Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)
- Thread starter Richard the Third
- Start date
slingylefty
New Member
Back in nets today after a 4 week vacation. It went surprisingly well given this long break. It's amazing how much psychological boost we get if the first ball of the day lands at the right spot 
I did not rip the first ball fully but it had decent flight and landed just outside off at a perfect length. I pretty much followed that up with about 70% deliveries landing consistently. Overall, a very satisfying nets session (bowled 5 overs). I am almost certain to start playing matches starting next month, my Captain confirmed.
One minor observation - if I raise the front arm higher and delay it by a fraction of second, it is helping me to complete the pivot of the back foot and improve flight & accuracy. Now, I am not able to pull it off every delivery and sometimes I rush it. If I am conscious about doing that, I am fine. I need to really bake that in my muscle memory. I will keep doing this drill in front of the mirror in my garage.
I did not rip the first ball fully but it had decent flight and landed just outside off at a perfect length. I pretty much followed that up with about 70% deliveries landing consistently. Overall, a very satisfying nets session (bowled 5 overs). I am almost certain to start playing matches starting next month, my Captain confirmed.One minor observation - if I raise the front arm higher and delay it by a fraction of second, it is helping me to complete the pivot of the back foot and improve flight & accuracy. Now, I am not able to pull it off every delivery and sometimes I rush it. If I am conscious about doing that, I am fine. I need to really bake that in my muscle memory. I will keep doing this drill in front of the mirror in my garage.
SomeblokecalledDave.
Some Bloke Called Dave
Nice one. What's your thoughts on that in terms of your rationale? To me that looks like a pretty aggressive field with some safety built in. To me that looks like you're going to be bowling for the most part a leg-stump line or there-abouts and you're looking for as many wicket options as possible if you've got the ability to bowl a nice tight line and length. Then if it does go awry, you've got some protection on the leg-side, this is pretty much if I let a captain set a field for me, they'd do something very similar and generally I'd be happy - especially with the slip. Does the slip stay for the entire spell, or would you move them once you got a look how much the ball is turning? With me most captains would allow the slip initially, but they usually get them out dependent of how well I'm bowling and move them elsewhere. I guess what I want to ask is how accurate is you're bowling these days - is this field in part set to negate some bad balls? Or are you looking to encourage the big shots on the leg-side? Do you look at your stats during the season and do you know whether your selectors/captain are looking at them and what do they feel is important - what did you feel was important average, economy or strike rate?
SomeblokecalledDave.
Some Bloke Called Dave
Slingy -what format will you be playing?Back in nets today after a 4 week vacation. It went surprisingly well given this long break. It's amazing how much psychological boost we get if the first ball of the day lands at the right spot
One minor observation - if I raise the front arm higher and delay it by a fraction of second, it is helping me to complete the pivot of the back foot and improve flight & accuracy. Now, I am not able to pull it off every delivery and sometimes I rush it. If I am conscious about doing that, I am fine. I need to really bake that in my muscle memory. I will keep doing this drill in front of the mirror in my garage.
SomeblokecalledDave.
Some Bloke Called Dave
Leggy88
More Q's! I noted that in order to get longer games and therefore access to proper grass wickets your working on your batting. Batsmen for the most part as far as I'm concerned talk a lot of B*****s in the context of facing spin, but it'll be interesting to hear your perspective as you're now"Poacher turned game-keeper". When a R/A wrist-spinner shows up for a spelll when you're batting (1). What's the most likely mode of dismissal is he going to get you with and why? (2). What's your 2 go to shots that are going to get you off strike or more than singles?
SomeblokecalledDave.
Some Bloke Called Dave
How do we all bowl in the nets? I'll explain what I do and this kind of is dictated by Philpotts mantra around "Serious, positive and purposeful" or "Perfect practice". I find net sessions with batters looking to slog me out of the park a bit of a joke because no-one knows whether there's a fielder there, so I show up with a diagram of a field with my field placements and show the batters and say 'Look mate, you tell me when you've hit it whether you feel that's probably been caught and be honest about it' and then I say 'Play me as though you're a middle order batter and you're looking to score runs with a degree of risk taking' - the more serious ones play along with it. My approach is, I give them 20 deliveries and I've got to get them out in those 20 deliveries ideally under 10. I do the Shane Warne thing where I try and few different lines and try and asceratain their strengths and weaknesses and then look to exploit the weakness. It's very rare that I've not got them within the 20 balls, I think last season it happened once or twice, generally I get them much sooner within 15. In actual games This season (2025) my strike rate was 16.83 in games and all time at the club, including really poor years and there's been a fair few it was 32.89. But 2024 - SR 22.11; 2023 - SR 16.96; 2022 SR 18.95; 2021 - SR 22.33. Do you all look at your strike rates or the other indicaters of how well you bowl?
Leggy88
Well-Known Member
I'd say for that field I'd be trying to operate on middle stump, get the batter trying to work it through the leg side or straight and then nick to slip or miss it and get bowled, with the occasional wide one thrown out there to tempt them into a big cover drive to short cover. Short cover is also there for the leading edge, I'd actually say short cover is my most successful field placing in terms of amount of catches, my bowling just seems to cause a lot of batters to hit it there. What would you say is your most successful field placing Dave?
Yeah generally slip would stay for the whole spell, unless the ball is not turning at all. Currently I'm bowling accurately enough to land the ball in line with the stumps most of the time, with slightly varying lengths but generally a decent length. My bad ball (of which there may be one an over) is slightly shorter and slightly down leg side, and therefore I have the deep backward square to counter that.
I'd definitely encourage big shots on the leg side like the sweep or just the simple slog, thats why I have the fly slip/short third man, because I find with batters who do that, after a while one will pitch a little shorter than expected, and they will get a thick outside edge to that catcher. I feel like volume of wickets is the most important thing for the selectors to see, which has sadly eluded me thus far this season, but I've got to be patient, for it is not due to me bowling badly, just due to lack of opportunity and lack of luck (so many catches dropped, lbw appeals, etc). I also feel economy is important to them, but this is not really something I focus on too much as if I bowl one bad ball an over, the figures get a bit inflated, and then you combine that with misfields etc, your economy really gets ruined.
Leggy88
Well-Known Member
"Poacher turned game-keeper". When a R/A wrist-spinner shows up for a spelll when you're batting (1). What's the most likely mode of dismissal is he going to get you with and why? (2). What's your 2 go to shots that are going to get you off strike or more than singles?
1: my most likely mode of dismissal would probably be an edge to slip trying to drive through the covers, but this is more due to a problem with my batting where I am not as good at driving spin as I struggle to get right to the pitch of it sometimes.
2: my two go to shots are definitely the cut and the pull, the pull more so for boundaries, and the cut for singles but occasionally more. This is because I feel the safest way to play a good leg spinner is to wait on the backfoot unless it is quite full, and then you can wait for the turn and you should have enough room to cut it once it turns if he doesn't pitch it on exactly the right line. These backfoot shots are definitely my strengths, for example you will never really see me dance down the wicket and hit it over his head. Instead I wait for the bad ball, which is definitely an effective method when most spinners bowl 1-2 bad balls an over (at least).
Leggy88
Well-Known Member
Wow Dave that is a really incredible strike rate. I personally love looking at the strike rate, I think it is the most valuable stat for the impact you have on the game as a leg spinner, however though when playing on synthetic my strike rate generally balloons to around 30, but when playing turf it used to be around 20, so strike rate is not something I look for that much at the moment (at least until I'm back on turf). I'm more concerned with if I'm landing it where I want it, and if I feel it's coming out well (with lots of revs), instead of the results, which can definitely be quite discouraging on synthetic wickets.
I don't so much bowl with a field to the batters in the nets (though I think it could be something I'll try), I just try and make sure every ball I bowl counts, and is purposeful, and I 100% concentrate on where I want it to go. Whatever the batter does with it is irrelevant in my mind. Yeah the Warne thing is good to do I reckon, but what do you do if you, say, meant to bowl it on fifth stump line but put it on off stump? Do you try again next ball or do you rearrange your over?