Now we're moving into the realms of really thinking outside of the box. If you give this subject a great deal of thought you eventually arrive at Baseball as offering other options and one of the more interesting if you do your research is the Knuckle Ball. Interestingly I've just done a little research today and came across this link - http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/4665793/curveball-main_Full.jpg
which is an image of a knuckle ball, but if you research wider you'll soon notice that this image rather resembles the Wrist Spinner grip rather than the majority of other representations of the Knuckle Ball. Also associated with this link is the parent link as such here - http://www.ehow.com/how_4826158_throw-knuckle-curve.html and again if you read the description again it virtually describes a Wrist Spinners grip even down to the fact that you flick the wrist! So as you can see there's a degree of interesting cross-over going on and it's something I feel that can add to your potential as a Wrist Spinner.
My own variation which is very much developmental is based on the images found here at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckleball the tips of my fingers are bent very much inwards with the ball secured resting on the actual knuckles in the side shot here. When I get a chance I'll shoot some images of my knuckle ball and upload them. But with regards a description of my version the main thing I find is that it's a faster ball with a flatter trajectory. The interesting aspect for me is the claim that when bowled with the smooth side of the ball facing the bat and the seam at the edges there's the potential for the ball to drift - but not in one single direction but in two directions so that the ball across 22 yards may wobble significantly from one side to the other. This is so extreme in baseball that the Knuckle Ball poses difficulties for the catcher who wears those enormous big catching mits!
I'm probably going to include some of the Finger Spin techniques in this section including the Iverson Gleeson technique which has found popularity recently via Sri Lanka's Ajantha Mendis who seems to have renamed it the Carrom Ball.
Drift, this is
the aero-dynamic feature of spin bowling that sees the ball move laterally in
the air in the opposite direction of the spin (Stick in a video or images of
mine in a sequence from you tube). When executed well using Leg spin, the
batsman will see the ball coming down the wicket towards him initially in a
straight trajectory, but then as the ball dips, the ball will appear to veer to
his leg side late in the delivery, leaving very little time to make adjustments
for the fact that it has moved off its initial trajectory. There's also the
fact that the visual aspect of the movement might also suggest that without the
ball spinning the ball might simply then 'Go down leg'. For the ball to 'Drift'
the ball has to be spinning and if it grips the chances are it's then going to
turn off the surface and come back into the stumps.
Double Click the illustration below to see the video.(Watch the slow motion sequence which shows the ball 'Drift' towards the 'Legside' before spinning back viciously.
Don't think spin has much effect on a ball - check this out...
There's some evidence here relating to the fact that Warne occasionally suffered from a lack of drift reinforcing the fact that you can't simple turn it off and on. What is interesting is the explanation offered by Jenner...
"It's all to do with alignment," Jenner said. "It's something we have done quite often over the years. Shane can sometimes tend to close off in his action, which robs him of the drift that he has used over the years to get a lot of batsmen out. The ball will drift across a right-handed batsman, which makes him open up and leave himself exposed. "We did the same thing last year after Lord's. He was closing off in the first Test, and we worked on getting him back to where he should be. It seemed to work."
Drift described back in 1930 in Clarrie Grimmetts wrist spin bible ‘Getting Wickets’. He refers to it as ‘Swerve’………..
Grimmett on Drift
The ball or sphere which is perfectly round, and has no seam, swerves because it is affected by the pressure of the atmosphere. This is dependent on the way that the ball is spinning. Take, for instance, a ball spinning in a horizontal plane from right to left. That is, if you were to put a chalk mark round a sphere, similar to the seam on a cricket ball it would be spinning round at right angles to the line of flight, parallel with the ground. The ball would then be traveling much faster on the right side than on the left, because it is spinning forward. On the left side, the ball is spinning back, and, consequently, not going so fast as on the other side. Hence, the different sides of the ball are differentially affected by the air pressure.
It is therefore, easy to see that the ball must tend to travel or swerve to the side on which there is the most resistance. In this case, the most resistance is on the left because the ball has a spinning motion backwards, and is traveling forward. Consequently, it swerves to the left; and, if the spin is reversed, it will swerve to the right. Similarly, top and backspin operate the same way in their respective directions.
A cricket ball introduces something different again by reason of the fact that it has a seam raised above the main surface of the ball. Through the fact that the seam is in such contrast to the smooth, shiny surface – this varying as the ball becomes worn – it necessarily follows it offers more resistance to the atmosphere than the shiny part. Consequently, it swerves according to the way in which the seam is spinning.
Bowl a ball spinning over towards the slips as for the leg break, the seam being gripped so that it touches the first two fingers and thumb. The seam would be then pointing in the direction of the slips, and, with the atmosphere striking it in this position it would act as a rudder, steering the ball towards the slips – an out-swerve. Now grip the ball with the seam exactly opposite, spin it the same way, and it will swerve towards fine leg – an in-swinger.
It is possible, however, for the seam to spin in such a way that, in the prevailing conditions it does not act as a rudder, and the ball swerves simply because it is traveling faster in one place than in the other, as for instance, the ball spinning on a horizontal plane.
In the case of a ball bowled as for a leg break, a previously described, with the seam spinning like a hoop towards the slips, the top part of the ball is traveling faster than the lower part, and causes the ball to drop quickly. Hence the curving, deceptive flight of a ball from a slow bowler.
In baseball, they use for practice purposes a ball with the seam raised about an eighth of an inch, the idea being to enable learners to get the impression of swerve more easily by means of the contrast between the raised seam and the ball itself. This suggestion could be applied to cricket. Bowlers anxious to solve the mysteries of swerve could have a cricket ball made to order with the seam so raised, and would thus more clearly be able to note the effect of swerve.
Much useful experience can be gained by noting, particularly with the raised seam ball, the effect of the wind. Young bowlers should also watch carefully to see how the swerve varies according to the way they grip the ball.
In swerve bowling, like other branches of the art, it must be the bowler’s object so to regulate his swerve that the ball will hit the wicket. A new ball swerves much more than the old one, and it is vitally important that this advantage should not be wasted.
It is always advisable for a slow bowler to work against the breeze, which causes the ball to dip or swerve, together with other peculiarities of flight impossible to obtain while bowling with the wind. It also helps greatly to make the ball break.
Philpott on Drift……..
Philpott points us to looking at Tennis and baseball for clues as to the way that a ball spins and we as Wrist Spinners need to be aware of the potential for applying drift to our game.
“For the left handed server (Tennis), it is easier to slice down the left side of the ball, creating ‘Leg-Spin’. The serve now drifts from left to right. It drifts ‘in’. The ball always drifts the opposite way to the eventual ‘Turn’ after bouncing’. Peter Philpott; The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling; 2006; Crowood Press Ltd, Wiltshire.(Page 31).
And that’s it, apart from a diagram that illustrates a ball that is spinning with its seam 90 degrees to the direction of flight. There’s no mention of whether the seam is fully upright or slanted backwards or forwards. The illustration suggests that the ball is delivered with the rotation 90 degrees and perfectly up-right. But then you could argue that Philpotts book is aimed like Grimmetts at young boys and is written in a manner that is accessible to kids in the 1990’s. Whereas Grimmetts is far more complex and assumes that the kids have far less to distract them and therefore will take the time to read it over and over again until it sinks in.
Woolmer on Drift
Woolmer, on the other hand attempts to take a very in depth look at Drift in his book. Page 301 through to 307 he writes several thousands of words illustrated with some good diagrams explaining the Magnus affect. If you want to explanations of the magnus affect youtube is particularly good if you search around links to Baseball as there are video clips of wind tunnel and water experiments showing the affects of turbulence around balls. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oph9BP4lKjs
Having tackled the subject of the Magnus effect he then moves on to the ball of the Century from Warne to Mike Gatting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeLn8sEAKfE&NR=1
There’s a couple of interesting points that Woolmer makes that are in opposition to many people’s explanations and theories and the key one contradicts Philpotts diagram of the ball with the perfectly presented up-right seam spinning at 90 degrees to its flight path. Woolmer concludes that a ball presented in this manner will not drift. He then goes on to explain in great detail Warnes Ball of the century which has a great deal of drift, but as he gets into it and starts to explain the theory he then notes “In order for the delivery to drift towards leg, the wake of the ball must be disturbed upwards towards the off-side. How this happens is not yet well described in scientific literature. Thus, some speculation is warranted – and illustrated in Figure 5.23”. Which is the diagram used to explain the ball of the century.
The key revelation within the text is the speculation that in order that the ball does drift in the manner illustrated in the video link, it was probably tilted slightly backwards from vertical (When seen from above). For me personally, its just this line from everything I’ve read that I feel is new and definitely worth looking into. Additionally another resource that is available to everyone on the internet and is exceptionally comprehensive is fellow bigcricket forum contributor ‘Spiderlounge’s blog that looks at the subject - http://pencilcricket.blogspot.com/p/magnus-effect-in-leg-spin-bowling.html
I can follow what he’s saying up to a point but then I get a bit lost but within his explanation I’ve noticed too that he looks at the possibility that big drift occurs when the seam moves off the perfectly upright (Viewed from above) position and slants one way or the other.
I find the difficulty with all of the explanations is the visualising of the written explanation with the reality and sometimes the written explanation and the combination of the illustrations still leaves me confused, Having looked at this now for several days and numerous explanations in books and on videos dealing with the physics of a spinning ball I’ve come to a inconclusive conclusion.
Some of the information relating to spinning balls is easy to grasp and the magnus force when it relates to some types of balls makes sense. But, with regards to wrist spinning and the fact that it in itself is a relatively unexplored and unexplained with very few people prepared to put their hand up and say that they are experts in the field either as protagonists or researchers (the researchers would need to work with the protagonists) it seems that the fact that it is such a dark art amongst all of the cricket specialities that information is scant. The fact that not many people bowl wrist spin apart from Danish Kaneria and 2 others (His words not mine) the scope to explore the physics using players is limited. Then add the fact that we spin the ball around a horizontal axis with the seam 90 degrees to the direction of flight and it all starts to get a bit messy and exceptionally complex. So much so that when you read the few books that there are, that, deal with the subject of Wrist spin in any depth (see bibliography). You then see even the experts in the field with the help of physics and cricket experts come to a similar inconclusive conclusion.
On the Bigcricket Forum as I discussed this with the others we all more or less came to the same conclusion……..
· It is a very complex theory to understand and apply to your actual bowling.
· If you spin the ball hard with your Leg Breaks you will produce drift and if you notice it or someone else notices it keep it in mind and try and work with it.
· Don’t get hung up on it though, because similar to seamers who can swing the ball some days and not other days – it may be the same kind of thing with drift.
Woolmer winds down his section on Wrist Spinning holding Warne up as an amazing bowler with an exceptional degree of technical mastery and that the Ball of the century was probably a ball in a million. He finishes the chapter though quite fittingly as I have at the start of this section on Drift transcribing Grimmetts original work from 1930’s and saying it was Grimmett who literally wrote the book on spin.
My final thoughts on the matter.
Right here we go, I hope this makes sense. Last night I couldn't sleep thinking about this and I kept trying to visualise why this might happen. I had some of the things Pencil cricket had written about going on in my head and some of the stuff in the Woolmer analysis. But last night the thing I was mulling over was the fact that the drift happens at the end of the flight. Somewhere along the way in all of the explanations someone had said that the fact that the ball was dropping was a key part of the equation. This morning my older son who's much better than me at maths was explaining his theory and some of what he was saying had a ring of truth and an obvious connection with the Magnus force. Again using a ball I tried to visualise what might happen and why. Then the eureka moment happened... I realised I was only thinking about the ball travelling along one plane and obsessing about the forward motion only in relation to the Magnus force. Others had said the drop was a factor and as soon as I started to think about the drop in relation to the Magnus force it started to come together and make sense, but I was still sceptical and unsure how it would be visualised as a diagram.
Then I read the old post by the bloke earlier in this thread realising I'd never read it before, but as I read it, it made sense with regards to my visualisations earlier in the day. I then found the video above and realised that this like most of the others, this relates to balls either dipping (top-spin) or balls that hold up in the air or in the case of base ball side-ways swerve. I then thought - it's the drop! The drop is the factor - the ball going through the air initially is much faster than the drop stage and will also be running out of spin, it's something about the drop - the Magnus force comes into action as the ball starts to drop. I then thought of the same diagrams that have so far completely confounded me and visualised them on their sides. As soon as you do that it makes total sense...
The dropping ball then goes through a different plane and meets the same physics as the ball moving horizontally through the sky, but as you've all pointed out and explained in different ways, the reaction of the ball is the opposite to the spin and this exactly fits the theory offered by the Magnus force...
The intention is that this blog will become a resource for wanna be Wrist Spin bowlers or Legspin bowlers as they're also known as. While it's under construction have a look at -
http://www.mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com/
http://thegooglysyndrome.blogspot.com/
Constant support and ideas when you're learning can be found at http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t58854/
Here's our big cricket Wrist Spin Manifesto - http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t58854/
There's a new one that should be added next time that we update it and that's a point about the value of bowling in the nets as a Wrist Spinner. One of the best reading resources that you should try and get hold of are books that deal with or are by Clarrie Grimmett on Wrist Spin. Grimmett was the forefather of wrist spin and possibly the greatest wrist spinner ever and unlike many of the others seemingly more than willing to explain his art. But one of his great observations with regards Wrist Spin bowling was about the usefulness of bowling in nets.
1. Nets sessions are primarily there for batsmen and their use to the Wrist Spinner is negligible.
2. The batsman is able to bat against the bowler with impunity with no consequence for his actions, if you manage to bowl him, he is allowed back for another chance.
3. The batsman therefore approaches his batting in a manner that he would never employ in a match against a wrist spinner.
4. If you do choose to bowl against a batsman in a nets situation disregard and ignore any of the balls that the batsman deals with effectively as it's not how he'd bat against you in a match.
5. Never be disheartened by being smashed every in the nets.
If you want to practice you should find yourself somewhere that you can do it alone, so that you can concentrate and focus on your bowling. Both Grimmett and Peter Philpott advocate practicing alone and taking it very seriously and being 100% focussed on what you are trying to do. Grimmett had his own wicket in his back yard where he would practice. I use several places - playgrounds and basket ball courts in the winter and anywhere there's some grass in the summer - outfields of cricket pitches, artificial wickets but mostly football pitches.
Look at this bloke Jim on the Big Cricket Forum and the progress he made once he stopped bowling against his brother - http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t58854-189/ track back through a few pages and see how disillusioned he was before he tried bowing on his own.
So if you're trying to learn what is known to be the most difficult form of bowling in cricket you've come to the right place - follow the links and check back here and see this resource grow.
Posted by MPA first eleven at 16:15
The Legbreak; Of the several deliveries that the wrist spin bowler uses this is the primary weapon. Attributed to right arm bowlers the ball is bowled relatively slowly in comparison to the medium pacers and fast bowlers. The ball is pitched up towards the batsman at different and varying lengths and then spins away towards the Slips fielders. So from your point of view as the bowler the ball lands and spins away to the left. From the batsmans perspective it lands and spins away to his right as he looks up the wicket back towards the bowler.
From your point of view as the bowler it's necessary to be able to make the ball spin away from the point it lands. The levels of accuracy required for both the length and the line are exceptionally important and as a leg spinner the ability to bowl different, speeds, lengths and line all combine to make this a tricky ball to play. The Legbreak has a number of other attributes - Dip, Bounce and drift.
Dip; Is a description relating to the flight of the ball. The ball is usually delivered in such a way that it is bowled above the eye-line of the batsman, this has the effect of making it more difficult to judge with regards to it's speed and it's likely point as to where it's going to land. The leg break spins anti clockwise with the seam of the ball pointing in the direct of cover/point so it combines some of the attributes of a Top Spinner ball. It' this top spinning characteristic that causes the ball to be affected by the magnus effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect . The ball flies through the air and from the side it would inititally give the impression that it would land beyond or on the stumps, but because of it spinning and the magnus effect coming into play it suddenly falls out of the sky rapidly far sooner than a ball thrown without spin. Which as you can imagine as a batsman is problematic. This then helps with another of the Leg Breaks characteristics....
Bounce; This is an obvious consequence of the ball suddenly dipping. If the ball was to have been thrown a similar distance without spin, the entry angle into the impact with the surface would be mariginally lesser than the mirrored exit angle. So seeing the ball pitched up above the eye level the brain would then calculate expected entry angle and exit angle out of the bounce and quickly put into action a strategy with the bat to deal with the ball. But then the magnus affect causes the rapid dip and surprising high bounce that is designed by the wrist spinner to be either struck on the glove or the top edge of the bat forcing an error whereby the batsman will be caught.
Drift; This is another attribute caused by the fact that the ball is spinning and is a consequence of the Magnus affect. As well as potentially dipping at the last moment because the ball is spun with the seam at 45 degrees it cuts threw the air and reacts in a way that causes it to swerve off it's initial line swerving in the opposite way to the spin direction, so it swerves towards the leg side.
The Grip; The grip is described as a 2 fingers up, 2 fingers down with the 2 up fingers across the seam as opposed to along the seam in the case of medium pace and fast bowlers. The most important finger is the 3rd finger as it's this that imparts the spin on the ball. It's easy to get really hung up on the grip as there are loads of opinions as to how you do it. Some people have a loose grip, others have a tight grip I had success when I was learning with a solid grip but making sure that the gap between the two up fingers and the 3rd finger was quite wide. I find in my bowling that now the up fingers and the thumb have very little to do with the bowling action and that the position on the seam is absolutely essential. I have to make sure that I place the 3rd finger very purposefully on the seam and concentrate as I bowl on ensuring that the 3rd finger stays on the ball till last micro second. It's this 3rd finger dragging across the seam as the ball comes out of the hand that puts the spin on the ball.
Other people I've observed have very different grips, kids I've noticed including my 7 year old have evenly spread fingers which make their grip look like a conventional 'Holding the ball' grip, but their fingers are all across the seam and they get it to spin. I remember when I first picked up a ball I did something similar and just used a flick of the wrist and got it to turn.
Currently I'm noticing the subtleties of my own grip make a big difference. Currently I'm employing the 'The Straight Ball with the drag off the 3rd finger' approach (See below) and I'm noticing that this gets the ball turn particularly well and it very accurate. By not rolling the ball off the 3rd finger so positively and using subtle changes in the wrist position more top spin and less turn is acquired and this produces a different ball that keeps the batsman on his guard.
Round the Loop; There aren't that many resources available to the wrist spinner but the most important is possibly the book The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling by Peter Philpott. ISBN 1-86-126-063-6 published by Crowood. Philpott in this book writes about the subject in great depth and anyone learning Wrist Spin bowling needs to get a copy and read it not once but several times.
In the book as Philpott describes how to bowl wrist spin he uses the analogy of going 'Round the loop' to describes the position of the wrist in conjunction with each of the variations. It was through reading this book and realising the relevance of the wrists position that I was eventually able to bowl the Leg Break. So look at the diagram and consider the wrist in relation to the batsman. All of the main images here depict the view of the hand and wrist as the arm comes over so the images are of the hand position as seen by the batsman.
The Loop aspect describes the rotation (Twisting) of the wrist with regards to each of the deliveries. The Leg break has the under-side of the wrist as it comes over the top of the head in the delivery facing the batsman with the back of the hand facing you as it passes beyond the position of 12.00 o'clock.
Another piece of advice that I was given through http://www.bigcricket.com/ was that when the arm came over instead of the action being that of a fling it needs to be something that is more akin to a push, this for me gives me the sense that the wrist remains in that forward facing position in the delivery and as the hand comes over and down and the ball leaves the hand the fingers unfurl with the 3rd finger staying on the ball for as long as physically possible so that it then spins the ball.
On the subject of arm action here's some wisdom from the great Clarrie Grimmett....
I'm currently reading Grimmetts on taking wickets kindly copied and sent to me by Macca, cheers bloke very much appreciated! Anyway he's just mentioned a point regarding round arm verses a more vertical arm. The comparison he makes is that of skimming stones across a pond. Suggesting quite rightly that if you throw a flat stone using a vertical arm action it's simply going to disappear into the water, whereas the sideways arm action means that the flat stone doesn't break the surface and instead skims bouncing several times before disappearing. The inference is that the round arm action facilitates a faster movement off the pitch. The vertical action would mean some of the kinetic energy would be absorbed into the pitch and thus slow the ball down.
Three Different Approaches to bowling this delivery
The Straight Ball with the drag off the 3rd finger
The Cocked Wrist with the straightening of the hand at release
The real leg break with the flick
Some of the mastery with the Leg Break is psychological and a brilliant exponent of this is Shane Warne exemplified for example in the lead up to the Ashes in England going so far as having a giant statue of himself being paraded through central London on the back of a truck coinciding with news reports that he was currently able to produce at least 5 variations including his Flipper which it had been previously reported he’d lost because of shoulder operations. The sense you got from the build up was that England were virtually doomed because of Warne’s presence on the team and his ability to completely bamboozle any of the English batsmen with his ridiculous ability to spin the ball a la the Mike Gatting ball.
What I’m trying to say is that with some psychology you can find yourself in a situation where you are in the ascendency before you even bowl a ball simply because you are a Wrist Spinner, so even with a small amount of leg spin you’ve got the potential to dominate the batsmen. You’ve only got to watch small boys with reputations of being spinners bowling against adults at club level to see that simply by flighting the ball and varying the length and speed that spin doesn’t have to be an enormous component of the game. But once you’ve got some spin abilities and skills your potential increases.
The Straight Ball with the drag off the 3rd finger
If you are struggling with the Leg Break, one approach is to bowl the ball with the palm of the hand at the point of release facing the batsman. As the ball leaves the hand the last part of the hand that has contact with the ball is the 3rd finger and it’s this that imparts the spin. This approach seemingly doesn’t use any wrist action but still produces a small leg break with a good degree of bounce. Some people say that as you bring the ball over you should also have a feeling that you’re pushing the ball forward out of your hand rather than flinging it. If you’re suffering from the Googly Syndrome this may be the solution to getting your leg break back because it focuses your attention on the fact that you need to keep the wrist facing forwards along with the palm of the hand. Also try turning the wrist slightly clockwise so that your thumb comes round towards you and the little finger moves towards the bat so that the hand starts to move towards being in the Karate Chop position. You’ll notice that this small variation in the wrist position affects will affect the spin and the bounce.
The unfurled cocked wrist approach
Many wrist spinners you’ll note will start with their wrists cocked at the start of the delivery and then release the ball with the hand in the ‘Traffic Cop’ position on release. Again if you’re having problems getting your Leg Break together this is an approach that you may want to explore that could potentially lead to a break through or an improvement. The unfurling of the cocked wrist to the ‘Traffic cop’ position with the palm facing the batsman on release involves a degree of wrist flick and incorporates the 3rd finger as the last point of contact on the ball thus producing the spin. You only have to do this gently over a couple yards so that you can step forward and catch the ball yourself and you can see how readily the ball comes out of the hand rotating perfectly with the seam rotating at right angles to the direction of flight.
The real Leg Break with a big flick
The real leg break requires the big flick. Look at the earlier explanations regarding the throwing of the ball from one hand to the other and the video on-line at (link & Info coming soon) . As you work on this and get used to the feeling you’ll soon begin to develop an action where rather than just rolling your hand over and round the ball you’ll begin to produce an action more akin to a flick. hopefully this flick will incorporate the use of the 3rd finger, the wrist, the elbow and shoulder in putting the spin on the ball. Again the exact way in which this is done varies from person to person, some people note that the amount of work that the 3rd finger does is such that it produces blisters, Shane Warne apparently was able to produce his spin without having blisters or callouses at all. The important thing is that the flick is there. My own version creates an audible sound not unlike the Flippers click as the ball is flicked off my 3rd finger. In trying to understand the wrist flick and the role the 3rd finger plays my own experience is that the sensation that I have is that I’m primarily bowling the ball off the 3rd and 4th fingers, the rest of my hand apart from the wrist has very little involvement in getting the ball to spin, the thumb and the 2 up fingers only support the ball in holding the ball poised against the fingers that impart the spin.
When learning this, note the sideways action of the ball being thrown from one hand across the body to the other right to left with the flick. This is the basis of the leg break with the big flick. This is the action that gives you the flick coupled with imparting spin off the 3rd finger. The combination of both.
Similarly with the other versions the hand still releases the ball with the *palm facing the batsman, the ball should leave the hand rotating anti-clockwise with the seam at right angles to the direction of flight so that when the ball hits the ground the seam bites and propels the ball towards the off-side away from it’s expected trajectory. You may find that with this variation that your thumb is instrumental in some way and holds the ball in the hand so that the ball is tucked up ready against the 3rd finger on release as the ball is released the hand closes around the thumb. With all these slight variations and approaches there is one consistent aspect and that’s the position of the wrist on release. The underside of your wrist with the veins needs to be facing the batsman on release.
Tactics; I think with regards tactics it's easy to get carried away with watching video clips of Shane Warne, as you kind of get drawn into the idea that as a Wrist Spinner you're supposed to be bowling Leg Breaks down the leg side with the intention that they turn round the back of the bats legs. Well - if you are Shane Warne yes maybe. But as a novice wrist spinner you're more than likely going to be better off sticking to a more basic approach. I found as I learned most balls down the leg side get put away quite easily by the batsman. A potentially better approach would be to bowl with an emphasis towards the off-stump. My own approach (RH batsman) is to bowl at middle and off so that each ball is threatening to hit the stumps and therefore needs to be dealt with and not left. I've seen this approach used by a bloke who was playing on a wicket that offered very little assistance in the way of turn, but he bowled a very accurate line but varied his length using his ability to use dip and keeping the ball up above the eye-line. This bloke was in his 60's and bowled about 10 maiden overs out of 13!
I vary my line slightly but always keep the ball down the offside looking for opportunities of a catch at point, gully, cover etc. But the line I bowl worries batsmen who are not that confident and with the ball spinning away to slips there's always the potential to force an error.
Practice; The key to all aspects of Wrist Spin bowling is practice. Almost without exception anyone that knows anything of cricket all say that Wrist Spin Bowling is the most difficult of all of crickets skills. Therefore it follows that to bowl wrist spin and do it well you need to practice constantly and practice seriously. Philpott writes chapters in his book on this subject emphasising that if you're not obsessed with the idea of being a wrist spin bowler and don't view the prospects of spending virtually every waking hour of your life practicing it you'll never become an accomplished wrist spin bowler.
In C.V.Grimmetts book 'Taking Wickets' he makes some observations with regards Medium Pace bowling. He concludes that Medium Pacers should have as a part of their armoury the Wrong Un because he explains that it is far more natural and therefore easier to release the ball out of the back of the hand at speed to obtain spin than it is out of the front of the hand as you do for the Leg Break. This got me thinking. At my own club we have small boys that bowl seam up medium/fast style and seemingly they can turn their hand to bowling a decent turning Leg Break with some ease. Additionally I've suffered a forearm injury which has coincided with my own sons aged 7 and 10 starting to play for a club and the balls that they invariably face are seam up medium/fast. So in order to rest my forearm and give my sons some practice which is specific to their cricket experience I've been bowling medium pace seam up and been really surprised how easy it is to get it on the stumps.
I then realised that there may be some logic in Wrist Spinners who are learning to bowl leg breaks or maybe trying to recover their leg breaks to explore Medium Pace Bowling? The theory is linked to the fact that the small boys find it easy to go from one speciality to the other and I rather suspect that this is because the Leg Break delivery shares some commonality with the seam up delivery in that it comes out of the front of the hand, which as I've just mentioned Grimmett observes as being the more un-natural technique in some respects. So might it be the case if you're struggling with the leg break that you leave all of the complex stuff and strip your bowling technique down to basics by applying yourself to bowling Medium pace. Could it be that in doing this you learn the fundamentals of bowling, run-up, gather, delivery, follow through, line and length using a far easier mode and you're releasing the ball in that palm forward style?
It strikes me that if you acquire some mastery of Medium Pace and get the fundamentals sorted it may as in the case of the small boys take the adoption of the 2 fingers up, 2 fingers down grip and then apply the cocked wrist and have someone show you that you simply unfurl the wrist in a flick at the point of release to find yourself bowling half decent leg breaks? It then follows that initially you may lose your line and length because you are bowling in a different way, but surely having already mastered line and length with the Medium Pace bowling their would be some self belief in your ability to practice this new delivery and get it nailed?
The following bit is something I need to incorporate somewhere in the blog at some point ......
The other thing we do is for the first five overs or so we whip eveything into the keeper and attack the ball as though its a run out every ball just to make the openers think, bloody hell these guys are on the ball. Its impossible to go the whole match doing it but its a good little thing to do when a long partnership is going on to get the fielders awake again and put a bit more pressure on the batsman. Its also intimidating to have a ball whistle past you to the keeper every ball you play if you are a batsman.
This is an essential aspect of your bowling and one that is difficult to get the hang of. Bowling the ball short in most instances isn’t going to work as it gives the batsman time to see how much turn you’ve managed to put on the ball, track the ball and then play the appropriate shot. Better batsmen are going to be able to hit the ball easily and score runs and it’s generally seen as poor bowling. If in doubt, or if you’re bowling poorly try and bowl fuller, but not so far that the ball becomes a full toss and arrives at the batsman still in the air having not bounced.
The optimum length is a variable distance (3.8 Metres see below) that subtly changes with each batsman, dependent on his position in the crease, his height, reach and the strokes that he plays. I was shown a basic method of judging where to bowl, when explaining to a bloke that I try and bowl around 4.5 yards from the stumps. He said that this was flawed because of the characteristics of each batsman as listed above. His advice was stand where the batsman takes his guard and reach forward with the bat and to draw an arc with the toe of the bat. His advice was the length to bowl was on or around this arc. The theory is that this length is the most difficult to play and generally no matter what approach the batsman takes this length of bowling will cause him far more problems (if the ball is turning) than any other. There are solutions, skip down the wicket and smash the ball back over the bowlers head. Stride forward with a big positive front foot defensive block, angling the bat down killing the spin at the point of contact that ball makes with the ground. Step back and play a back-foot defensive block or play the ball on its merits having watched it turn off the wicket. All of which as far as we’re concerned are still risky, simply because of the length you’ve bowled. This approach can then be further enhanced………..
Flight
This is an aspect that is often over-looked by learners of the art as it seems to be a high risk strategy. At the early stages of your development it may be the case that you do not recognize or indeed simply have the skill to bowl the ball with differing degrees of over-spin. Your, Leg Break, dependent on the direction you get the seam to spin in and how much spin you put on it will dip rapidly towards the end of its trajectory. Explanations of this, involve complex physics but an analogy that is often used that people seemingly are familiar with are those using Tennis. A tennis ball hit across the top of the ball with a slice action spins with top-spin and dips ferociously towards the end of it flight path. You may also recognize the action in table tennis as well. The same physics applies to a cricket ball and if the ball is ripped from the fingers and wrist with over-spin (Top-Spin) the ball will suddenly dip from its expected flight path and fall short of its predicted trajectory causing the batsman problems. Additionally, because the ball has suddenly dipped, its angle of entry is nearing the same exit angle once it bounces. This sudden increase in bounce can be unexpected and cause yet more problems, coming off the gloves being a typical dismissal from a ball with more over-spin. The Top-Spinner one of the Wrist Spinners variations is the delivery that exemplifies this affect most dramatically, but a Small Leg Break e.g. one that has very little seam angle will have many of the attributes of a Top-Spinner. Again, this is only conjecture, but even a ball that is spinning at right angles to it’s direction of flight is still over-spinning albeit side-ways and to my way of thinking must include the attributes of dip caused by the over-spinning ball?
The conclusion thus far is that once again we return to the mantra of making the ball spin viciously in order to extract every advantage we can in our pursuit of slow bowling. Now, we come to another attribute, the trajectory or flight of the ball. Key to this next section is this from Bob Woolmer……
The brain is unable to predict the exact landing position of a delivery that, for a significant portion of its flight, moves above the horizontal direction of the gaze. So instead of telling spinners to get the ball above the batsman’s’ eyes, coaches should be telling them to get it above his eyes for as long as possible.
Bob Woolmers Art & Science of Cricket; 2008; New Holland Publishers; London.
This, therefore reinforces the necessity, to put revs on the ball. One of the things I find amazing about Warne’s bowling is the fact that he bowls his deliveries up in the region of 50mph and yet he bowls with a loopy action. The only way I could bowl at 50mph would be in a straight line and no way (At this stage) get it to go above the batsman’s eye level and come down before his feet, I simply do not have the skill to impart that amount of spin on the ball. But all is not lost, fortunately we’re not usually facing Sachin Tendulkar and simply getting the ball above the eye level of a club batsman is going to help our bowling a great deal. Additionally the small Leg Break with its Top-Spin attributes shares a wicket taking feature with the pure Top-Spinner, Woolmer again quoting research conducted by Renshaw & Fairweather (2000)…………
Expert batters were better able to distinguish the different types of deliveries than less good players. They also found that for all groups, detection rates (percentage of deliveries correctly identified) were best for Leg Breaks (90%) and Googly (52%) deliveries, but were considerably less good for Flippers (32%), Orthodox Back-Spinners (23%) and Top-Spin (12%) deliveries. Surprisingly, viewing the full flight of the delivery did not add any further predictive value in the case of these deliveries.
This study shows that essentially all the relevant information that the batter requires is provided in the spin bowlers action. Thus the batter makes his prediction of what the ball will do in the basis of advanced cues in the delivery action. In addition, it seems that if the ball lands 3.8 metres or closer to the batsman, he is unable to play it ‘Off the pitch’. Rather he is playing it on the basis of his predictions made at the time of ball release.
Bob Woolmers Art & Science of Cricket; 2008; New Holland Publishers; London.
The conclusion is for the spinner that you should endeavor to make your deliveries as identical to one another as you possibly can, as the skilled batsman’s key cue as to what the ball will do when it lands is taken from your release. Again as club players this would only be the forte of the 1st XI teams I would imagine.
The interesting aspect of the Woolmer information is the fact that the Top-Spinner and therefore the smaller Leg Break with the over-spin dip attributes and the potential to really give it some air and keep it up above the eye-level makes this delivery combined with that loopy flight a killer ball. This goes a long way to explain some of the innings of good batsmen that I’ve witnessed coming to very abrupt endings at the hands of small boys and old blokes that are barely able to walk let alone run! The characteristics of their bowling has been very good line and length, combined with loopy flight and perhaps a touch of Top-Spin.
I’d never heard of the Big Leg Break being described as something different to your bog standard Leg Break until I read Peter Philpotts book. I thought a Leg Break was a Leg Break and when it turned big it was either - you putting more effort into it or you getting lucky and the ball turning out of some rough! I didn’t realize that there was a technique to it, but there most definitely is and if you haven’t read the book the art of wrist spin bowling you may find this contentious or simply physically impossible. The characteristics of the biggun are all pretty much as you’d expect of the Leg Break, but it just turns more – a lot more! This comes about through the application of Philpotts round the loop theory whereby the position of the wrist dictates the direction of the spin and therefore the direction of the deviation from the expected line of delivery.
The top spinner with it’s over-spin - spins forward because the wrist flicks forwards with the thumb leading the way. The batsman sees the hand with the thumb at the front and the side of the hand visible. Hold your hand out in front of your with your thumb facing your nose that’s the aspect that he sees. Now turn your hand 45 degrees anti clockwise between the Top-Spinner position to one where your thumb is pointing to your right and the face of the hand is facing you. This is the leg break position and any variation between those 45 degrees potentially offers you varying degrees of sideways deviation off the line of flight because of the sideway rotation. Needless to say the palm facing you with a big flick would mean that the ball would come down the wicket to you as the batsman with seam rotating sideway and only the smooth side of the ball visible, so once it hits the track it’s only going to go one way – sideways.
So have you realized what’s coming next? In order that the ball spins even more radically to create even more deviation off its flight line once it hits the track, you apply the around the loop theory. From the Leg Break position of the hand facing you - now turn your hand further still anti-clockwise so that side of the hand with little finger (The karate chop side) comes round to start to be in front of your face – this is now the side of the hand that should be facing the batsman during the delivery of the Big Leg Break (see image) or put in another way if your were throwing a spear forwards it’s that side of the hand that goes forward that faces the bat in this delivery. In addition you then give it the big flick. If you’re keeping up with this you’ll be sitting there thinking but that suggests that I spin it backwards? Exactly! The ball spins inwards with the seam spinning towards somewhere between Square Leg and Fine Leg.
In the book Philpott alludes to this early on, suggesting that as well as spinning/flicking the ball from your right hand to left hand with the seam sideways to you, also hold the ball at arms length with the seam straight on to you and spin it back in towards your body.
As we have already discussed, spinning it from right-hand to left-hand. The other is to hold the it out in front of your body and spin it back towards your chest. I'll come back to that later. (The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling - Peter Philpott 2006 -page 22),
So right from the start he’s suggesting that you learn the back spin technique as well as the conventional side to side technique when you're just standing around learning how to flick the ball and get the rotation going with the use of the wrist.
It’s this that produces the Big Leg Break. The ball lands and has diagonal backspin towards the off-side. The forward motion is suddenly interrupted by the contact with the surface in the same way that the Flipper is but the diagonal nature of the seam angle means that the forward energy is combined with the diagonal backward forces and the result is the big turning Leg Break.
I think I’ve said before that lots of people do have the ability to pick up a cricket ball and simply using common sense and agility can bowl leg break balls using all sorts of variations of the 2 up 2 down grip and sometimes other more unorthodox grips. When I first discussed this technique (Big Legbreak) on website forums it was met with derision by some people and I personally couldn’t do it across 22 yards always instead producing a Googly/Wrong Un ( Googly syndrome ). But I did have an hour once practicing with a mate throwing the ball back and forth and I got it and was able just for that hour to produce massive turning Leg Breaks. Other people on the forum that tried it have developed it and now report that their little leg Break is now a big Leg Break simply by using Philpotts back-spinning into the body technique.
If you try this standing up at arms length and bowl it over short distances it’s relatively easy to replicate with the big flick and back-spin and you’ll see how the forward motion is interrupted on impact and the ball spins away to the left (Off-side) massively as a result of the seams position and the back-spin. If you have any doubts with regards the validity of this as a technique I can only point you in the direction of Peter Philpotts book The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling.
The Top Spinner probably the most basic and least problematic of the lot and potentially a very useful tool in learning some of the other variations or at least a starting point with regards putting some of the theory into practice. This delivery is a forward spinning ball with the seam aimed directly at the batsman. On impact it bounces more than expected and shouldn't deviate off it's incoming line after making impact with the wicket. The desired effect is that the bounce catches the batsman off guard and glances off either the gloves or the top edge of the bat and ends up with a catch being made.
The batsman sees the hand viewed from the side with the thumb leading the hand as the hand comes over the head. My personal experience with this ball is that this is the one that allows easiest flick action of the wrist. Other observations are that if you're concentrating on learning how to bowl a good line and length this is the ball that could be instrumental in facilitating this process. With no need to try and do anything tricky with the seam e.g. make it come out of your hand with the seam rotating sideway (Leg Break & Wrong Un) you can bowl straight unhindered again and again just tweaking your delivery until you find the right feel. After a lot of bowling you'll reach a very satisfying point when your accuracy comes to you.
Dip
The top spinner with its forward spinning characteristics is potentially the ball that drops out of the sky the most dramatically as it’s not subjected to any side spin as the Wrong Un and Leg Break are? It’s here that I have to concede that my lack of experience means I can’t confirm this as it’s not something I’ve observed or had a batsman come back to me and mention. But reading about spin and the Magnus affect it makes sense that this ball is potentially the one where this comes into play the most? Again, the effect would be the batsman would see the ball released and it would begin it’s trajectory through the sky and he would calculate it’s expected path based on experiential information – the entry trajectory would be mirrored with a slight decrease by the exit trajectory out of the bounce off the track. Henceforth with the top-spin the ball suddenly dips rapidly out of the sky and in doing so with the forward spin then bounces far more than expected because of the sudden increased angle of entry into the bounce. The effect is the ball bounces far higher than expected and comes off the top of the bat or the gloves for a catch.
Drift
As far as I know a well delivered Top Spinner doesn’t particularly produce drift because the rotation of the seam is upright. But in the same way that an outswinger or an inswinger is affected by the surface of the ball e.g. one side is shiny and the other not as shiny there's the potential for the ball to swerve through the air as a result of the rough side causing friction against the air. Similarly if the ball is bowled with a slight emphasis with the wrist towards the Leg Break or Wrong Un position on an un-responsive track the affect may be a dead straight non-turning ball with the Top Spinners bounce but the accompanyment of drift through the air.
Tactics
At club cricket level one of the best passages of play I’ve ever seen was a spell by an older bloke in his late 50’s bowling primarily Top-Spinners. The team were short of bowlers it seemed and between 4 blokes they had to bowl 50 overs. This bloke bowled 13 of them and got 10 maiden overs. I didn’t see his initial overs and I can only assume that at some point he got one or two of the balls to turn because when I picked up the spell he had the batsmen tied down and he was into his Top-Spinners. The batsmen were two of our openers, cricket players of many years (In their 40’s) on our own wicket and yet this bloke was had them fixed to their respective ends playing defensive shot after defensive shot. The only ball I could see that he was bowling was a Top Spinner. After the match I asked our bats ‘What was going on out there’? and they said "There was nothing we could do he was so accurate and was bowling different lengths, different speeds and different flight all of them on the stumps meaning that you had to play the ball.
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