, think and visualise that as you bring the arm over you are doing so in a way that the batsman will see the side of your hand and not your palm.

The reality is because you're neural map is so well written for the Googly all your attempts up to this point to bowl out of the front of the hand have meant that so far as your arm has come over your head, your muscle memory is so well defined and programmed that you are still bowling out of the back of your hand. You have now got to bowl what feels like a Karate Chop action in order that you bowl out of the front of the hand so that the spin and seam presentation is such that you produce a leg break. This may not happen over-night, it took me 8 months of bowling in the closed season 1-2 hours a week to rectify, but I got there in the end, but no-one was giving me any advice and I had to discover the Karate Chop thing through trial and error. Other people that I've explained the Karate Chop thing to that have had the Googly Syndrome for months and years have corrected it much faster - days and weeks in some cases.

See the video below..........


YouTube - Googly Syndrome.wmv

Good Luck

 

[mas cambios]

Re: Googly Syndrome

I read the title as google syndrome at first.

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Googly Syndrome

if the Googly is such a natural way to deliver a ball then why cant i bloody bowl one?

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Googly Syndrome

As it says you've gone for the difficult option as you should do. I only know one other person that bowls a wrong un. I don't think I could have done it without the 2 or 3 weeks of doing nothing but bowling it, but then you know what the outcome of that will probably be. Do you bowl a pure top -spinner - one that goes dead straight?

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Googly Syndrome

ive got a top spinner, i occasionally bowl leg breaks that go the wrong way, but its seam deviation rather than turn, if the seam scrambles a bit and lands just right then it will deviate back in, but its not spin. my off spun flipper turns back, and my flipper has vicious inswing, but they just arent the same as a googly. the flight is totally different to the leg break so it struggles to deceive.

you say you only know one other person with a googly - whereas ive never met a full time leg spinner that doesnt have one! i think most kids have the googly as a priority, as soon as they can bowl a leg break they are trying to land a wrong'un to compliment it. i dont think even 2 or 3 weeks of solid wrong'uns would even help me, as of yet im not even able to get close to it. i can bowl a top spinner, but as soon as i try to go that little bit further around the loop my wrist snaps back to bowl leg breaks at the release point. there is absolutely nothing natural about bowling the wrong'un in my opinion. it may be easier for the muscles to remember or something once youve done it, but as a starting point its a LOT harder to pick up.

i mean ive got a zooter and an off spinning flipper, probably 2 of the hardest deliveries to bowl and i dont know anyone else that can bowl them (not even pros, Warne is the only person ive ever seen bowl a zooter). they are wholly unnatural deliveries, the wrist position is completely foreign. but i picked those up no problem, the zooter took me about 10 minutes to perfect!! its more consistent than my leg breaks lol. but the wrong'un on the other hand....

i keep trying it here and there, but so far no joy. im adopting the method of just bowling top spinners to get those better and adapt my wrist/shoulder/etc. and then hopefully one day il just be able to go that bit further around. i reckon theres more chance of me getting a backspinning wrong'un though by getting further around the loop from a zooter though. that would be an insane delivery to have, it would turn huge and stay low!!

 

[chippyben]

Re: Googly Syndrome

I have gone back over Philpotts book and one thing really struck me was most have not bowled "right over the top" and I thought thats definately me. The last few nights Ive been working on it and a lot of the advice everyone has been giving me on here has really come together.
Ive got a lot more round arm which felt very wierd before but now is producing so much extra loop and bounce. Combined with really tucking the leading elbow in things are really improving. Tonight I noticed that my topspinners were landing on the seam and occasionally seaming back. Initially I thought they may be slight wrong-uns but it soon became obvious it was just hitting the seam.
Im with you Jim, I find the wrongun extremely unnatural. In my mind though everything is a bit mixed up when I bowl. To bowl a hard spun leg break I have to bowl waht feels like a pure backspinner. A leg break is like a hard spun leg break and so on. It took me a long time to get this sorted out in my mind.
To bowl the back spinning wrong un I found it impossible with a normal action. I get my chest front on at least and more like my right shoulder leading at the point of release.I pull back with my leading arm and not tucking it in at all so I can open myself up quickly.This is the only way I could get my arm and wrist in the right position to bowl the delivery. I have less forward momentum after release too as a result of opening myself up and pulling back my leading arm. I laugh now at my naivety now when i look back because i thought this was the orthodox wrong un!!

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Googly Syndrome

The back spinning wrong un - now that is extreme! I can assure you that being able to do both and you've only got to look at my Vids to see the difference between the 2. The Wrong Un once you've got it is far more the most natural action. The Leg break is a nightmare in comparison!

I reckon if you're generally slightly round armed Jim and you can get the Top-Spinner all you need to do is relax your hand more, sit the ball nice and cosy in the middle of your hand with your finger on that seam and bowl with a vertical arm, you're so close to getting it to go the other way if you can bowl a good straight Top-Spinner with a round arm!

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Googly Syndrome

i can get the ball to spin out pretty hard without flicking my wrist and with it angled a bit more sharply when flicking the ball between hands. this is how i figure the wrong'un should come out. the only issue is with actually releasing it that way when bowling. it probably is just a question of relaxing and getting the arm higher. i plan to spend time on it throughout the winter as id like to have the full range of deliveries next year, and be able to land them all on demand as well. the wrong'un will be an awesome delivery to have as with the way im turning the leg break now having one that goes the other way will petrify batsmen. i should be playing indoor as well, and it could prove very useful there too.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Googly Syndrome

Honestly in my opinion you're over doing it if you're spinning it between the hands, I could never do that convincingly with the Googly action and you've seen the kind of turn I get off the pitch with my Wrong Un. I reckon if you're getting big turn with a Leg Break, you'd only have to have it go the other way a bit to cause real problems.

Would you consider forfeiting the Leg Break to learn the Googly, accepting that the consequence might be the Googly syndrome and then have to spend time re-learning the Leg Break with no guarantee that you'll ever be able to bowl the Leg Break as good as you've got it now in the short term?

 

[shrek]

Re: Googly Syndrome

i can get the ball to spin out pretty hard without flicking my wrist and with it angled a bit more sharply when flicking the ball between hands. this is how i figure the wrong'un should come out. the only issue is with actually releasing it that way when bowling. it probably is just a question of relaxing and getting the arm higher. i plan to spend time on it throughout the winter as id like to have the full range of deliveries next year, and be able to land them all on demand as well. the wrong'un will be an awesome delivery to have as with the way im turning the leg break now having one that goes the other way will petrify batsmen. i should be playing indoor as well, and it could prove very useful there too.

Jim,

I can empathize with you now. Bowling googly seems a little difficult to me now that I have worked hard to get over the googly syndrome. I can still bowl one -only problem is that it is a lot more loopy than my normal leg break and I have to really concentrate hard to bowl it.

The way I used to bowl googlies earlier was simple, rotate my forearm so that at the release point, the release is from back of the hand so that the ball goes forward. Now as my wrist readjusts itself, the same release results in a perfectly bowled topspinner - seam perfectly aligned with path of propagation.

In order to bowl the googly now - I have to add a second rotation - this time of my wrist (just before we cock it at the wind up).

In short - This is how I bowl the legbreak, topspinner and googly now-

Leg break - Imagine doing a bicep curl from shoulder height (starting with your arm at level with shoulder going out towards the right side), wrist should curl inwards- so that palm is facing towards your body, with the ball in the palm and then fire it as arm rotates over

topspinner- start with same bicep curl position, but rotate the forearm clockwise (or from the elbow joint) so that when you cock your wrist, so that palm faces straight ahead).


Googly- Start with topspinner position - rotated forearm, add a rotation of the wrist to it - in other words, curl the wrist and then turn it 90 degrees clockwise. Concentrate as your arm is rotating over to hold the wrist in that position - opening up a little earlier helps.
You will get a slowly bowled loopy googly that has seam pointed towards fineleg/leg slip when you bowl this.


Bear in mind that rotation of forearm occurs as the arm is rolling over to deliver the ball, whereas wrist has to be rotated before you start winding up. And this breakdown into rotation of forearm (at elbow joint) for topspin and at wrist+forearm for googly is how I tell my body to bowl, how it actually comes out might be totally different.

Try it and let me know if this works for you too.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Googly Syndrome

I like the bit at the end.......

'How I tell my body to bowl, how it actually comes out might be totally different'.

This is a common theme with me with regards my leg break as you'd have seen in the video clip.

 

[shrek]

Re: Googly Syndrome

How to recover your leg break

1. You've got to stop bowling the Googly. Don't worry, when you come back to it in a couple of months it'll still be there, remember it's the natural option of the 2 methods and you know how to bowl it now.
2. Only attempt leg breaks.
3. Bowl the leg break by over-exaggerating the wrist position. Turn the wrist so that it feels like you are going to bowl with a Karate Chop action. You need to physically set your arm and wrist, think and visualise that as you bring the arm over you are doing so in a way that the batsman will see the side of your hand and not your palm.

The reality is because you're neural map is so well written for the Googly all your attempts up to this point to bowl out of the front of the hand have meant that so far as your arm has come over your head, your muscle memory is so well defined and programmed that you are still bowling out of the back of your hand. You have now got to bowl what feels like a Karate Chop action in order that you bowl out of the front of the hand so that the spin and seam presentation is such that you produce a leg break. This may not happen over-night, it took me 8 months of bowling in the closed season 1-2 hours a week to rectify, but I got there in the end, but no-one was giving me any advice and I had to discover the Karate Chop thing through trial and error. Other people that I've explained the Karate Chop thing to that have had the Googly Syndrome for months and years have corrected it much faster - days and weeks in some cases.

See the video below..........


YouTube - Googly Syndrome.wmv

Good Luck

Great work with the video dave! Count me amongst those who got rid of googly syndrome from your idea of karate chop method.

However, I have one small addition - remember that bowling with a full runup exaggerates your technical flaws - and so is the case with googly syndrome.

So, take it one step at a time - 1) underarm throws with leg break on it, 2) karate chop with stand start 3) karate chop with full run-up

Karate chop method helped me get a feel for leg break in a stand start mode in about 6 bowling sessions. I was then able to bowl a ripping legbreak at stand start, but would end up bowling top spinners when in full runup for about 2 months. Then I started with an extremely slow walk up (just 2 paces at first, slowly building up) now I can get it to spin big of my usual run up.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Googly Syndrome

Glad it helped, it took me months! I nearly grasped the idea quite early and made a note of the idea of turning the hand to the Karate Chop position about 2 weeks into trying to recover my Leg Break, but I didn't realise it's potential. I then persevered with the 'Palm facing the batsman' for months and noticed there was a marginal positive outcome and I kept going with that. I then one day months down the road of frustration pondered......

'I wonder if what I perceive that I'm doing with my wrist above my head is actually happening'?

I then thought what if it's not - what if my hand is still pretty much turning over to produce the wrong result, even though it feels right? I then thought - lets try and really exaggerate the wrist position and bowl with Karate Chop and see what happens? As you well know - what happens is a lovely Leg Break!

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Googly Syndrome

i dont think i could ever sacrifice my leg break. although thinking about it, its a common theme that everyone ive met that bowls a good wrong'un has had Googly syndrome because of it! i wonder if that applies to any of the pros. Warne never had a strong googly, but perhaps thats because his focus was always so heavily on the leg break.

il give the ideas a try next time i practice but i dont hold out much hope for them. my wrist is too conditioned to flick across for the leg break, so i think the only way id change that is to work on the googly non stop, but then id almost certainly hinder my leg break.

 

[chrisbell]

Re: Googly Syndrome

i dont think i could ever sacrifice my leg break. although thinking about it, its a common theme that everyone ive met that bowls a good wrong'un has had Googly syndrome because of it! i wonder if that applies to any of the pros. Warne never had a strong googly, but perhaps thats because his focus was always so heavily on the leg break.

il give the ideas a try next time i practice but i dont hold out much hope for them. my wrist is too conditioned to flick across for the leg break, so i think the only way id change that is to work on the googly non stop, but then id almost certainly hinder my leg break.

Jim - I think your stock ball is so good that to risk damaging it or even losing it temporarily would be a big mistake.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Googly Syndrome

Yeah It's certainly a conundrum, when you are aware of it and the fact that the situation is reinforced by examples of people having gone through it, that can then tell their story. Just to hear Jenner mention it or read about it briefly from Philpott doesn't really tell it like it is.

I need to read all the books again to ascertain who it was that wrote about the action and release for the Googly being far more natural than the leg break, I'm convinced that it was either Grimmett in 'Getting Wickets', or it may have been Ashley Mallett in his book 'Grimmett the Bradman of Spin' as he quotes Grimmett a lot in their and as I recall it covers Grimmetts admiration for O'reillys bowling and I'm pretty sure in conjunction with the stuff about O'reilly who was a fast wrist spinner Grimmett makes the comment?

Actually - I need some answers to a few questions with regards to people that have been through the Googly Syndrome.

1. Before you moved on to bowling the Googly how good was your Leg Break control? Could you mentally formulate what was required of the wrist, hand and fingers to produce the difference between and Big, medium and small turning Leg Break?
2. Having recovered the Leg Break do you feel that you've (A) Improved; (B) Maintained; (C) lost; that control over the subtleties of your Leg Break?

 

[shrek]

Re: Googly Syndrome

Yeah It's certainly a conundrum, when you are aware of it and the fact that the situation is reinforced by examples of people having gone through it, that can then tell their story. Just to hear Jenner mention it or read about it briefly from Philpott doesn't really tell it like it is.

I need to read all the books again to ascertain who it was that wrote about the action and release for the Googly being far more natural than the leg break, I'm convinced that it was either Grimmett in 'Getting Wickets', or it may have been Ashley Mallett in his book 'Grimmett the Bradman of Spin' as he quotes Grimmett a lot in their and as I recall it covers Grimmetts admiration for O'reillys bowling and I'm pretty sure in conjunction with the stuff about O'reilly who was a fast wrist spinner Grimmett makes the comment?

Actually - I need some answers to a few questions with regards to people that have been through the Googly Syndrome.

1. Before you moved on to bowling the Googly how good was your Leg Break control? Could you mentally formulate what was required of the wrist, hand and fingers to produce the difference between and Big, medium and small turning Leg Break?
2. Having recovered the Leg Break do you feel that you've (A) Improved; (B) Maintained; (C) lost; that control over the subtleties of your Leg Break?

In my case, it might have had to do with hitting puberty- I learnt the googly quite early on - within two months of legspin bowling.(I was 12 and we used to play with the heavy tennis ball). I had very good control and would turn it miles bothways. A senior told me that once he learnt googly, he couldn't bowl legbreak, but it didn't affect me. I was bowling legbreaks and googlies at will for about 2.5 years - when I switched to leather ball in a cricket camp- Suddenly, the legbreak wouldn't turn anymore, I thought that I wasn't putting enough revs on the ball and kept ripping it until deep gashes showed up on spinning finger, but it would rarely ever turn. I always got it to bounce though and usually pinged keepers on their head atleast twice an over. As I was self-taught, I had zero idea about overspin vs side spin, backspin etc. Although I did come up with the offspinning flipper Jim has a video of one day (I had no idea why the batsman got bowled to a seemingly innocuous delivery right after he had hit me for a six but now I realize it stayed low due to the backspin on it.)

The coach there told me that I was bowling topspinner- which until recently I had no idea why I was doing nor any idea how I could correct. He didn't give me the answer of how to correctly bowl a legbreak but did say "With fingers like yours, you should make the ball dance". (fat lot of help that is when you are a 14 year old confused leggie looking for answers).

I took a long sabbatical first from cricket entirely, then from bowling legspin for nearly 9 years- during this period whenever I picked up a ball and tried legspin, there would be zero sidespin on it and I would get desperate and bowl it halfway on the pitch or over batsmen's head.

2) Recovering the legbreak at full action needed a lot of small changes in action/runup etc and it turns out that once I figured out what to do to bowl a legbreak, suddenly I got my control back - Part of it I believe had to do with the fact that I could relax, safe in the knowledge that I can get the ball to turn as much as I once did, so I could get my focus back on landing it right. If you are worried about how to get the ball to turn, you are not going to be able to land it right -especially legspin. The googly is harder to bowl, but now I have much better control on the amount of sidespin vs topspin I would put on each delivery. Which I would say is a lot more important than the googly that lost its bite (good batsmen rarely get out to googlies anyway)

 

[macca]

Crikey it didn't take much for my young bloke to pick up a dose of wrongun syndrome. Two deliveries was enough !

He only bowls leggies and topspinners in matches on purpose but occasionally jags a little wrongun when he overreaches the topspinner. That is a good ball.

His deliberate wrongun is a bit short yet for matches and he hasn't bowled one for months but a couple of days ago i got the bright idea of working on his googly to maybe use on purpose in the last part of the season http://www.youtube.com/user/GUNNERJIMMYable?feature=mhum#p/a/u/1/6xnL4eOiL4U .

Still too short so we decided to leave the wrongun till the off season. Now when we went back to legbreaks he started bowling almost everything out the back...googly syndrome. So we will have to get that legbreak back in full because in 4 days he has a big match on.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Yeah it doesn't take much does it? The thing is like Jimmy, if you don't put some effort in there's a tendency (in my case) to bowl short, but if you then start to bowl a few to try and get it right there's a possibility that the little practice that you do will have some negative affect.

 

[macca]

I couldn't believe it, it only took 2 wronguns and he was showing the effects !