Wrist Spin Bowling

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I witnessed the 'Fizzing Ball' phenomenon on Sunday. I've never had anyone bowl it at me before. The bloke was bowling Chinaman Wrong Uns so they were being pitched wide of my off-stump and going away from the bat. The blokes action was really unorthodox and looked slightly Grimmett-esque. It wasn't that obvious that he was doing anything incredible with his arm, wrist or hand but you could hear the ball fizz as it went past. How the hell do you get it to spin that fast, I reckon I can spin the ball pretty well but it never fizzes!

 

[The Edge Of Willow]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Where's the bloke with the blisters? What do you reckon to the advice I gave him?

http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t58854-215/#post361953

Sounds alright to me. The bit about callouses is very much correct in my experience.

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I witnessed the 'Fizzing Ball' phenomenon on Sunday. I've never had anyone bowl it at me before. The bloke was bowling Chinaman Wrong Uns so they were being pitched wide of my off-stump and going away from the bat. The blokes action was really unorthodox and looked slightly Grimmett-esque. It wasn't that obvious that he was doing anything incredible with his arm, wrist or hand but you could hear the ball fizz as it went past. How the hell do you get it to spin that fast, I reckon I can spin the ball pretty well but it never fizzes!

id say you get it to fizz mainly with a really poor seam position! mine fizz far more when the seam is wobbling than when they are ripped with the seam bolt upright. also a mixture of overspin and sidespin adds to the sound.

the more you disturb the air the more sound it makes, to get a 90 degree leg break to fizz is probably quite hard. i get it to happen from time to time when i really get one right. my stock leg break (with over spin) fizzes most times, it does it much more when the ball sticks in my fingers a bit though and comes out with the seam wobbling around (like a gyroscope lol). thats when i hear the proper phwwshhh noise, but it tends to be quite intermittent (kinda like the rotor blades on a helicopter). when i get it right its just a constant shhhwwwwwwssshhhhhhhhhh noise as it flights.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

id say you get it to fizz mainly with a really poor seam position! mine fizz far more when the seam is wobbling than when they are ripped with the seam bolt upright. also a mixture of overspin and sidespin adds to the sound.

the more you disturb the air the more sound it makes, to get a 90 degree leg break to fizz is probably quite hard. i get it to happen from time to time when i really get one right. my stock leg break (with over spin) fizzes most times, it does it much more when the ball sticks in my fingers a bit though and comes out with the seam wobbling around (like a gyroscope lol). thats when i hear the proper phwwshhh noise, but it tends to be quite intermittent (kinda like the rotor blades on a helicopter). when i get it right its just a constant shhhwwwwwwssshhhhhhhhhh noise as it flights.

You obviously hear it as you bowl it - or is it that other people say they hear it as it passes them? I thought about the fact that maybe it's more obvious when the seam spins the wrong way and maybe that's what this bloke was doing as they didn't seem to be turning off the wicket much or drifting?

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

You obviously hear it as you bowl it - or is it that other people say they hear it as it passes them? I thought about the fact that maybe it's more obvious when the seam spins the wrong way and maybe that's what this bloke was doing as they didn't seem to be turning off the wicket much or drifting?

i hear it as i bowl it, for as long as its in the air.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I want to be able to do that!!!! No matter how hard I spin the ball this doesn't happen. Are you able to spin all your deliveries this much - what of your 45 degree Leg Break, surely if you're spinning that ball that much that should be giving you ludicrous amounts of turn off the wicket?

Adil Rashid gets a mention here as a real contender for the future http://www.testmatchextra.com/Blogs...loggerID=d53f001a-e39b-42de-a043-683d7e0fb9cf

 

[legspinenthusiast]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I witnessed the 'Fizzing Ball' phenomenon on Sunday. I've never had anyone bowl it at me before. The bloke was bowling Chinaman Wrong Uns so they were being pitched wide of my off-stump and going away from the bat. The blokes action was really unorthodox and looked slightly Grimmett-esque. It wasn't that obvious that he was doing anything incredible with his arm, wrist or hand but you could hear the ball fizz as it went past. How the hell do you get it to spin that fast, I reckon I can spin the ball pretty well but it never fizzes!

I did not find get a chance to bowl this week. I have a net session coming week and would try your advice of holding the ball loose. I do not think I was holding the ball tight in the first place.

I guess you missed my third question, which was about the slider..... Can you shed more light on it. I have read,heard many versions of it. What do you think is the genuine version or the standard version of it?

 

[legspinenthusiast]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Where's the bloke with the blisters? What do you reckon to the advice I gave him?

http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t58854-215/#post361953

I did not find get a chance to bowl this week. I have a net session coming week and would try your advice of holding the ball loose. I do not think I was holding the ball tight in the first place.

I guess you missed my third question, which was about the slider..... Can you shed more light on it. I have read,heard many versions of it. What do you think is the genuine version or the standard version of it?

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I did not find get a chance to bowl this week. I have a net session coming week and would try your advice of holding the ball loose. I do not think I was holding the ball tight in the first place.

I guess you missed my third question, which was about the slider..... Can you shed more light on it. I have read,heard many versions of it. What do you think is the genuine version or the standard version of it?

To be honest there seems to be a number of ways that people bowl the slider and it can get a bit confusing as to what a slider is. I think the bottom line is that if you can bowl a straight ball that has some backspin on it that stays straight and comes out of the hand preferably looking like a Leg Break you've got yourself a slider. There's a clip on the SKY sports website at the minute that shows Warne last weekend talking to a couple young blokes and he discusses the Slider and Warne more or less says what I've said above. Similarly people like Peter Philpott would probably support the same notion as Philpott says that you shouldn't get too hung up on your grip, if it's unorthodox but works for you - why change it?

I used to agonise over it a bit and not quite get the explanations, but having had Warne say what I've just said about it conforming to the general theory - it's therefore a Slider I can now say that I too have a slider. My own slider uses the two up two down grip as with the leg break with the seam in the usual position, but I then bowl it in the manner you would with a seam up ball e.g. dragging the two 'Up' fingers down the back of the ball giving it back-spin. Because of the seam position the ball then has a chance of landing on the seam or not on the seam and then act weirdly. I've not used it for months and months though.

 

[Paulinho]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I did not find get a chance to bowl this week. I have a net session coming week and would try your advice of holding the ball loose. I do not think I was holding the ball tight in the first place.

I guess you missed my third question, which was about the slider..... Can you shed more light on it. I have read,heard many versions of it. What do you think is the genuine version or the standard version of it?

I have two sliders that I bowl; these are the same that Shane Warne mentioned on his master class at the oval.

The first which I suppose you could label the genuine one is a sort of leg break but one were the wrist has come so far around that you are flicking the ball back at your own face with your hand coming down in a karate chop in the follow through. I have found that this delivery requires a supple wrist and elbow. Also I've never seen it from the batsman’s point of view so have no idea how obvious a variation this is. It feels very much (to me anyway) like a big leg break that has gone really wrong. One benefit of this delivery is that if you do mess it up (as I have on many occasions) it can turn into a massive leg break.

The second I can best describe as a seamers delivery but with the 3rd and little finger being used instead of the first and second like a seamer would. It is far easier for me to bowl and I have seen footage of me bowling it from the batsman’s end and it looks very much like a leg break delivery.

Both of them require patients and practice but can be very handy deliveries to have. Try and bowl with your normal arm speed to maintain the deception that you’re bowling a normal leg break.

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

i bowl mine with the "karate chop" style that Paulinho describes. its basically a "round the loop" variation (referring the Peter Philpotts way of explaining things) that spins back towards my face.

as Paulinho has said, if you get it right its a back spinner, but if its ever so slightly off of straight it ends up as a massive leg break that stays low! which i think its quite useful, as even if the batsman reads it, it can still do the complete opposite of what hes expecting. when it comes out right it has massive amounts of spin on it because of the nature of the action and i actually find it grips the surface so well that it almost stops dead, giving it more bounce that you might expect it to (it doesnt skid on like a flipper) and then a very sharp drop back down. if i could bowl it on the right length it would literally land 2 feet in front of the stumps, bounce clean over the stumps, and land again a foot behind them!

if its delivered slightly angled then it does a similar thing, but turns to the leg side in a major way. its a really tough delivery to bowl though, i had it going well but ive lost it a bit now. i can only bowl it without a run up, and even then its not great. ive changed my action quite a lot so im trying to find it again.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I have two sliders that I bowl; these are the same that Shane Warne mentioned on his master class at the oval.

The first which I suppose you could label the genuine one is a sort of leg break but one were the wrist has come so far around that you are flicking the ball back at your own face with your hand coming down in a karate chop in the follow through. I have found that this delivery requires a supple wrist and elbow. Also I've never seen it from the batsman’s point of view so have no idea how obvious a variation this is. It feels very much (to me anyway) like a big leg break that has gone really wrong. One benefit of this delivery is that if you do mess it up (as I have on many occasions) it can turn into a massive leg break.

The second I can best describe as a seamers delivery but with the 3rd and little finger being used instead of the first and second like a seamer would. It is far easier for me to bowl and I have seen footage of me bowling it from the batsman’s end and it looks very much like a leg break delivery.

Both of them require patients and practice but can be very handy deliveries to have. Try and bowl with your normal arm speed to maintain the deception that you’re bowling a normal leg break.

That's how my attempts at the Biggun end up a lot of the time, so I've got a variation as well then!

Adil Rashid played today at Stormont with England 4-0-16-1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/shared...et/scorecards/2009/8/15834/html/scorecard.stm I was hoping that channel 5 might have covered it, but they haven't. Fingers crossed Rashid will be included in the tour of South Africa soon and we'll get to see him bowl.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Jim, how's your bowling going, I've been thinking about your fizzing ball and the fact that surely that puts you in an amazing position potentially to become an exceptionally good bowler? Do you play for a team and what are your bowling figures like?

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Jim, how's your bowling going, I've been thinking about your fizzing ball and the fact that surely that puts you in an amazing position potentially to become an exceptionally good bowler? Do you play for a team and what are your bowling figures like?

funny you should ask, because i was just about to post (its going to be a long one though!). i went to the clubs net training tonight, there was nobody else there again, its got to be the end of season drop off i think. that doesnt bother me though because i dont mind bowling by myself, its more useful than having a batsman play ridiculous shots all over the park that he would never even contemplate in a match situation lol.

it was an absolutely magical session, easily the most significant improvement ive made to date, as well as being the most consistent and good!! im absolutely chuffed with the progress ive made in the last week.

i started out where i left off on monday or tuesday (cant remember when i practiced last). the best thing is that i started out EXACTLY where i left off. often il make progress, then have to re-find it again the next time, not today. so thats good, things are finally clicking together. there was a young kid there who wandered over to have a look, i let him have a bowl as well. he was mightily impressed with the amount of turn. for some strange reason when youve got a kid going "wow" at every delivery its inspring to make you bowl even better lol. at least i seem to find it that way.

so then he left and i got down to business. i instantly identified a major problem in my action that ive known about for a while, but underestimated. i bend my front leg when i bowl, i dont brace it or lock it out, i let it flex slightly. i figured this out by bowling some deliveries off of no run up, and i keep my leg straighter then, and so i got to thinking that maybe i should try and keep it braced. so i tried to bowl with a dead straight leg off my now fluid run up (ive got a rhythm, including a few weird little "trigger movements" (a batting term, but im sure it can be applied to bowling as well) that i guess help me keep the rhythm), and this one simple change has transformed my action! firstly, the braced leg transfers weight more effectively, and it transfers weight faster. not only that, but it also FORCES me to rotate around it (knees dont bend backwards), and the rotation has magically fixed my leg-side tendancies!! i have to lift my trailing leg up (as if im stepping over the stumps) which i never did before with any great pronunciation. i now end my delivery action with my right foot forward, almost in line with my left foot, so im turning through the full 180 degs (or a little less). before i would barely turn past 90, id end my action face on, not side on.

the end result was a smile on my face for an hour of awesome bowling last practice i said id got my accuracy to around 45% of deliveries inline with the stumps. today that was more like 70%, 10% down the off side, 15% down the leg side by a foot or less, and 5% well wide.

for the first time EVER i managed to bowl an entire over of very good deliveries, 7 in a row in fact. and most of the bad ones were just short on length, still on a sensible line. im bowling primarily 45 deg overspun leg breaks, which typically pitch inline with middle and turn to anything from 6" outside off stump to sometimes 2-3 feet. i bowled a couple of awesome deliveries that pitched a foot outside leg and hit the stumps. my new action also means i can bowl 90 deg leg breaks with the same consistency as overspun ones (which hasnt been the case until now), and i can bowl slightly backspun "big" leg breaks with the same consistency. the top spinner works just as well as it did before, the flipper now works off a run up, my slider is still hit and miss.

the other thing ive acquired, which ive always had on occasion but with varying degrees of success, is consistent drift!! id imagine there is dip as well, but i cant see that so easily. the drift today was awesome though. there was one delivery that i really managed to rip, that drifted literally 8-12" in the air from inline with middle to outside leg, and turned back with extra bounce over off stump. its probably the best delivery ive ever bowled. literally every good ball i bowled was drifting, this hasnt happened before. i also noticed a weird "reverse drift" phenomenon on some heavily overspun leg breaks. is it possible im getting the ball to swing?!? it may be, as its a lot faster in the air now that ive got the run up working. there were definitely some deliveries that i thought "oh no, thats going leg side" as soon as it left my hand, only for it to shape back in and pitch inline with middle!! it definitely had me puzzled a few times.

a couple of guys showed up as it was getting dark with bats and cricket balls, but no pads lol, they wanted a go in the nets. only the one i was using had stumps so i said they were welcome to have a go in those ones, i just wanted to bowl at a batsman because my confidence was sky high. it was really getting dark, so i couldnt see that well where i was bowling, and i think this and the distraction of a batsman led to me going down the leg side a little, i was trying too hard. but i got probably 1 in 3 to do what i wanted. i bowled a couple of absolute rippers that beat him all ends up. and i threw in a flipper that had him absolutely bamboozled lol. i dont think these guys play for a team at present, but one of them is ex-first team at the club i now play for, i wouldnt be surprised if both of them were. one of them made a nice comment of "so do you play for the first team?" after about 5 mins of bowling. im hoping he genuinely wondered that because of what he had seen of my bowling. without blowing my own trumpet, id imagine at club level my action probably does look pretty awesome. its not that consistent, but i really do shape myself by the textbook. lots of club level spinners seem to have a very hand grenady action at times, or a weird unorthodox action. all of the videos ive seen guys on here make though have been very similar to mine, they look similar to those of the pros.

to top it all off, at the start of my session before id done anything good i got asked by one of the club players who was in the bar and wandered over if i was up for a game on sunday because theyve got the 2 sunday teams playing a friendly against each other and one of them is short a player. theyve seen me practicing up there for hours every thursday and knew i hadnt played properly yet. so that should be a good chance to put my bowling to the test in a proper match situation. i got a wicket in my first game (that i wasnt even supposed to be playing in lol) after id only been playing for 2-3 weeks. so lets see what happens now

as for my figures, at present (after a single T20 game, that i bowled right at the end of when they were chasing the total with 9 wickets in hand!!) are 2-0-14-1, so my bowling average is 14.00 and my strike rate is 12.00. if i can maintain those averages il be very happy lol my target for the weekend is to try and bowl 5 or 6 overs if i get the chance, and aim to take some wickets, but most importantly find some rhythm and get people "ooing" and "ahhing" at every stroke of the bat. im playing for the 2nd team, so in theory i should be up against some higher quality batsman in the 1st team. hopefully theyll be super confident and looking to embarass a rookie leg spinner that would make my day.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Yeah that'd be good if you could get the better of them. I hope it goes well and look forward to the result. Let's hope you get a Fivefor! I reckon that if you keep at this for a few years it sounds as though you've got real potential, just the fact that you're spinning the ball so ridiculously hard puts you in a really good position to go forward.

I've just been on facebook talking to a girl who used a high speed camera at work last year and she was saying the camera is hireable, so I'm going to look into trying to get hold of that to film what happens with hand in the delivery, it's high end spec camera used for things like car crash analysis and medical stuff. I'm not that hopeful, but I'll fish around and see what I come up with.

 

[Paulinho]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

so then he left and i got down to business. i instantly identified a major problem in my action that ive known about for a while, but underestimated. i bend my front leg when i bowl, i dont brace it or lock it out, i let it flex slightly. i figured this out by bowling some deliveries off of no run up, and i keep my leg straighter then, and so i got to thinking that maybe i should try and keep it braced. so i tried to bowl with a dead straight leg off my now fluid run up (ive got a rhythm, including a few weird little "trigger movements" (a batting term, but im sure it can be applied to bowling as well) that i guess help me keep the rhythm), and this one simple change has transformed my action! firstly, the braced leg transfers weight more effectively, and it transfers weight faster. not only that, but it also FORCES me to rotate around it (knees dont bend backwards), and the rotation has magically fixed my leg-side tendancies!! i have to lift my trailing leg up (as if im stepping over the stumps) which i never did before with any great pronunciation. i now end my delivery action with my right foot forward, almost in line with my left foot, so im turning through the full 180 degs (or a little less). before i would barely turn past 90, id end my action face on, not side on.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the bent front leg was basically the cause of all my problems. I never spotted it myself but someone mentioned it to me.

Philpott doesn't really seem to put a massive amount of emphasis on it which surprised me as it was such a massive problem for me.

once I had corrected it everything seemed to come together really quickly, greater control, more turn, much better pivot, just a better action all around to be honest.

hope you continue with your good form.

 

[macca]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I did not find get a chance to bowl this week. I have a net session coming week and would try your advice of holding the ball loose. I do not think I was holding the ball tight in the first place.

I guess you missed my third question, which was about the slider..... Can you shed more light on it. I have read,heard many versions of it. What do you think is the genuine version or the standard version of it?

If you are not holding it too tight but still get blisters early on, that is probably a sign of dedicated practise. You will hopefully develop a callous. It is only a problem if you keep getting them all through a career. Benaud had a major problem with blisters and Colin Mc Cool's test career was ruined by his inability to stop his spinning finger from blistering.

It is probably better to think of "a" slider rather than "the" slider these days. The term was borrowed from baseball. There are lots of descriptions of various sliders on this thread. In itself it is not a dangerous cut through delivery but mixed in amongst topspinning legbreaks it makes for a sometimes deadly variation.

 

[macca]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

I mentioned in an earlier post that the bent front leg was basically the cause of all my problems. I never spotted it myself but someone mentioned it to me.

Philpott doesn't really seem to put a massive amount of emphasis on it which surprised me as it was such a massive problem for me.

Philpott says on pge 47 of "Cricket Fundamentals" to "brace the front leg at delivery to give you something to bowl against."

Grimmett and O Reilly both collapsed their front leg at delivery. But most legspinners should not follow their example unless it works for them as well.

 

[Paulinho]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Philpott says on pge 47 of "Cricket Fundamentals" to "brace the front leg at delivery to give you something to bowl against."

Grimmett and O Reilly both collapsed their front leg at delivery. But most legspinners should not follow their example unless it works for them as well.

Yeah I'm sure he does use the term braced front leg in "the art of wrist spin bowling" i guess I just didn't realise it could cause me so many problems and frustration or more to the point that I didn't have one.

I don't remember it being mentioned in the "some bowling problems" section in this book but it could be that it's such a fundamental part of the action that anyone not doing it should know better...

I would say that the more orthodox I'm getting the better I'm getting but like you say orthodoxy isn't for everyone.

 

[Jim2109]

Re: Wrist Spin Bowling

Durham played Sussex in the Natwest Pro 40 this evening on Sky Sports, so i thought id give it a watch and have a look at Will Beer, the 20 year old Sussex leg spinner (who was on the Shane Warne masterclass earlier in the week during the test match coverage).

i stopped watching whilst i was eating dinner, which was toward the end of the Sussex innings, little did i know that Scott Borthwick was playing, who is a 19 year old leg spinner for Durham!! so i managed to miss all of his overs, he bowled 8-0-56-0 but Sussex scored 277-6 off of 40 overs. so his figures probably arent as bad as they look.

i did manage to see Will Beer bowling though. Durham got skittled early on by Kirtley and when Beer came on to bowl it was towards the end of their innings and they were already 7 wickets down iirc with about 70 runs on the board lol. but that meant no pressure at all for the bowler, and what i saw was far from impressive. his first over started with a couple of wides down the leg side. the rest of the over was very inconsistent and inaccurate. amazingly he took a wicket. he bowled a really poor ball that dropped short without any flight, the "batsman" (actually a bowler in Liam Plunkett) smashed it into the leg side going for a 6, and got caught on the boundary rope lol.

in total Beer bowled 5 overs, his figures were 5-0-17-2 but they are flattering for what was some incredibly average bowling at best. in 5 overs i saw him bowl 2 good balls. one of them just had the tail end batsman confused and he only just managed to get some bat on it. the other was a peach to a left hander, it turned back in about 12" from outside leg stump and he played it onto the stumps. most of them were either flung up full toss or dropped short, or were miles off line. in his first couple of overs several would-be-wides got hit on the leg side saving the extras.

hes got a fairly unorthodox action, he kind of sticks his arse out and squats a little, as his arm comes over it is completely bent, and it never fully straightens. and he has a really odd wrist angle. he imparts a small amount of spin, but on the slow motion replays (which they did on almost every ball!! the commentators were fascinated by leg spin, as if theyd never seen it before) the seam position was awful. scrambled all over the place, its a wonder the ball turns. the wicket was incredibly dry and crumbling, so it suited spin perfectly. the most i saw him turn it was about a foot, in pretty much perfect conditions.

the commentators were full of praise most of the time, and as said, seemed fascinated by it. i guess that underlines the lack of understanding of leg spin bowling in this country. they did a side by side slow motion comparison of Beer and Borthwicks actions (from front on, you didnt get to see the ball in flight or off the pitch unfortunately) and Borthwick looks a lot better. much more conventional, the ball was turning more out of his hand, and with better seam discipline.

i was hugely unimpressed by Beer. i cant believe hes playing at county level really, its great that counties are giving young guys a chance, but i was bowling better, AND more consistently in the nets yesterday than Beer managed in his match tonight, and im a long, long way down the ability ladder compared to a county cricketer. or at least i should hope so!. hes only young, so theres plenty of time for him to develop, for all i know he might be an England star in 10 years and il look very silly for my criticism. but its either worrying that players can get to county level purely on the hype about the fact they are a leg spinner regardless of their outright talent, or its a great thing and means there might be hope for me yet if i keep practicing hard and making improvements lol.