Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

Agree with Dave, however, because you are so far away Russell, I cannot work out what you are doing when you bowl leg and off. Do you find you bowl more leg when using your fingers and off when not? Lovely strong back when batting... however, I do get the impression that you are holding back a little ;)

Anthony is batting well, however, do try to encourage him to move his feet more. Lovely action when he gets in the right place but he loses power when he compensates by moving his arms rather than his legs.
 
Chippy I'm in the same boat, my bowling after 6 years has suddenly all come together and I'm bowling like I've never bowled before - accurate with, dip, spin and drift and the ball turns off the pitch viciously and guess what - I get a sore finger which kind of for me indicates I'm doing it correctly. And I'm taking wickets!!!

Good one Dave. All the hard work and practise has paid off. I know what you mean by the sore finger being a good indicator. By the sounds of your bowling form you can afford to ease off a little on your practise at the moment ? 6 years for my son as well.

Jimmy went really well at the school cricket trials the other day. He is more into it at training. He uses music to psyche himself up at our practise sessions and in between deliveries he bops to the beat and carries on but at least he is having fun, which is the main thing, after all.
 
Good one Dave. All the hard work and practise has paid off. I know what you mean by the sore finger being a good indicator. By the sounds of your bowling form you can afford to ease off a little on your practise at the moment ? 6 years for my son as well.

Jimmy went really well at the school cricket trials the other day. He is more into it at training. He uses music to psyche himself up at our practise sessions and in between deliveries he bops to the beat and carries on but at least he is having fun, which is the main thing, after all.

I think with kids that fun aspect has to be a key part of it, so if the music is a part of it when he's training then so be it. I think it's so easy for kids to lose interest if it's not fun or they don't sense they're getting any benefit out of it for themselves. They have to feel like they've got some control over the situation especially when they're of a certain age and have a sense that what they're doing is deemed as being successful. Over the summer break here we had this idea where we set up (Not related directly to cricket) a circuit through the woods next to the paddock and do time trials. Both my kids were well up for it, but I made the fatal mistake of getting carried away and reverting back to being a 'Competitor' rather than a facilitator and set a very fast PB for the circuit, that my eldest son Ben tried to beat on a couple of ocassions and simply couldn't and that killed the whole game dead in the water, which was a shame as up till that point it was such a good idea that they were both into. The lesson learned was that at this particular age I reckon that they need to feel like they're succeeding and gradually being able to get one over on their old man and other people, it builds their confidence.

With the bowling, yeah big big advances, massive changes a wholly new approach and completely different outcomes. But then you go and play a side that that the opening batsmen between them put on 230 runs between them and you have an ineffective day, although I've probably done something bad to my litttle finger early in the game fielding, so wasn't able to grip the ball 100% (It looks a mess at the minute). The only consolation was that others said that I bowled well and would have had a wicket if one of the 'Pie eating' fielders had caught a ball that was skied out to Mid - wicket and it was the bloke that scored 147 not out. Plus once I got home I had 24 balls in the paddock just see if I'd 'Lost it' and hadn't it was probably that he was just a good batsman. I'll have to get the video going once my fingers a little better.
 
I posted a couple of comments.

Agree with Dave, however, because you are so far away Russell, I cannot work out what you are doing when you bowl leg and off. Do you find you bowl more leg when using your fingers and off when not? Lovely strong back when batting... however, I do get the impression that you are holding back a little ;)

Anthony is batting well, however, do try to encourage him to move his feet more. Lovely action when he gets in the right place but he loses power when he compensates by moving his arms rather than his legs.

I'll try and get a bit more zoom next time and possible hand the camera from a height, yes with finger spin i usually aim for around leg stump spinning ideally outside off but in matches i generally get more success with the quicker flatter middle stump delivery. With the wrist spin which i have only started in matches this year I just try and bowl with a lot of loop to entice a big shot with the hope of being caught or stumped. Reached my bowling goals this season though and i'm sure part of that is down to the new looping ball :D (W 32 - BB 3/18 - AVG 25.53 - S/R 34.56 - RPO 4.43) With 2 possibly 3 games left

Batting wise I just hope for the best :D It's slowly improving there though I'm averaging around 7.5 compared to 3 last season and Ant has had his average fly up from 2 to 20. I just can't wait to see him play with a straight bat in matches like he does in practice.
 
I just had a bit of a bowl out on the paddock. Went well - generally good accuracy, hitting the may several times, getting drift and turn off the wicket. But still forgetting to get up on the ball of my foot and twisting at the start, then when I remember massive difference - enormous bounce and turn! Just got to keep it going through the winter and staying fit, at 51 that's a bit of a challenge sometimes!
 
Hooray, Im back in the modern world, The internet is connected!!!
Well my bowling is still going well although the wheels did fall off for a while today. I managed to get back on track and bowling well again which was satisfying. I have been working on trying to get methodical about solving problems that arise and getting back on track as quickly as possible.

(RELAX) So far the first thing I do when bowling badly is just stop, take a few breathes and relax.

(BOWL SLOWER) Then think about slowing down my action as I have a tendancy to rush.My fast bowling past keeps butting in

(RHYTHM) Next comes rhythm, reading Philpott he says concentrate on rhythm and arms and legs just fall back into place. Doctortran mentioned to me ages ago about having a few markers in your action to fall back on. My particular ones are when my back foot lands my arms are crossing each other across my face and the other one is my leading arm reaches the directly pointing down position as my front foot lands.

(ARMS) The next thing is my arms. This is my own particular peculiarity. I know when my arms are working in unison so to speak and when I'm bowling badly my bowling arm is racing ahead and trying to do all the work itself. I double my arms over in my action and by concentrating on doing this and keeping my leading arm strong things tend to fall back into place

(MOMENTUM) Another thing that I do is get lazy at times and find I'm not pushing through my action. I either land on my back foot without any forward momentum or I dont brace up my front leg properly or I don't follow through in a straight line directly at the target.

(POSTURE) Standing taller and keeping the back strong seems to help towards the end of a long training session.

This has really helped me and hopefully means I can keep bowling consistently and have a good season the year. I'm sure I'll find other problems as time goes on but at least I should have the method to fix most things and the more I practice the less these problems should crop up.
42 days to the season starts.!!!
 
Here's a wierd one. I was mucking around with a few wrong uns the other day at the end of a session and something strange began to happen The balls were drifting in the same direction as for a leg break (off to leg) and then turning from off to leg as a wrong un should. There was no wind so the only thing I could think of was they were swinging like an inswinger. They are mostly topspinners really as they are only turning slightly. Has anyone else experienced this???
 
Here's a wierd one. I was mucking around with a few wrong uns the other day at the end of a session and something strange began to happen The balls were drifting in the same direction as for a leg break (off to leg) and then turning from off to leg as a wrong un should. There was no wind so the only thing I could think of was they were swinging like an inswinger. They are mostly topspinners really as they are only turning slightly. Has anyone else experienced this???

Nope, not something I've ever seen in my bowling. I'll look out for it though. Good to see you back as a regular though Chippy!
 
Blimey talk about 3 steps forward 2 steps back. My bowling's been coming along very nicely and I thought a lot of stuff was resolved, but today I video'd my new bowling action and there's still shed loads wrong with it. I'll have to upload it to siliconcoach and see what they say on there, but it seems where I've resolved about 3 different things another 2 things have gone wrong. I'm not getting side on enough is one of the issues, but I reckon if I get that back - it may resolve many of the issues and increase the spin, drift and dip. But other than that I have a proper run up now with a bound and generally things are going well. I need to post up some old footage of me bowling with the skip just to show how far I've come in a year, as it was this time last year that I resolved to get rid of the skip.
 
Blimey talk about 3 steps forward 2 steps back. My bowling's been coming along very nicely and I thought a lot of stuff was resolved, but today I video'd my new bowling action and there's still shed loads wrong with it. I'll have to upload it to siliconcoach and see what they say on there, but it seems where I've resolved about 3 different things another 2 things have gone wrong. I'm not getting side on enough is one of the issues, but I reckon if I get that back - it may resolve many of the issues and increase the spin, drift and dip. But other than that I have a proper run up now with a bound and generally things are going well. I need to post up some old footage of me bowling with the skip just to show how far I've come in a year, as it was this time last year that I resolved to get rid of the skip.

How frustrating is it, you think youve got it and then something else goes wrong!!!!
Are you still bowling well though? Ive given up on trying to get the perfect action. Too many times Ive thrown away things that work just because they don't look right on video or are a bit unorthodox. For me the most important thing I have found is to really understand my action, flaws and all.

On another subject, I find when I'm at the nets I bowl ok at first but the wrist isn't really flicking for the first 10 overs or so. But by the end of the session its really flicking and the ball is ripping. The thing I struggle with is how do I get it coming out ripping from the start of the session, or more importantly with the season not far away, the first over in a game. It has been quite cold here so I thought maybe it just takes a bit to warm up but even on warm days it takes a bit.
Any ideas???
 
How frustrating is it, you think youve got it and then something else goes wrong!!!!
Are you still bowling well though? Ive given up on trying to get the perfect action. Too many times Ive thrown away things that work just because they don't look right on video or are a bit unorthodox. For me the most important thing I have found is to really understand my action, flaws and all.

On another subject, I find when I'm at the nets I bowl ok at first but the wrist isn't really flicking for the first 10 overs or so. But by the end of the session its really flicking and the ball is ripping. The thing I struggle with is how do I get it coming out ripping from the start of the session, or more importantly with the season not far away, the first over in a game. It has been quite cold here so I thought maybe it just takes a bit to warm up but even on warm days it takes a bit.
Any ideas???

Yeah I had that and was banging my head against the wall, but because of the old Googly syndrome up until recently, I was still bowling with a really 'Fingery' action as opposed to a good old solid cocked wrist action and for the first time in two years I tried the cocked wrist action and since then I've been fine. Liz and a couple of others on silicon coach have gave me some pointers and at the moment apart from the fact that I've got a bit chest on at the minute I'm bowling really well and all the wides at the start has been resolved. I get more energy going forwards now and things have come together including a decent run up. But the cocked wrist seemed to be the thing with the accuracy.
 
I had a fairly decent bowl at the weekend after struggling to find my rhythm during a match for a good few weeks, 5-1-19-1, took that wicket with my first ball as well. Nice leggie on middle stump and the guy tried to swing through the line, outside edge way up in the air and caught at backward point. i bowled some of the best stuff I have all season and felt pretty much in control although my googlies were all too far outside off stump and far too easy to pick because of the massive difference in line. The thing I've really been working on is using the crease, with the best variation being as wide as possible coming over the wicket and really accentuating that angle across the batman and getting it to turn as far as i can. amazing just how much that messes even good batsmen up. I could have easily had 5 but it was one of those ridiculous spells where everything spins past the stumps, past the keeper or batsmen edge good balls just past or even over the top of the stumps! Sad that the season is coming to an end really as I feel that if i had a few more months to really kick on I'd be bowling some super stuff but instead we'll stop and I'll have to try and pick up here somehow in march when I'll be bowling from bloody memory. In the nets when I'm really loose and everything's warm I can tie a batsman down completely, the lads have even nick named my top spinner the 'elbow ball' because its rearing up so high that its catching them all on the elbow and causing a fair bit of pain! although i can never quite get it exactly the same during a match, mostly because I'm never warm enough and the pitches are rarely hard enough. So who else votes we all club together and ************ off to Australia for the winter eh!
 
I had a fairly decent bowl at the weekend after struggling to find my rhythm during a match for a good few weeks, 5-1-19-1, took that wicket with my first ball as well. Nice leggie on middle stump and the guy tried to swing through the line, outside edge way up in the air and caught at backward point. i bowled some of the best stuff I have all season and felt pretty much in control although my googlies were all too far outside off stump and far too easy to pick because of the massive difference in line. The thing I've really been working on is using the crease, with the best variation being as wide as possible coming over the wicket and really accentuating that angle across the batman and getting it to turn as far as i can. amazing just how much that messes even good batsmen up. I could have easily had 5 but it was one of those ridiculous spells where everything spins past the stumps, past the keeper or batsmen edge good balls just past or even over the top of the stumps! Sad that the season is coming to an end really as I feel that if i had a few more months to really kick on I'd be bowling some super stuff but instead we'll stop and I'll have to try and pick up here somehow in march when I'll be bowling from bloody memory. In the nets when I'm really loose and everything's warm I can tie a batsman down completely, the lads have even nick named my top spinner the 'elbow ball' because its rearing up so high that its catching them all on the elbow and causing a fair bit of pain! although i can never quite get it exactly the same during a match, mostly because I'm never warm enough and the pitches are rarely hard enough. So who else votes we all club together and ************ off to Australia for the winter eh!

It's a nice thought, but they wont have me now, not that I'm 51. Going to Australia is one of my last ambitions, it used to be on the basis of going surfing, it looks more likely that it'll be to get some respite from arthiritis or some other ailment now!!!
 
I've just bowled a couple outside the house tonight and focused on getting side-on and it worked, I've just got to get rythmic with the side on aspect. It makes such a massive difference to the amount of turn I get, I reckon next year If I get this together I should have a good season and maybe get some more games.
 
Seems like everyone is getting it together. I just had a blinding session. Its really just so satifying when it works.
My wrist started to really flick early too which was good considering it was quite cold.
Get yourself all out to oz, We can form a team of leggies only, with not a boring medium pacer in sight!!!
Ive always thought a different take on the iconic surfing movie "The Endless Summer" would make a perfect lifestyle, just travelling the world playing cricket.
Seems like silicon coach has helped you out a fair bit Dave?
 
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