leg spin grip and ball rotation

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danovice

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Hi guys, this is my first post but have been reading the forum with great interest.

My son is 10 and has been bowling leg spin for over a year. He is quite accurate and tries to spin the ball hard.

He holds the ball with the conventional "2 up 2 down" grip along the seam and he gets a bit of turn (about 6") but the ball is not rotating along the seam in the air - it is scrambled.

However, when he holds the ball across the seam with a "2 up 2 down grip", the seam points towards the slips and the ball rotates along it. Consequently he gets a lot of turn and bounce.

Is there an issue with his release or his wrist position at the point of delivery?
 
A pretty common problem with young kids learning leg spin. This might come down as an unpopular idea... but don't change it. One interesting subtlety I've found watching videos of Warney is that he does change the direction of this seam in his hand. Though I can't prove it... I think he may well place seam of the ball on his spinning finger so before release and hence before imparting of spin it looks like an inswinger -- with four fingers up and thumb down. Perhaps this is similar to your boys grip.

Of course that is all digression. Keep it -- if it's accurate and it spins then he's already acquired two variations of the leg spinner. Only 2 or 3 more to go!
 
Sounds okay to me, leave him be for the short term if he's taking wickets, as he gets older no doubt he'll want to look at doing something different and hopefully it may be more turn with the leg break, but it sounds like he's already got a fairly sound technique. I reckon if you just keep encouraging him to spin it hard and he keeps doing so - flicking it from one hand to the other and letting it drop and seeing how it turns when it hits the floor he'll see the potential and possibly adapt his bowling himself.
 
danovice said:
Is there an issue with his release or his wrist position at the point of delivery?
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There might be, but it is a bit hard to know yet from sitting here, but if you stick around and get a conversation going on it i bet you find out a lot of stuff and maybe get to the bottom of it.

I have seen it done by other kids that spin mostly with there supple wrists and dont involve or time the finger spin .It is not really a problem at his stage of development but there are some basics that you really should do from the start, is everything he does pretty much orthodox? Having asked that though, lots of spinners have gone a long way by breaking orthodoxy with unusual grips.

Sounds like you are watching the seam closely. Does this happen every ball. Is he getting lots of topspin with the bigger spinner or more sidespin even a bit of backspin?
 
macca said:
Sounds like you are watching the seam closely. Does this happen every ball. Is he getting lots of topspin with the bigger spinner or more sidespin even a bit of backspin?
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I don't know much about spin bowling, just what I have seen on tv and stuff I have read here on this forum. When he holds the ball across the seam, the seam position is near enough always towards first slip and the ball rotates along the seam.He gets more movement and topspin.

This is obviously not the norm as the grip Jenner/Warne talk about is along the seam. We're not particularly worried but it just seemed a bit odd ;)
 
danovice said:
We're not particularly worried but it just seemed a bit odd ;)
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You're right not to be worried. He'll go through a few phases of development if he keeps it up.

At his age just bowling either ball and landing near a good length on the stumps will see him get lots of ctaches hit off his bowling I bet. The worst ball is a short ball, especially down legside, because even kids who cant bat at all can manage to score there.
 
Is there a case for scrambling the seam to get natural variation? i.e one will really turn and one will go straight. I guess that limits the amount of drift though and I read somewhere that a scrambled ball only has a 1 in 7 chance of landing on the seam although I reckon that it would be more like a 1 in 3-4 chance myself.
 
the best tips given to me for grip the ball to do leg spin is this you should grip the ball with your index finger (next to thumb) and the middle finger....after holding this you drop it from the 80-90 degrees level and then check the spin and bounce you will get from it..... i have done it and got the excellent result.... you better try once.... thanks
 
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