Wrist Spin Bowling (part Five)

[SomeblokecalledDave.]

Yes! I recently bowled to an younger bloke and the first shot he played was a switch hit. He then followed up with a paddle sweep. He moved across the crease too much that it was very difficult for me to pick a line. After a couple of shots, I slowed down the ball even more and gave more flight and he ended up getting top edges. But yeah, this is something I need to be aware of playing the T20 game. Lot of batsmen are now playing unorthodox shots and if they connect a couple of balls cleanly in an over, you will be looking at a 10+ run over. This is why it is important to be attacking with leg spin. My fellow leggie bowls a faster ball whenever he gets hit but that in a way is playing in the hands of the batsman. Batsmen can easily spot that pattern and prepare for the faster one.

Yeah the tactic of bowling faster I don't think that has ever worked for me and yet it was always the go to approach for years and years. It always seemed utterly counter-productive to me to slow down. I can't remember when it was when the penny dropped, I think part of the journey was watching a bloke that played for Scotland... Majid Haq and reading about the fact that he bowled frequently at sub 40 mph and yet he'd dismissed people like Jaques Kalis. I remember now... it was when I captained our 4th XI when the club was really struggling to survive hence I was the captain - that's how bad things were! We were short and one of the kids in the team, his dad helped us out by playing. Big bloke, out of condition, pretty much just there to make up the numbers. I think it was one of several games where we were playing against 11 adults and I had a team of 5-6 small boys and we were getting hammered and I asked him if he could bowl and he came back with... "Dunno, used to as a kid, I'll give it a go if you want". I think he came off 2 steps and lobbed up a moon ball that was sooooo slow, the batter lunged forwards and was bowled. 4 overs and 4 wickets laters (two of them in that first over) he'd gone for about 8 runs! I couldn't believe it. He didn't spin it, it was simply down to the fact that it was up above the eye-line and the length he bowled on.

Instinctively I still want to go faster, but I rein it in and do go slower and it works better than faster that's for sure. Last summer I was in a tight game and there was a well set batter that had been dropped off me in his first over, but he was dealing with my bowling quite well and I'd been trying to keep him off strike and he needed something like 8 off the last over - he may have been the last wicket as well - one of those games. I bowled my stock ball he hit that well... 2 runs, but I felt that he had a couple of 4's in him. I think the next ball went for 4 and I felt that I needed to take a risk and thought a slower ball might do it and I'd been brought on for the last over because the captain and some of the others felt that if anyone was going to do it, it would be me. Didn't work, he hit the slow one for 4 - game over. Your then left feeling like the slow ball was the bad option, but they're not a lot of the time.