Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

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Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

legspinner_don;398030 said:
As you may know by now, I've recently come back to cricket after some time off. I've always been a leggie, all through childhood, and I really want to get successful with it. This forum is a great resource, and thus I'd like to pose another question/scenario which, hopefully, you'll be able to answer/give some advice.

First some background, I came back to cricket half way through last season after 5 years. In my first nets session, I turned my arm over a few times with my mate before bowling to batsmen. I had a run-up of a few yards and just bowled - my natural action if you will. As the season progressed, I looked on the internet and found a few websites: Dave's blogs, "The Art of Wrist-spin", the youtube vidoes etc. and gradually worked on my action, taking on the advice. I generally bowled ok in the nets, with the amount of turn and accuracy varying from week to week. The season finished with one over under my belt in game situations (the less said about that the better!).

After that I did not bowl again until last month once indoor nets started. Since then, I've gone through many peaks and troughs: sometimes I've turned the ball I mile, other times I've bowled like a complete drain with virtually no turn. Last week I ordered 6 balls and have had 4 sessions this week, 2 nets and 2 by myself - and I can't see much progress. Basically I'm fiddling with some part of my action every single ball - nothing's been spared: grip, front foot, back foot, release, front arm, bowling arm, the flick, the run-up, the follow-through, the pivot.... I've mucked about with just about every part of a wrist bowlers action, and I'm getting frustrated. I don't like having such an unstructured plan.

So basically, I was hoping you guys have found yourself in similar situations and have some recommendations as to how to proceed. I don't know whether to just run-up and bowl, and work on things from there... or go back to the start, armed with Philpott's advice and begin from the beginning.
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This is the exact same boat I'm in at the moment I even for a moment thought to myself 'I wonder if I should just try and bowl straight and not even try and spin the ball' - that's how disillusioned I am at the minute. If you find the answer to your last paragraph, let me know.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

shrek;398055 said:
Something that helped me out get some consistency in turn is by looking at my own action. Most of the time, it is quite difficult to control the wrist position accurately enough - so videotaping your action (esp wrist position from front on) might help. I didn;t have a videocam at hand, so I went through my actions in front of a mirror trying to stop at each point to see if anything was going wrong - helped me a lot.
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If you can't record yourself on video then a mirror's the next best thing, but I do think filming your action, and from several angles, is the best shortcut to improving your action. You need to look at your action in slow motion and if you've half an idea of what a wrist spinner needs to do it should be pretty clear where you can fine tune your action. It'll just stand out where it doesn't naturally flow. I said you needed to look at several angles, and this is because only the other day I found a major flaw in my action that I simply couldn't have seen from front-on.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

I'm sorry Dave that you're finding this. If it's any consolation, I wish I could have the sucess you've had since you took the art up!

I had a decent nets session today. I did bowl a lot of shit balls, but I went with quite low expectations. My mantra was "As long as I rip the ball with a good pivot and follow through then I'm happy". I got smacked a lot, and god forbid what my figures would have been, but I actually enjoyed bowling today. I relaxed, and considered whatever the batsman did as incidental to my own performance. My action's not perfect, but I did get the odd few to come out nicely. About half the balls I got smacked for were full tosses, which hopefully means I just need to adjust my timing slightly to improve the length.

Perhaps the hardest thing in legspin/wrist spin bowling is getting a regular, repeatable, consistent action. To be able to bowl the same way for each ball. I'm still learning so I'm happy to experiment for now, but I am concerned that my action seems to change with each ball I bowl.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

legspinner_don;398067 said:
About half the balls I got smacked for were full tosses, which hopefully means I just need to adjust my timing slightly to improve the length.
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The full toss is 10 times better than the long hop to a legspinner and it shows you are pitching it up. Better to overpitch than under.

How good are these guys that you are bowling at ? You have to set aside some time to bowl at no batsman and just zone in on targets on the pitch, real and imaginary.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

Spiderlounge;398063 said:
If you can't record yourself on video then a mirror's the next best thing, but I do think filming your action, and from several angles, is the best shortcut to improving your action. You need to look at your action in slow motion and if you've half an idea of what a wrist spinner needs to do it should be pretty clear where you can fine tune your action. It'll just stand out where it doesn't naturally flow. I said you needed to look at several angles, and this is because only the other day I found a major flaw in my action that I simply couldn't have seen from front-on.
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Good place to post the video is here. You get people like jim, liz ward, doctortran, goldenarm, gundalf, dave, sadspinner etc, picking up things in the footage that can help with your action.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

macca;398070 said:
The full toss is 10 times better than the long hop to a legspinner and it shows you are pitching it up. Better to overpitch than under.

How good are these guys that you are bowling at ? You have to set aside some time to bowl at no batsman and just zone in on targets on the pitch, real and imaginary.
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2/3 of the batsman are current/ex-Scotland, but I also had the chance to bowl to batsman more at my level, when I did slightly better. I have been bowling by myself for about an hour in the park before I went to nets. I'm going to have a rest day today but might go and have a bowl on Sat/Sun.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

Hi there everyone – this is my first post on this forum so be gentle with me.

By way of background I returned to playing cricket last season after nearly 20 years out of the game. I was drafted into my local club side as an opening batsman and I had a pretty good season – averaging around 20 with a couple of good knocks in the 40s (although I fell short of a maiden 50).

However I had to find something to do in the nets when I wasn’t batting and when I was a kid I used to bowl some quite useful fast medium. 20 years down the line my body is not quite up to fast medium – and the older version of this translated into useless medium pacers that any half-decent batsman could cart around willy-nilly.

I noticed that the team didn’t have any leg spinners so – having never bowled spin before – I decided to reinvent myself as a leggie. I only had about a month of pre-season to practice so wasn’t really that ambitious – I went into the season with only two deliveries - a ‘stock’ leg break (loopy, slow and not much turn) and an ‘arm ball’ (quicker with no spin). Not much to write home about although my previous experience of seam bowling means that my accuracy was better than I’d expected.

I had no aspirations for my bowling but I was pleasantly surprised how things turned out. Having been turned to in desperation when the opposition were 150-0 I took 3-30 in my first match - which included my first ever stumping. Until I experienced the sheer joy of seeing a batsman stranded out of his crease having swiped at a ball that simply wasn’t there to be hit I didn’t realise how much more fun spin bowling is than seam.

Having got off to such a storming start I managed to get 5 overs or so fairly consistently in my games after that and ended the season with a total of 12 wickets off 50 overs at an average of 17 (and an economy rate under 4). All in all I was pretty pleased.

So here we are now – season 2 starts on Sunday and I am excited beyond belief. Strangely enough more so by the prospect of bowling than batting. I’ve been bowling well in the nets and am trying to move forwards from last year. I now have four variations in my armoury:

(a) Stock legbreak – having read this forum I think this is basically a topspinning legbreak. My bowling speed is faster than last year (although still pretty slow!) but I’m getting some good bounce although turn is not huge (a foot at most). I bowl this with the seam pointing towards 2nd slip and aim to pitch middle/leg.

(b) Googly – Haven’t really worked out how I bowl it (I just concentrate on flipping it out of the back of my hand if that makes sense). Turn is pretty limited - at worst it goes straight on and at best I can get it to turn slightly into the batsman. Took a beautiful wicket in the nets against one of our best batsman when I turned it through his gate and hit middle. However that was very much a one-off - my control over this delivery is terrible and it’s very much a ‘chuck it up and hope for the best’ ball.

(c ) Slider/backspinner – not really sure what to call this. Basically I put backspin on the ball by rolling it backwards over my palm and fingers at delivery (imagine your palm pointing to the ceiling throughout the delivery and the ball rolling from palm to fingers). Not at all disguised but tends to bounce a bit lower.

(d) Quicker delivery – basically a medium pacer off a short run up. Can surprise once in a while but normally a dot-ball delivery rather than a wicket taker.

Having found this forum I’ve been reading the posts avidly and I’m impressed by the experience (and dedication!) of the posters here to the art of legspin bowling.

My questions are really around how best to move forwards – I feel that I’ve hit a bit of a wall and am not sure what to do. I would love to (a) be able to get more spin on the ball and bowl the ‘big leg break’ that you guys talk about but I haven’t the faintest idea where to start and (b) be able to bowl a ‘proper’ googly that actually pitches on the wicket once in a while!!

What’s your advice as to what I should concentrate on over the season – stick to what I know and learn how to do it better or try to develop more deliveries?

As a pretty raw learner any advice would be really appreciated.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

mr bojangles;398161 said:
Having got off to such a storming start I managed to get 5 overs or so fairly consistently in my games after that and ended the season with a total of 12 wickets off 50 overs at an average of 17 (and an economy rate under 4). All in all I was pretty pleased.
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Excellent figures for your first season.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

mr bojangles;398161 said:
What’s your advice as to what I should concentrate on over the season – stick to what I know and learn how to do it better or try to develop more deliveries?
.
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Would not worry about learning new deliveries in season. It is hard not to muck around with flippers and zooters when everyone is talking about them here but beyond learning the basics of the rarer variations just to know what they are and how to do them I would stick to what you know.

Most extractions of batsmen can be carried out with leg break and top spinner. You have a couple more balls as well so you have a nice assortment of tools for the job.

The two strands of accuracy on one hand and ball revolutions on the other are the two things to work on. As a general rule if you are very accurate you may not be spinning hard enough on the other hand if you are spinning bigtime you are probably a bit short, wide or full more than you should.

You have to bring the two together and work on both of them. You need nets and middle pitches with and without batsmen. Bowling at targets to work on the accuracy. Some of the work on building the revs can take place at home in the backyard or even inside watching tv. If you get the bug bad you will have that ball at hand a lot.

Let me guess, in your delivery you jump so high then you lightly touch down mr bojangles.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

interesting to hear that your bowling is around 40mph Dave. i would actually have guessed from your videos at about 40mph, but having measured my own bowling off of video (average speed across about 5-6 yards) at only around 43mph, its thrown my perception off. i was expecting to find it at more like 50-55mph!!

however i reckon that 43mph across the first 5-6 yards probably still equates to about 47mph out of the hand. the fact that your bowling is around 40mph probably confirms those thoughts for me as well. so in terms of bowling speed im up there at professional level. id like to see what the speed gun says.

as ive said before, the other leggies at my club can consistently turn a ball bigger than i can. but none of them get drift or dip, and their bowling is probably more like 35-40mph and much more loopy. if i bowl off of no run up i can bowl at about that speed, and turn the ball yards. but batsmen find it really easy to play, they just wait on it. youve got to hit the perfect length every delivery else youll get dispatched.

i bowled yesterday at club net practice (at which there were about 10 people. 33 are playing this weekend in 3 matches, and im not one of them. so thats 24 people playing at the weekend who couldnt be f**ked to show up to practice (including ALL of the captains, who were there, but chose to drink in the clubhouse instead of practice). which seriously irritates me, because im there improving my game every week, and have been completely shunned for selection). so anyway, i had a bowl, and it went averagely. if i didnt set such high standards i would probably be saying it was an amazing session given the number of wickets i took and what the ball was doing. but there were still drag downs and what not. so therefore it wasnt perfection.

anyhow, i was getting inconsistent turn, but it was still doing quite a bit. the one thing i really noticed more than i ever have before is dip! one of the batsmen was fairly short, maybe 5'. and hes a pretty tidy batsman as well, very good footwork. based on his foot movements and where he seemed to be expecting the ball to pitch, and then based on the amount of bounce i was then getting, it was just really clear to see how much dip the ball had on it. against taller players its less obvious. it was bouncing to clip the top of the stumps at the very minimum, but more often than not it would bounce a good 18-24" over the top, sometimes more. off a flat trajectory. he was playing cut shots with his hands above his head!!

observing the way batsmen play me, if i drag it down for a long hop, bearing in mind my stock line is outside leg stump (and ive been completely unable to alter that), good batsmen pull me square, or in front of square. a few play stood up sweeps, nobody ground sweeps me (if they tried theyd need excellent judgement). very easy to set a field to, but theyll get singles all day long. if i drag down inline with the stumps then they tend to play through mid wicket, usually airborne. again, easy to set a field to. very, very few batsmen can ever play me straight, even off of long hops.

when i get my line and length right, they either wait on the ball and cut me if its a bit short, playing with the turn, play a forward defence or a drive and usually score no runs, or they try to get creative on the leg side but often end up missing the ball. again, its fairly easy to set a field to. if they try to drive me for runs then generally they end up in trouble. the difference with a full length ball down the leg side is that it bounces so much that unless theyve got twinkle toes they can never get themselves positioned to play anything off it. a good few balls went straight up off the top edge yesterday. if it bounces like that with turn then its in at their ribs, and again, its hard to score off of. if i pitch it on the stumps and it turns then its actually quite easy to cut off the back foot. i have to REALLY pitch it up there, almost full toss, just to make completely sure they come forwards to it. the dip then catches them out of position. in contrast to Maccas statement that too full is better than too short - generally id agree. but i get a few wickets in the nets off of long hops that turn and bounce! so long as i pitch it within 4 yards of the stumps its ok. any shorter than that and its way too easy. but so are full tosses. the good batsmen realise the dilemma with the bounce, so they come prancing down the wicket all the time and play shots off the pitch to negate the bounce. however ive got crafty this season. if i see them coming i drop it shorter at the last second, and then they find themselves in no mans land with a ball getting big on them, and they either continue with their aggressive shot and get stumped/bowled, or if they are sensible they play a panicked defense just to get the ball away, which often leads to edges. having that mental guile is worth so much more than technique. i reckon its the main difference between top club spinners and international players. although plenty of international players have absolutely zero bowling intelligence!!

i reckon i took 10+ wickets last night in probably 60 deliveries, if that. 3 were clean bowled, 2 in a row against one batsman. at least 4 stumpings. and about 3 edges. thats not counting probably another 10-15 that may have been caught in the field. the added speed and bounce of my bowling just makes it so much harder to play than slower loopier bowling. there was a left hander at the end who came in and smashed everyone. so i switched nets to have a go and he didnt hit me big once. but i got him out twice! once bowled through the gate lol. it was pretty dark by then though.

without wanting to be too arrogant, and overlooking the fact that i bowl at least 1 bad ball an over - im probably top 5 on the "most likely to take a wicket" list at the club (but probably bottom 10 on economy rate lol). and thats in nets, against cocky batsmen playing stupid shots with no pressure. yet i still cant get a game. its really annoying me.

i work 90% of the weekends during the summer, ive got the next 2 free, and i might not get a game in either of them. i might have to look at other clubs where there is less of a tendancy towards players getting picked based on who they are mates with, and more on players getting picked based on effort and performance. i play to win, not to have a jolly with some mates. so its just annoying me.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

Hey Jim what are the wickets like there at the moment maybe that has something to do with selection. I remember dave didn't get picked the first couple of games last season than after that he was here nearly every week showing off his latest bag of wickets.

I like your attitude mate. You will get noticed soon for your bowling I bet. Missing the first couple of games can be a bit of an advantage if your not fully prepared but you are probably more match ready than most at that club.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

the wickets look absolutely amazing. i REALLY want a bowl on them!! following the horrendous winter, about a month ago the pitches looked awful. waterlogged and soggy, no chance of them being ready for summer.

then weve had a spell of about 3 weeks of constant sunshine without a drop of rain, the ground has really hardened up, and the club groundsman is excellent and theyve got proper equipment. so the pitches are looking fantastic now. really hard and dry, but without being cracked and tired like they were when i started bowling at the back end of last season. if the summer is going to be as dry and hot as predicted then the wickets should be perfect for leg spin.

in terms of being overlooked, i dont think the selection process is as deep as considering the conditions and who is best for the job. its more like the captains thinking which of my mates do i fancy having a drink with this saturday/sunday after the match. maybe im being overly cynical, and i havent been picked because none of the captains have my contact details and ive not played at the club for that long. but ive never even been approached by a captain and asked about availability (and when they dont even show up to practice, what hope do you have ?). whereas other players have captains chasing them every week asking if they are available, or trying to poach players from the other XI's.

the whole process is just too informal for my liking. if i was a captain id be picking the best XI each week, no question about it. and personally i reckon that would put me in the first or second XI for pre-season friendlies to see how i get on. i take enough wickets at practice to justify the chance.

anyway, one of the captains has my number now, so come sunday evening when they check everyones availability i should be getting a call. selection takes place on monday evenings, so i had better be playing next week.

the downside to that is that next week is an inter-club match. which means if 40 people make themselves available we will be playing 20-per-side with rolling substitutes in the field/bowling. so il probably get to bowl 3 overs.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

macca;398178 said:
Excellent figures for your first season.
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Bear in mind we are talking about lower league cricket here - mainly IIs and IIIs. Any half-decent first teamer would take me to pieces!
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

mr bojangles;398221 said:
Bear in mind we are talking about lower league cricket here - mainly IIs and IIIs. Any half-decent first teamer would take me to pieces!
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They all count at the end of the season! Good to have you join us Mr Bo and thanks for you appreciative words, lets hope you become a regular contributor on the forum?

Advice - personally I'm a t bit lost at the moment with my own bowling so feel kind of inclined to keep my mouth shut and let the in-form players deal out the advice. Generic advice is to practice as much as possible, but I realise this is quite difficult as an adult unless you have got unlimited access to nets in the way that Jim has? Other than if your thick skinned and don't mind the local community thinking you're a care in the community patient anywhere there's a flat bit of grass will do.

Have a read through Peter Philpotts book 'The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling' every 3 months or so till you can almost repeat the words - and you'll have then accessed and understood the 'Round the loop theory' and been introduced the potential of 'The Big Leg-break'. Hopefully you'll have started out bowing with a big flick, if not - there's your first target - you've got to bring the big flick into bowling your Leg-Break.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

legspinenthusiast;398244 said:
Hi Guys - Please find my bowling video from front view and back view. All feedback is appreciated. This is my first time I have look at my bowling.

YouTube - myspinsideview.AVI
YouTube - myspinbackview.AVI
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Looks very good overall, and very energetic. The only comment I'd make is that I think Liz would probably advise more of a follow through to reduce the stress on your legs at the end, but that's for the sake of comfort rather than actual performance.
 
Re: Wrist Spin Bowling (Part Three)

Jim2109;398193 said:
i get a few wickets in the nets off of long hops that turn and bounce! so long as i pitch it within 4 yards of the stumps its ok.
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Well that could be a good length on most pitches here sometimes, I wouldn't call that a long hop really but I dont know about over there because you read where Mailey,Grimmett and Jenner all say you must be fuller, flatter and faster in England as a general rule.
 
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