How To Bowl A Flipper In Legspin Bowling

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awesome video, Rajesh!
i'm tempted, but don't want to try this now.. As Richie Benaud said, "don't even try a flipper without mastering the legbreak, googly and topspinner!"
btw, the slomo video at the end shows that some flippers bounce off as legspinners while some cut in like offspin :-D
 
Back from a weeks holiday in the Med! I've been reading 'The Twirlymen' book, I'm not finished yet a little over 140 pages of the 400 and have been reading about the Flipper and it's connections with under-arm bowling which when you think about it are obvious and logical. But in the book the bloke that has written it, illustrates some of the deliveries including the Flipper and his own account of it as a basic delivery differs from the one that I would say is generally accepted on here. Given that this bloke is a journalist and seems to have access to a fantastic array of research material his opinion I reckon is pretty sound, although on some of the points I don't always agree, but his take on the basic flipper is very interesting and worth investigating as a practitioner of the art. His description has the ball held in the conventional manner (Finger and thumb) but with the hand held in what would appear at some stages through the dlivery like a cocked wrist. He has the ball released it seems with the seam rotating like a Flying saucer and he says that this produces Off-Spin. As it happens I had a couple of balls with me on holiday - I can't be doing with sitting around doing nothing even if I am on holiday, and I was able to give it a go. Initially it seemed as though it would be difficult to hold the ball and realese it in this 'Drooped' position, but the first attempt was right on the money and did come in from the off towards leg if only minimally. The other advantage is that my Flippers are far faster than my conventional deliveries and a faster ball that turns like a small off-spinner after a series of leg-breaks may be productive, so it's definitely something I'll be working with.

Moreover reading the Twirlymen book just makes you realise that The Flipper is an incredibly versatile ball, which can be released from the hand in a multitude of ways to produce a whole range of different outcomes. I’m beginning to think that it’s an injustice to think of The Flipper as being 4 different deliveries and it’s certainly a travesty to think of it as a simple back-spinner if your own research only takes you as far as looking at videos on youtube of Warne and Jenners explanations of it. I’m also pretty much convinced that Grimmett was the Bloke that saw the true potential of the Flipper as an over-arm delivery having spoken to Simpson-Hayward about his application of the finger and Thumb technique in his under arm bowling. As Amol Rajan writes………..

“One of the greatest achievements of Simpson-Hayward’s career would not become apparent until many years later, when a conversation he had with Grimmett was decisive in generating the rediscovery of the Flipper”.

There’s so much information in ‘Twirlymen’ I’m not even 100% that Grimmett was the first to bowl it over-arm, there may have been someone who bowled it per the description above before Grimmett, but I’ll have to read the book again to make sure, but Grimmett seems to have been the bloke that come up with the idea that the ball could be released in the ‘Round the loop’ method over-arm and thus recorded the four potential methods in his book ‘Getting Wickets’ in 1930.
 
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