Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

[SomeblokecalledDave.]

I read about being on toes for FFC. I need to work on that. The issue is that I have my ACL reconstruction on that knee and as part of that, they shaved off 50% of meniscus. Because of that, my knee doesn't like any extra pressure during landing. Braced front leg is also tough. I am yet to try landing on toes and pivot but so far I am too scared psychologically I have a home gym with foam pads and one of the things I am going to try next week is to slowly practice landing on the ball of my foot and see how I take it.

I went to nets today and had a very good session. Bowled a couple of hours in a really humid 38C weather but felt really good. One change I made to my action is to bring the front knee a lot higher. I took this cue from this forum where they discussed the high front knee of Nathan Lyon. It seems to have added more stability to my post load up and also gives me that extra time for me to align and deliver. The results were pretty much instantaneous. I got my flight back, and they landed at a good length. I did bowl some drag downs but I can attribute that to trying to bowl faster. I really need to curb my fast bowling instincts as they seem to creep up every now and then. When executed well, those fast deliveries were pretty quick, flat with huge turn but I am pretty sure I cannot pull that in matches. Plus those deliveries do not seem to bother good batsmen at all.

One other observation, I can now judge a batsman by how they are moving the feet. If I see a batsman not good at moving his feet, I am noticing that I am instantly troubling him. When it flights well and lands in good area, they usually don't come to the pitch of the ball and end up playing across the line in the intention of thrashing the ball. They might succeed a couple of times and hit boundaries but eventually they mishit one. That was my nets experience (I induced a false shot every 5-6 balls from a decent batsman who is knows for his hitting abilities). I am no where near to playing any mind tricks, let alone bowl consistently, But I am absolutely loving the fact that I am already creating doubts in the batsman's head. One batsman I bowled to last week walked up to me and said I will be lethal come next Spring season and he is already asking me to join his team. I just told him I still have a long way to go

Have you considered an even more relaxed and less stressful approach to the crease. Have a look at my languid approach to the crease in this video - I come on at 1 hour and 4 mins and get hit around a bit by some blokes that play at much higher level than me and I go for some runs, my field wasn't right and I had another old bloke in one of the key positions, so was bowling with that in mind. I just looked at your approach to the crease, yeah that's quite 'Active' if you've got a knee injury, I'd say and I wouldn't look to step it up in terms of intensity personally, unless of course you're under a physio and they're saying you're good to go.

 

[slingylefty]

Oooh that sounds like classic case of a rotator cuff injury. Have you had it looked at? On two ocassions in the last 20 years I've put in way too many hours practicing and ended up injuring my rotator cuff and the consequence was that I couldn't lift my arm above 90 degrees. Both times the solution was to just rest for 2-3 weeks and allow it to heal and it worked both times.

Yeah. I got it checked out. The PT said it is actually shoulder impingement and not a rotator cuff tear (Thankfully). I am doing a lot of shoulder strengthening exercises and managing my load. Because it is on my non bowling shoulder, it is manageable but I am very cautious with the bowling arm now. Wrist spin adds a lot of pressure on the shoulder with all the twisting and turning and I have a few warm up sets I do before I hit the nets. My bowling arm mostly comes around the 45 degree angle and a lot of folks are advising me to go more vertical. I tried that especially to bowl the wrong one but if I do too much, there is a bit of soreness. The muscle at that angle/position needs to get used to that rotation. I am slowly bowling 10% of my deliveries a lot more vertically.

 

[SomeblokecalledDave.]

One other observation, I can now judge a batsman by how they are moving the feet. If I see a batsman not good at moving his feet, I am noticing that I am instantly troubling him. When it flights well and lands in good area, they usually don't come to the pitch of the ball and end up playing across the line in the intention of thrashing the ball. They might succeed a couple of times and hit boundaries but eventually they mishit one. That was my nets experience (I induced a false shot every 5-6 balls from a decent batsman who is knows for his hitting abilities). I am no where near to playing any mind tricks, let alone bowl consistently, But I am absolutely loving the fact that I am already creating doubts in the batsman's head. One batsman I bowled to last week walked up to me and said I will be lethal come next Spring season and he is already asking me to join his team. I just told him I still have a long way to go

My mate Sriram and I compete to take the key wickets in the oppositions teams, I think this season I've taken more of them than him. I think we both approach practice in the nets in the same way. Like your example we're looking to elicit the false shot as soon as possible. In the nets where they're going for it we both get similar outcomes a false shot or a wicket in around 5-6 balls. In games the batters approach is far more circumspect as indicated by a strike rate of 23.68. Sri's is simillar 23.26, but he's a finger spinner. It'll be interesting to see how you develop as a wrist-spinner, I've always thought that if you've previously bowled another way, you've already got a good grounding in the fundamentals and know a lot of the theory. Therefore all you need to do is change the mechanics, so potentially you'd learn and become proficient so much faster than I did. It'll be interesting to hear what you say about the way you're deployed and used in the games. I think this aspect of the game is really important and whole heartedly agree with both Warne and Jenner on the need for the wrist-spinner to feel that they're a valued and integral part of the bowling attack. I've frequently been in teams where I'm brought on to bowl in the last overs or on some ocassions only bowled 50% of my potential spell allocation. This weekend was a case in point with regards the psychology and the perception of the captain.
4-5 years ago I was the spinner in the 5th XI under a particular captain 'P-mac' first time I'd played with him and he was pretty decent at the time with me, I always bowled my full allocation, I was always brought in at 2nd change bowling against well set openers or new to the crease middle-order batters. This was the Flipper season and I got plenty of wickets. But I can't really bat. I consider myself decent in the field (Far better than him as he's a 'big' unit). I bowled so well I think I saw a chance of being the spinner in the 4th XI, but there were 2 stalking horses - fingers spinners, younger than me and able to score a few with the bat down the order, but again not as agile and fast in the field as me. That wasn't enough and I found myself playing in the 6th XI as a regular. But if there were any spinner "cry offs" I would be called up to the 3rd XI and always performed well. Same with mixed ability Sunday friendly games with good batters... 1st, 2nd, 3rd XI batters, I'd get their wickets.


So for the last 3 years I've been a 6th XI player, getting the rare game in the 5th or 3rd XI (And doing well). This year there's been talk of a 7th XI and I felt that there was a good chance they'd have me in that team guiding them through; being the scorer; reporting back who was good at what, and it'd be friendly cricket again which is pretty dire much of the time.

The consequence of being dropped from the 5th XI was that I felt that P-Mac was instrumental in that decision to drop me and replace me with the younger bloke. This year P-Mac has not captained and I've had a couple of games in the 5th XI where I out-bowled their regular bowlers in both games. P-Mac though has still loomed large in my psyche as he's now a selector and I feel like he may have been instrumental in ensuring I stayed in the lowest developmental team for reasons mentioned above.

This weekend gone, not having played in a league team for months I got the call up for the 5th XI in a decisive game. I was 'Gassed' and up for it, but I arrived at the game only to find that the captain was 'P-Mac'... Immediately I felt the pressure... "This blokes got no faith in my bowling whatsoever'. We bowled first and in the huddle at the start he said all the right things, but I didn't believe a word of it.

Long story, short I bowled 4 of my potential 8. I bowled with a very brisk wind behind me, not giving it much consideration. The evening before in the nets I'd bowled beautifully - top-spinners on a difficult length and then small leg-breaks hitting the off-stump or the edge of the bat. In this game with P-Mac watching, I bowled full-tosses one after another... 4's and 6's being hit leg-side. I came away with 4-0-35-0 (8.75) an over, one of the worst spells ever. P-Mac had already signalled during my 3rd over to someone to warm-up and be ready to take over. As I watched the final balls of the 4th over disappear over the boundary I thought... It's the wind... I've not compensated for the wind.

Back at the club prior to the game the next day, the captain (Dan) a youngster and the best batter this season at the club with 1200 runs, who refers to me as "Thommo the legend" greeted me with "Thommo - eight over straight from you tomorrow mate".

The next day against a better opposition with the wind behind me again, but with the obvious support of the captain and team I came away with 8-2-28-4.It almost certainly wasn't the wind, it was the captaincy. The obvious belief in what I can do and the fact that I was brought into the attack at first change. Don't get me wrong I like P-Mac and as a rule I like the way he captains and in that first year he handled me well, but since the fact that I was dropped and replaced by a lesser bowler, my perception is that he has preferred options. *This is why I don't come on here so much - I write too much!

 

[SomeblokecalledDave.]

Yeah. I got it checked out. The PT said it is actually shoulder impingement and not a rotator cuff tear (Thankfully). I am doing a lot of shoulder strengthening exercises and managing my load. Because it is on my non bowling shoulder, it is manageable but I am very cautious with the bowling arm now. Wrist spin adds a lot of pressure on the shoulder with all the twisting and turning and I have a few warm up sets I do before I hit the nets. My bowling arm mostly comes around the 45 degree angle and a lot of folks are advising me to go more vertical. I tried that especially to bowl the wrong one but if I do too much, there is a bit of soreness. The muscle at that angle/position needs to get used to that rotation. I am slowly bowling 10% of my deliveries a lot more vertically.

How on earth you bowl a wrong-un with your arm at 45 degrees, that's crazy! Most people bowl with their arm over vertical in the opposite direction!!!

 

[slingylefty]

How on earth you bowl a wrong-un with your arm at 45 degrees, that's crazy! Most people bowl with their arm over vertical in the opposite direction!!!

I know it is a bit crazy but I can't pull it off every time But sometimes when I try to bowl top spin, it has enough to deviate slightly the other way. Basically I twist my shoulder to an extent where my elbow is pointing to the sky but it puts a lot of load on the shoulder for sure. I also compensate a bit with my head tilted to the side which is a give away to the batsmen if they notice. That is why I want to try to bowl more vertical.