Controlling Swing

[Jonesy]

I've had a pretty poor season - in between the constant rain, I've been bowling pretty poorly. I'm playing at a decent level and club seems to have confidence in me, but myself, not so much.

Back in juniors I used to bowl great outies, which I lost late last season. I have an open action but have been told it's too open, and that my hand comes up too straight sometimes, obviously not helping the outswing.

I used to be able to bowl outies by just holding the seam straight, but nowadays I move it back in - not really what I'm suited to.

I started the season off struggling and had a period where I had only bowled well once. The first game everything was going down leg, the other games a mixture of off side wides, down leg and a few half trackers thrown in. So I started holding the seam on an angle, trying to get my outswing back and have succeeded. But that didn't work, bowled heaps of wides - down both off and leg. I started bowling cross seam, and since then have bowled really well. But I'm just a gentle medium and I can't help but feel bowling cross seam all day is going to produce the best results.

So I'm asking, how can I control it? It will be swinging down off and then all of a sudden swing down leg (I'm thinking because I open up too much and my hand gets too vertical?), and getting it just outside off is very hard. I'm very much a confidence player as well, so at the moment when I bowl one wide I go "here it goes again..." and just get really down, so any tips for that would be great.

 

[MookerjeeAditya]

I think the seam is more on the horizontal side, than vertical. Perhaps, I do not know. If the seam points 10 O Clock, then it is an inswinger, and if it points 2 'O clock, then it is an outswinger, to the right hand batsman. In my experience, being a left hander, I could bowl outswingers to right-handers. I couldn't somehow, become comfortable with bringing my arm across my body. I got my arm to leave the body, because my arm was not restricted.

 

[cricketdrills]

Ok if you want to control your swing you must first:

Have a consistant action. If your action keeps changing them you won't know if you can just naturally swin the ball away or in. That also means that in a game, you will spray it. Maybe work on a bit of core strength to really get your body upright through the crease.

From there you really just need to experiment with it in the nets.
Realize that you will have to pitch the ball in different areas if you know you swing it consistently.