Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

Well I have not been playing cricket for 15 years. Picked it up again last year, and bowling spin this season for the last two games. So I have been practicing leg spin for 3-4 weeks now.
I do practice spinning in the hand at home, but in the net most of the time I bowl to a batsman.

That's great, it seems like you have a natural aptitude for spin. You can already spin the ball, and that's half the battle.

I would recommend the Philpott book The Art of Wrist Spin bowling, you can't go much wrong if you follow the advice in that book. If you enjoy it and have the passion to practice, I think you'll get the wickets!
 
That's great, it seems like you have a natural aptitude for spin. You can already spin the ball, and that's half the battle.

I would recommend the Philpott book The Art of Wrist Spin bowling, you can't go much wrong if you follow the advice in that book. If you enjoy it and have the passion to practice, I think you'll get the wickets!

Ok, I will buy that book then. I did go through a lot of YouTube tutorials but they became really confusing at some point. 😅
 
Ok, I will buy that book then. I did go through a lot of YouTube tutorials but they became really confusing at some point. 😅

Yes, there is different advice and lots of information to take in. But I would say, for 3-4 weeks, you are making solid progress and can turn the ball.

Try not to become obsessed with variations and think "I must bowl leg spin, googly, slider, top spinner and flipper all to perfection". If you can do it, great.

But the most important is to have a great stock ball leg break with high revs.
 
Yeah there is that. Philpott's book is an essential read I reckon. UK's SKY videos of Warne after he'd retired and finished with all the BS, he's talked a lot of sense on there after he retired.
Yeah the slider is just confusing. He stopped talking about it after retirement. I saw your post in this thread. It makes a lot of sense. It’s just big leg break gone wrong. It happened to me in the synthetic pitch already. Just bowl big leg break with pace in synthetic pitch, it becomes a slider 😅😅
 
Why would anyone do that?

Actually something funny that I tried for a few net session was having a leg spinners wrong’un as a variation for my off spin.

So it’d come out my hand completely different but be exactly the same delivery as my off break.

It kinda worked but it’s too hard to bowl.
 
Actually something funny that I tried for a few net session was having a leg spinners wrong’un as a variation for my off spin.

So it’d come out my hand completely different but be exactly the same delivery as my off break.

It kinda worked but it’s too hard to bowl.

I also try this concept with "the wrong wrong un", which is the flipper out of the back of my hand and if I bowl it well enough I can produce a small back spinning leg break. it's almost like a doosra but using the flipper click technique.

Personally, I think the flipper and off spin are very closely related and that these variants known as "the wrong wrong un" and "doosra" are also closely related and resemble one another closely.

That's a lot of spin jargon in two paragraphs but I'm hoping it makes sense.

I will try and video my "wrong wrong un" one day to show what I mean, but it's basically a flipper bowled out the back of the hand like a googly. I learned it from Dave's blog. I've never bowled it in a match, maybe I should try it in a friendly and see what happens. I don't really see the point of it, because it will never be better than my leg break, but it is kinda funky being able to bowl a small leg break using a different technique and showing the back of the hand to the batsman.
 
I also try this concept with "the wrong wrong un", which is the flipper out of the back of my hand and if I bowl it well enough I can produce a small back spinning leg break. it's almost like a doosra but using the flipper click technique.

Personally, I think the flipper and off spin are very closely related and that these variants known as "the wrong wrong un" and "doosra" are also closely related and resemble one another closely.

That's a lot of spin jargon in two paragraphs but I'm hoping it makes sense.

I will try and video my "wrong wrong un" one day to show what I mean, but it's basically a flipper bowled out the back of the hand like a googly. I learned it from Dave's blog. I've never bowled it in a match, maybe I should try it in a friendly and see what happens. I don't really see the point of it, because it will never be better than my leg break, but it is kinda funky being able to bowl a small leg break using a different technique and showing the back of the hand to the batsman.

Right so the back of your hand is facing the batsman and it come off of your index finger (like an off break)?

If so I see what you mean with the doosra, except your hand is twisted the other way around. The only difference is you can actually legally bowl it lol. The doosra is unbelievable difficult to bowl without chucking.

I also had a leg spin delivery that I sometimes bowl in the nets that my palm facing towards cover and the back of my hand towards mid wicket (right handed batsman) if that makes sense, and I’d release it like a usually leg break except all of the revs I put on it is back spin. Unfortunately it’s fairly obvious but being able to but a regular leg breaks worth of back spin on a ball is pretty good.
 
Right so the back of your hand is facing the batsman and it come off of your index finger (like an off break)?

If so I see what you mean with the doosra, except your hand is twisted the other way around. The only difference is you can actually legally bowl it lol. The doosra is unbelievable difficult to bowl without chucking.

I also had a leg spin delivery that I sometimes bowl in the nets that my palm facing towards cover and the back of my hand towards mid wicket (right handed batsman) if that makes sense, and I’d release it like a usually leg break except all of the revs I put on it is back spin. Unfortunately it’s fairly obvious but being able to but a regular leg breaks worth of back spin on a ball is pretty good.

Not off the index finger, but squeezed between my third finger and thumb (flipper click release) with the back of the hand facing the batsman. In my view this is similar to a doosra, it just comes down to which fingers are used because the wrist isn't involved much if at all in imparting the spin.

I think Dave is familiar with this "wrong wrong un", too, as I learned from his blog. I will try and video it and capture getting the ball to turn from leg to off using the back of the hand flipper release.
 
Yeah, it's great to see new members and more chat going on.

Talking of the dark side, I started bowling googlies in the nets again. I even bowled one in a match at the weekend, it was telegraphed and I think he picked it from the hand. He just watched and blocked it.

The question is, do I bowl more googlies or stick with the flipper? I don't want to ruin my leg break, but those googlies are starting to come out nice in the nets.

Which one do the batsman struggle with more by your observations? Whichever it is, work on that more. But still keep the other cause it's handy.
 
I reckon If your cautious and bowl a ratio of 10:1 or something when practicing and you can develop it slowly, always bowling at a high ratio of Leg-Breaks you might be on to something. I try them every now and then, but they just come out as Leggies! So I leave it another 500 balls or so, so I'm working on a 500:1 ratio!
I've never had problems with googly syndrome for some reason. I've been able to develop them at a ratio of 1:1 or so.

I have a theory why this is. When I take my thumb off the ball, I literally cannot get any revs with leggies hand to hand. The ball just comes out weakly with around 20% of the revs I get with the thumb on the ball. I think for me, the thumb actually does a lot of the work in the spinning. When I experiment bowling leg breaks with the thumb off the ball, it comes out like a wrong un off 22 yards. I think this is because without the thumb the action therefore gets more 'fingery' and especially with a high arm action, the fingers are likely to just flick the ball and apply the off-spin if you get it slightly wrong instead ? It doesn't have the thumb to guide it and give control? Does anyone else have a similar experience to me here?

Also, just read Peter Philpott's book - gonna try his 'round the loop' practice next session. Where you bowl in sequence the big leg break, average legbreak, small legbreak, topspinner, small wrongun and big wrongun continuously, trying to spin each as hard as I can. Also gonna still throw in a few flippers at the end of most sequences so I can keep developing them.
 
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Yeah the slider is just confusing. He stopped talking about it after retirement. I saw your post in this thread. It makes a lot of sense. It’s just big leg break gone wrong. It happened to me in the synthetic pitch already. Just bowl big leg break with pace in synthetic pitch, it becomes a slider 😅😅

After reading Philpott's book, I've realised the slider is probably just any leg break with a bit of backspin. Key words - 'a bit'. Doesn't need to be a lot, cause just a bit will change the ball from dipping with the topspin to carrying through more with the backspin and skidding on.

P.S - If you bowl a standard leg break that doesn't turn and the batsman asks what it was - always say the slider! Heck, even start calling it the zooter and other stuff they call it these days haha.
 
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Which one do the batsman struggle with more by your observations? Whichever it is, work on that more. But still keep the other cause it's handy.

I feel like the ball turning in the completely different direction will always be more effective than the ball going straight just because of the change in angle.

The issue is that the wrong un can be hard to disguise.

That being said the difference in flight bounce for the flipper/slider would be more effective on certain batsmen.

So it’d probably depend on how the batsman plays.
 
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