Symptom: It was going brilliantly only a day/week/month/season ago and I thought I'd cracked it. Suddenly now nothing feels right and it's all over the place and embarrassing, I feel like I'm back to square one and might as well give up and just become yet another passable-but-dull dibbly-dobbly merchant.
Suggestion: Don't let it get to you. Your inner Shane Warne, is in there somewhere, even if he seems to have been eaten by your inner Ian Salisbury. You've found it before, and unless your arms have fallen off, you'll find it again. Concentrate on the general 'height, balance, rhythm' bit, and then watch out for any of the specific symptoms mentioned here to see if my suggestions are any good.
Symptom: It was going brilliantly when I practised yesterday on my own, and I turned up to nets tonight full of beans and hopeful of doing well, but it hasn't clicked and I'm getting carted by this b*st*rd who's taking the p*ss. I know when it goes well I can beat far better players than him all ends up, but at the moment even when it's not a rank bad ball it's just a gentle slowly-turning lollipop without any of the fizz in the air, and he's able to just watch it and slap it.
Suggestion: Forget him, and don't get drawn into a contest. If you're bowling well, then that's a time to have a little battle with a batsman and see if you have enough control to execute a plan to get him. If you're bowling badly, then the contest is between you and your body/muscle memory, not between you and him. Don't start trying to bowl magic balls and all of your googlies and other party tricks just to try and shut him up and get revenge - ignore him and look forward to having a quiet inward gloat when you're bowling well next week and make him look foolish for most of your spell. How people play in nets is different to matches anyway. Try and clear your head and focus on rhythm. If necessary, retreat to an empty net and bowl at a set of stumps. When going to nets, try and get there in time to warm up and find your radar/rhythm without any hecklers to watch or axe murderers to hit you around. It's a lot easier to bowl against a batsman if you've got the looseners out of the way and experienced the surge in confidence that comes from seeing the ball dip nicely onto a length and then rag sharply away.
Symptom: I can bowl a wicked googly/topsinner/[other trick ball] when practised in isolation. However when I try and surprise a batsman with it, it goes awry and never lands on the spot I'm hoping for.
Suggestion: You are concentrating too much on what's different about the variation, and this is taking up excess amounts of valuable 'CPU power' which should be spent on keeping the overall action balanced and rhythmical. Remember, the basic biomechanics of getting the ball over 22 yards are the same for a googly as a for leg-break - if you concentrate too much about the hand action you can forget some of the other bits. If you take this approach, then the worst that can happen is that you bowl a flipper that doesn't flip, or a not-especially-wrong'un, but that at least is on reasonable line and length and isn't a complete disaster.
Although I still occasionally spend some time working on a particular party trick, I adopted a rule of thumb which was that whenever I tried to bowl a variation, or to try and put a bit more oomph in, or even whenever I bowled a bad ball, the next ball I bowled in practice would always be the stock leg-break. The reasons were (a) the stock ball is, er, my stock ball, and I'm trying to get to a stage where I can land a *reasonable* ball at will; (b) as mentioned, the basic biomechanics are the same anyway, so you need to keep grooving the overall action, and (c) you don't bowl these special variations in a vacuum... it's important to practice making the [subtle] shift in action needed to bowl a googly in the middle of an over of legbreaks - you can't ask the batsman in a match to allow you to warm up with a couple of practice goes.
Symptom: I'm bowling pretty nicely most of the time, but still keep bowling the odd comedy [as opposed to merely bad] ball. I'm still a bit nervous in matches and feel like I'm inventing an action every time I come on.
Suggestion: You know what you're doing, you just need to groove it and build muscle memory. Ignore everything else in this column. Clear your head. Focus on your target. Run in rhythmically. Bowl.
Suggestion: Don't let it get to you. Your inner Shane Warne, is in there somewhere, even if he seems to have been eaten by your inner Ian Salisbury. You've found it before, and unless your arms have fallen off, you'll find it again. Concentrate on the general 'height, balance, rhythm' bit, and then watch out for any of the specific symptoms mentioned here to see if my suggestions are any good.
Symptom: It was going brilliantly when I practised yesterday on my own, and I turned up to nets tonight full of beans and hopeful of doing well, but it hasn't clicked and I'm getting carted by this b*st*rd who's taking the p*ss. I know when it goes well I can beat far better players than him all ends up, but at the moment even when it's not a rank bad ball it's just a gentle slowly-turning lollipop without any of the fizz in the air, and he's able to just watch it and slap it.
Suggestion: Forget him, and don't get drawn into a contest. If you're bowling well, then that's a time to have a little battle with a batsman and see if you have enough control to execute a plan to get him. If you're bowling badly, then the contest is between you and your body/muscle memory, not between you and him. Don't start trying to bowl magic balls and all of your googlies and other party tricks just to try and shut him up and get revenge - ignore him and look forward to having a quiet inward gloat when you're bowling well next week and make him look foolish for most of your spell. How people play in nets is different to matches anyway. Try and clear your head and focus on rhythm. If necessary, retreat to an empty net and bowl at a set of stumps. When going to nets, try and get there in time to warm up and find your radar/rhythm without any hecklers to watch or axe murderers to hit you around. It's a lot easier to bowl against a batsman if you've got the looseners out of the way and experienced the surge in confidence that comes from seeing the ball dip nicely onto a length and then rag sharply away.
Symptom: I can bowl a wicked googly/topsinner/[other trick ball] when practised in isolation. However when I try and surprise a batsman with it, it goes awry and never lands on the spot I'm hoping for.
Suggestion: You are concentrating too much on what's different about the variation, and this is taking up excess amounts of valuable 'CPU power' which should be spent on keeping the overall action balanced and rhythmical. Remember, the basic biomechanics of getting the ball over 22 yards are the same for a googly as a for leg-break - if you concentrate too much about the hand action you can forget some of the other bits. If you take this approach, then the worst that can happen is that you bowl a flipper that doesn't flip, or a not-especially-wrong'un, but that at least is on reasonable line and length and isn't a complete disaster.
Although I still occasionally spend some time working on a particular party trick, I adopted a rule of thumb which was that whenever I tried to bowl a variation, or to try and put a bit more oomph in, or even whenever I bowled a bad ball, the next ball I bowled in practice would always be the stock leg-break. The reasons were (a) the stock ball is, er, my stock ball, and I'm trying to get to a stage where I can land a *reasonable* ball at will; (b) as mentioned, the basic biomechanics are the same anyway, so you need to keep grooving the overall action, and (c) you don't bowl these special variations in a vacuum... it's important to practice making the [subtle] shift in action needed to bowl a googly in the middle of an over of legbreaks - you can't ask the batsman in a match to allow you to warm up with a couple of practice goes.
Symptom: I'm bowling pretty nicely most of the time, but still keep bowling the odd comedy [as opposed to merely bad] ball. I'm still a bit nervous in matches and feel like I'm inventing an action every time I come on.
Suggestion: You know what you're doing, you just need to groove it and build muscle memory. Ignore everything else in this column. Clear your head. Focus on your target. Run in rhythmically. Bowl.