Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

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Cleanprophet said:
I can't imagine the missus would be too impressed!

It's one of things I wish I had, somewhere to practice at home. The garden is like a quagmire. If I had a nice little area to practice in the back garden/yard, I'd probably do 20min-30min everyday.
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Yeah my wife hates it, our kitchen roof a few years back had scuff marks all over it when I used to flick with less control and accuracy and the odd ball would hit the roof! Like you I'm struggling with somewhere to practice at the moment, I'm contemplating hiring out a badminton bay at the local community centre - £9.00 an hour and have an hour just grooving my run-up and action through the crease as I need more work with the muscle memory aspect of the new action. I could video it and then have a look at how it's going, but I hate paying for it when really there should be places you can go and do this outside what with the Government banging on about obesity and recommending we all participate in sports activities.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Yeah my wife hates it, our kitchen roof a few years back had scuff marks all over it when I used to flick with less control and accuracy and the odd ball would hit the roof! Like you I'm struggling with somewhere to practice at the moment, I'm contemplating hiring out a badminton bay at the local community centre - £9.00 an hour and have an hour just grooving my run-up and action through the crease as I need more work with the muscle memory aspect of the new action. I could video it and then have a look at how it's going, but I hate paying for it when really there should be places you can go and do this outside what with the Government banging on about obesity and recommending we all participate in sports activities.
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Well, as we know, in Australia there are many parks that have batting lanes there for people to have a bat and a bowl. Can you imagine that in this country? I'm fortunate that my club has a nice four lane outdoor nets that I am able to use and it's more than acceptable. The only issue is the weather but it's generally not too bad. As long as it's not raining, then it's not a problem.

I ended last season with all kinds of problems with my action (losing the legspinner after developing the googly). The time spent in the outdoor nets from September to January really was crucial to me getting my legspinner back. In the process I changed some things in my action that were not right from the very start and my bowling action is now better than ever - although I'm still grooving the action with the changes and getting the new run up feeling natural. Having a net area to work in was vital. Then, of course, filming the bowling to watch it back is just as important. I remember saying this a couple of years ago when I first filmed my bowling, but everyone should film their bowling because you need to know how your action looks. For the most part, you will have to coach yourself, so it is essential to know what your bowling looks like. Professional bowlers spend hours and hours watching their bowling and for good reason.

It was filming my bowling that helped me pick up on some very basic errors I had in my bowling. That was also when I first realised that I wasn't cocking my wrist right the way to the point of release, so I wasn't get the full wrist flick. As I said a couple of week's ago, I'm now cocking my wrist right through my action and getting that full snap of the wrist. I used to try it and it just didn't work. For some reason (probably all the remedial work I've been doing on that legspin wrist position) I'm now finally getting that complete wrist action that you really want.

Now I've got about 6 weeks to get the action smooth and consistent.
 
Hello everyone, I can't remember the last time I was on here but it must have been a while ago. I had to stop playing cricket as I moved house and started working long hours including Sundays :-(

But things have settled down a bit now so I am getting back into it. I've got my wrist and bicep up to strength again and my callouses back, after a lot of hand to hand work at home, and have also had a few winter nets but I just found them frustrating waiting around to bowl with three or four bowlers in each net. So today I found a local club and had some good luck when I stumbled across someone helpful who said I could use their net whenever I want. I guess I might join their village club. I've just got back from 90 minutes of golden solitude in the net. Line and length was erratic for a couple of overs but then I got it going and bowled 20-30 leg breaks in a row I was pretty happy with. I need to work on my stock ball as I'm sure I started suffering from googly syndrome the last time I was playing in a match. The leg breaks were all at sea but I pitched two googlies perfectly, there's something wrong there. I am trying not to bowl the googly or practice the release at home but I couldn't resist and bowled a couple today, it felt dirty but good. I have also added a slider to the Darth Spin repertoire, I am pretty happy with it and might give it a whirl in a match if I'm bowling well. I might try and replace my googly with the slider as it's much harder to pick and doesn't run the risk of messing up the leg break.
 
Darth Spin said:
Hello everyone, I can't remember the last time I was on here but it must have been a while ago. I had to stop playing cricket as I moved house and started working long hours including Sundays :-(

But things have settled down a bit now so I am getting back into it. I've got my wrist and bicep up to strength again and my callouses back, after a lot of hand to hand work at home, and have also had a few winter nets but I just found them frustrating waiting around to bowl with three or four bowlers in each net. So today I found a local club and had some good luck when I stumbled across someone helpful who said I could use their net whenever I want. I guess I might join their village club. I've just got back from 90 minutes of golden solitude in the net. Line and length was erratic for a couple of overs but then I got it going and bowled 20-30 leg breaks in a row I was pretty happy with. I need to work on my stock ball as I'm sure I started suffering from googly syndrome the last time I was playing in a match. The leg breaks were all at sea but I pitched two googlies perfectly, there's something wrong there. I am trying not to bowl the googly or practice the release at home but I couldn't resist and bowled a couple today, it felt dirty but good. I have also added a slider to the Darth Spin repertoire, I am pretty happy with it and might give it a whirl in a match if I'm bowling well. I might try and replace my googly with the slider as it's much harder to pick and doesn't run the risk of messing up the leg break.
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I recommend (unless you want to be a Googly bowler) to stop bowling the Googly totally, otherwise I reckon you can kiss your Leg break a long goodbye. Same as you, when I first identified the problem and thought I better stop bowling the Googly I would get fed-up with the lack of progress with the leg break and have the odd Googly to cheer myself up. I think that went on for the best part of a season and the leg break didn't come back. It was only when I decided enough was enough and vowed never to bowl a Googly till the leg break came back was there any sign of an improvement and it took me two seasons if I remember correctly.
 
Darth Spin said:
I heed your warning, no more dark side googlies!
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I can't bowl one anymore, I've got a ropey Top-Spinner, which if I put a massive amount of effort into it comes in a fraction, but to be honest if you have a good stock ball and you can vary your leg break, a top-spinner takes them by surprise and they think it's a Googly anyway because it is so different to your leg break, even a leg-break with masses of top-spin is a useful ball mixed in with your turning leg-break I find.
 
Darth Spin said:
I am in Northamptonshire and whatever level they throw me in at!
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What do you reckon your level is, I play 4th XI and occasional 3rd XI, I find 3rd XI players are precious about their wickets so tend to play you with more respect. Although I guess levels are different depending on leagues and stuff so is pretty subjective?
 
someblokecalleddave said:
I can't bowl one anymore, I've got a ropey Top-Spinner, which if I put a massive amount of effort into it comes in a fraction, but to be honest if you have a good stock ball and you can vary your leg break, a top-spinner takes them by surprise and they think it's a Googly anyway because it is so different to your leg break, even a leg-break with masses of top-spin is a useful ball mixed in with your turning leg-break I find.
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I am pretty happy with my pseudo-flipper (for some reason it breaks slightly to the leg side most times but I can bowl the odd straight one) and my embryonic slider as variations, for some reason I have never got to grips with a top spinner but I think that's down to a lack of effort and commitment to learning the delivery properly, whereas the googly came quite naturally and easily. But is the googly really worth it? I dunno, I've only taken two wickets with it. One of those wickets was a big one and helped turned the game but I still don't think it's worth sacrificing the leg break just to look snazzy and turn the ball the other way. Having a proper leg break is far more useful, let's face it.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
What do you reckon your level is, I play 4th XI and occasional 3rd XI, I find 3rd XI players are precious about their wickets so tend to play you with more respect. Although I guess levels are different depending on leagues and stuff so is pretty subjective?
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When I started bowling leg spin I started off on the second team (there's no third team). I took wickets consistently and was promoted to the first team but the captain didn't bowl me, I played four games for the first XI including one where we had 280 runs to play with and needed ten wickets to get the outright win (you get extra points for bowling the oppo out) yet still I didn't get a bowl. After that I injured my finger and then played briefly for the second team for a few matches before taking a break from cricket.
 
Darth Spin said:
I am pretty happy with my pseudo-flipper (for some reason it breaks slightly to the leg side most times but I can bowl the odd straight one) and my embryonic slider as variations, for some reason I have never got to grips with a top spinner but I think that's down to a lack of effort and commitment to learning the delivery properly, whereas the googly came quite naturally and easily. But is the googly really worth it? I dunno, I've only taken two wickets with it. One of those wickets was a big one and helped turned the game but I still don't think it's worth sacrificing the leg break just to look snazzy and turn the ball the other way. Having a proper leg break is far more useful, let's face it.
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Yeah everyone without exception says if you're a wrist-spinner first and foremost have a Leg break that you can bowl properly. I found the exact same thing - Googly was easy to bowl so much more so than the Leg Break hence the Googly syndrome. Yeah I took wickets with it, combining it with a Flipper that broke like a little leg break, I may have bowled pies with a crap leg break and then relatively decent flippers back then and then a killer Googly, I had one season where I had 3 or 4 x 4-fers on the trot in consecutive games as I recall.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
I recommend (unless you want to be a Googly bowler) to stop bowling the Googly totally, otherwise I reckon you can kiss your Leg break a long goodbye.
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Obviously, this is a problem I've had recently too. I remember MacGill saying that he suffered from it also and it took him 6 months of hard work to get his legspinner back.

I could bowl the legspinner reasonably well and far more naturally that the googly. There was some suggestion that those who struggled to bowl the googly would be more prone to losing their legspinner after working hard on the googly. But, I think it is much more likely just as simple as what has already been said: working on the googly before the legspinner is mastered (or close to it) could lead to the loss of the legspinner.

For me, inadvertently, my arm movement changed and as it was moving up to the delivery position it was moving towards the legside of the target. This made the googly much easier to bowl but it lead to me losing the legspinner. It's only now, after about 6-7 months of work that I've got the legspinner back. I didn't try to bowl a single googly during that time. I only tried to bowl a googly recently and it was mainly to see if I could bowl one and then go straight back to the legspinners, which I was able to.

The best exercise I did during the last 6-7 months was bowling over short distances and getting that feeling of the fingers dragging over the ball again.
 
Cleanprophet said:
The best exercise I did during the last 6-7 months was bowling over short distances and getting that feeling of the fingers dragging over the ball again.
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Lovely to hear someone else echoing this! I just see short distance work as crucial for technique, the equivalent of slow tempo practice for musicians.

I just had my first bowl of the season off about 12-15 yards, it pretty much came back from when I left off last season so quite encouraged. Just tried to bowl topspun legbreaks, going for maximum spin. I need to buy some more balls... any recommendations?
 
Interesting and I did feel this but I was avoiding too much of this.. Seems worth trying if you had good results... Cheers


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boogiespinner said:
Lovely to hear someone else echoing this! I just see short distance work as crucial for technique, the equivalent of slow tempo practice for musicians.

I just had my first bowl of the season off about 12-15 yards, it pretty much came back from when I left off last season so quite encouraged. Just tried to bowl topspun legbreaks, going for maximum spin. I need to buy some more balls... any recommendations?
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Off ebay cheap crappy ones, or bags of 2nd hand ones that come up every now and then.
 
hemant said:
Interesting and I did feel this but I was avoiding too much of this.. Seems worth trying if you had good results... Cheers
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One thing you can try is to bowl a few from around 12 yards, then move back to about 15 yards and bowl a few, then back again to about 18 yards for a few more and then bowl some off the full length. I would have about a dozen balls and do that little drill. If I felt my fingers dragging over the ball and the ball spun quite sharply, then I'd move back a few yards. If I didn't get that feeling, then I'd carry on bowling from 12 yards until I did get it. The aim is to bowl from the full length and get that nice side spin on the ball.

This is something really for people who are struggling to put much side spin on the ball. Otherwise, bowling over a short length is probably only worth doing half a dozen times during a warm up.
 
Can you guys post a sequence of images that shows the wrist and finger position when you are bowling the big legbreak?
I am struggling to get the ring finger over the ball and when I try that position with the ball in hand, it seems
impossible to have any kind of support on the ball if the index and middle fingers slip over to the other side.
May be I have small fingers?.
This I feel is critical to rip the ball, and I am not happy with the revs I am getting.
 
Shane Warne at 0:23

The wrist is mostly facing forwards and he seems pull back the wrist and go over the seam.
It seems like you need a long ring finger to do that.
 
Hers
tcs said:
Shane Warne at 0:23

The wrist is mostly facing forwards and he seems pull back the wrist and go over the seam.
It seems like you need a long ring finger to do that.
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Here a question for you... Do you rest your thumb on the ball? Small hands doesn't mean you can't rip it. I have smaller hands and it's made no difference to me.
 
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