Legspin bowling

Update on Blog

2012-01-14T13:38:00.000-08:00

My main Blog has been updated at http://www.mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com/2012/01/sidearm-pro-cricket.html if you don't view that blog I'd suggest that you check it out and sign up to that one as there's far more content on that one especially now as the season in getting nearer here in the UK.

Dave

The bowling action basics

2011-08-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

This is a new section that hopefully will integrate with some new content in the near future. This section will either grow in detail or be split into sections, but for the moment here is the content in its basic form.

Many people struggle with the approach to the crease and how and what you should be aiming to do, currently at my club I'm working with a lad who has a similar problem that I had for over 5 years. I always bowled with a skip rather than a bound and was constantly told that it was hindering my bowling, which I suspected was true, but I couldn't see any way without some coaching how I could rectify it.

I have two sons aged 12 and 10 who both bowl and the older lad when he started to play for his club also had an incorrect bowling action in that he jumped off the wrong foot. Aware that if he kept bowling in this manner the more difficult it would be to rectify it later in life, so I helped him get it right showing him what to do in an awkward and exaggerated manner, but within a few hours he corrected it, but I still couldn't see that I'd be able to correct my bowling. A sort of you can't teach an old dog new tricks thing.

Then last season I had 2 problems. (1). It seemed as though developmentally I'd kind of hit a brick wall with moving forward with my bowling. Having learned a great deal quickly, I then plateaued out and then seemed to be going no-where. (2). I developed plantar fasciitis and speaking and visiting a physio/bio-mechanist the suspicion was that this was exacerbated by my bowling action using the skip. So at the end of the 2010 season I decided that having seen the Beau Casson video there was scope to gradually learn the correct approach and end up bowling with the bound. The full version of this video with the variations of the stand start are here. Off the back of that and then with help of my 9 year old son and 'Super Dave' at Stanford Le Hope CC, I eventually got the basics sussed. This got me to a good basic start which only needed a couple of tweaks. Since then, working around the problems with my knee (Damaged meniscus)

So if you're having problems with this and you don't know what your legs and feet are supposed to be doing this may be helpful.

The image here (Above) in my case is off of a handful of steps 6-8 perhaps, but then you hit a point where the business starts. At some point as you reach the crease if you're right legged and right handed you have to start the bowling action and this starts with a commitment off your left foot and this is the start of the 'Bound' an energetic leap. You leap into the bound off the left leg 'A', and it may help when you start out with learning to do this to do so in an exaggerated manner. So this part is the first stage leaping off the left leg into the 'Bound'.

So, now we're mid-bound and this part is one of the crucial sections in the whole action. Whilst in mid-bound you need to be setting your body up to get side-on which is one of the key components in getting the ball to do all those special things like dip and drift. So, while you're in the air you need to be thinking about how and where your foot (A) is going to land on the crease. At this point as a series of words this all sounds complex, but once you get going and realise there's only a sequence of a few essential details it quickly becomes fairly natural. The foot A needs to land side on with foot then pointing sideways towards 'Cover' this will help with getting your whole body into the side-on position.

So in this shot (above) we can see that foot B is going to land, coming out of the bound and it's ready to plant down firmly in the side-on position. Meanwhile your left leg is starting to follow up, but your primary focus is landing foot B side on.

In this image above you can see that the foot is planted firmly side on and that left leg which is going to be the next crucial stage is stepping out forwards to then become the 'Pivot foot' on which you will rotate through the bowling action.

Above; here you can see the pivot foot about to be placed and the emphasis on your focus when you're learning this, now shifts from the side-on landing right foot (at the back in this image) to the left foot on which you're now about to execute the next critical stage.

With the left foot now planted, the right foot has come out of its side-on position and is now kicking up and round, rotating and the 'pivot foot' at the front in the picture above. At this point you need to get as tall as possible on the left foot, so you push up on the ball of your foot and toes. This next bit is the really exciting bit, because as you push up on the toes you then, in addition to swinging around the pivoting foot as a part of your body being swung round by the forward motion and your arms facilitating the pivot, you add to the pivot/rotation by twisting on the ball of your foot from the hips.

So it's this subtle addition in the two images above that could be the key to you producing your leg break with far more spin, dip and drift. The simple addition of ensuring that you get up tall onto the ball of your foot and twisting on the ball of the foot from the hips.

The best exponent I've seen of this is Basildon & Pitsea Cricket Clubs Dave Bonnet, who up to the present time is currently the biggest wicket taker in the league that he plays in. He does this in a beautiful smooth balletic action and I should try and get some video footage of him bowling to show as an example of how it's done. My version of it is a work in progress and I'm sure that in a year or so's time if my knee survives it'll be better, but here it is as I write showing the rise and twist up on to the foot.

Updated Again

2011-02-15T13:57:00.000-08:00

An update has been added to the Leg Break section of the blog. The information concerns Flight and Length, if you're looking for a quick view of the update see this link.

The Flipper

2010-12-12T14:18:00.000-08:00

The Flipper and its variations (Under construction and being re-edited). Copyright Dave Thompson 2010

With the Flipper and its variations we’re now moving into the more advanced techniques. Again I have to mention that if you’re still struggling with your basic stock delivery – The Leg Break, you should work on that before moving on to bowling any of the following variations. There’s another warning that comes with the Flipper and this has to do with the stresses that the technique for imparting the spin on the ball puts on your body. During Warne’s career he went through a phase where he lost or didn’t bowl the Flipper due to surgery on his shoulder. It appears that because of the surgery or maybe because the Flipper was a part of the problem that led to the injury, Warne was Flipper-less for quite some time. The inference is that during the rehabilitation process Warne was either advised not to bowl the Flipper or simply couldn’t bowl the Flipper, suggesting that the strain the technique puts on the body needs to be recognized. Anecdotally Richie Benaud another exponent of the Flipper warns that people under the age of 18 whose bodies are still developing, should steer away from the Flipper as a variation because of the stresses and strains that it puts on the body. My own experience can pay testament to the fact that it can cause a condition called Medial Epicondylitis, also known as ‘Golfers Elbow’. The exertion of clicking the ball from between the finger and thumb whilst holding the ball in peculiar wrist configurations causes strain from the fingers through the hand and wrist right up the arm to the inner elbow. This causes a fair bit of pain in the inner elbow that becomes evident when performing a whole range of different non-cricket activities and requires attention and re-habilitation in order to rectify.

The Flipper Click - How the spin is imparted.

Unlike all of the classic Wrist Spin deliveries that impart the spin through the use of the third finger and wrist action (at the hand-stage of the delivery), the Flipper uses a completely different mechanical action. First described by the inventor of the Flippers - Clarrie Grimmett in his book Getting Wickets in 1930 the spin is imparted using the fingers and the thumb.............

The ball is held between the second finger and the thumb, and I spin it or twist it. The method of spinning is similar to that used in clicking the finger and thumb to attract attention.

Clarrie Grimmett; Getting Wickets: Hodder & Stoughton:London; 1930.

Or in a more up to-date rendition – clicking the fingers in the manner you would to the beat of music. It’s easily understood by using a small light-weight ball such as a table tennis ball or a tennis ball even. Place the ball between the clicking fingers and thumb and squeeze them together to click the ball out of the them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvix9j7IPgU

Pre-bowling training and drills

If you’re serious about this delivery, you should start to incorporate the flick into your Philpott-esque drills. In the same way that Philpott advocates that you “Spin,spin,spin”! As much as you can at every opportunity to get the wrist working over the top of the ball giving it a good flick, you should do the same with your Flipper. At every opportunity in amongst your daily spinning of oranges, apples, cricket balls and tennis balls - learning the wrist spin techniques as you sit watching the tele etc. You now need to incorporate the clicking of the same objects from hand to hand using the Flipper technique. Initially try it with something lighter and smaller such as a tennis ball and just do it as much as you can and as often as you can. You’ll probably start out with very little control over it, but given time and practice you’ll be able to click it from one hand to the other with control and ease. If, you do experience any muscle strain you would probably be advised to stop and rest it for a couple of weeks before resuming the drills. If this happens you should be cautious when you resume the practice you should consider looking into some warm up exercises used in medial epicondylitis rehabilitation...........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iklojqcUjgE&feature=related

Beyond that if you do the stretches and then resume the training with a ball and still experience the pain I’d advise leaving the Flipper and seeking advice from a doctor before resuming. It may be that your lifestyle is pretty sedentary and that you need to look at fitness programs that help develop muscle strength and flexibility.

Flipper History

The Flipper like the Big Leg Break and the Orthodox Back-Spinner and even to some extent the Wrong Un are not seen that much in club cricket or indeed the higher levels of cricket. With slow bowling falling out of favour in the 1970’s and 80’s and the fact that most Wrist Spinners focus on using their stock ball to good effect with only the Top-Spinner as a variation, the Flipper amongst others has disappeared into obscurity. This is not surprising when you consider that Peter Philpott in his book ‘The art of wrist spin’ which surely must be seen as the definitive work on the subject of Wrist Spin Bowling spends very little time describing the flipper and comes across as being unsure about this variation and writing as though it’s not a variation that he has ever used himself? Philpott then shrouds the ball in further mystery by commenting on the fact that expert cricket commentators continually embarrass themselves again and again on TV claiming that they have just seen someone bowl a Flipper. The only detailed instructions relating to bowling the Flipper can be found in Grimmetts book Getting Wickets and even in there Grimmett describes the variations as experimental and isn’t sure at this stage in his career as to whether they will ever be used in first class cricket.

So obscure is the Flipper with regards to written descriptions of it, that again and again people mistakenly call ‘Flipper’ when in fact the ball bowled was an Orthodox Back-Spinner or one of the more advanced deliveries that has gone wrong and simply skidded through because the seam didn’t bite. The obscurity of the delivery has meant that some commentators on the subject like this one which you’ll find on the Cricinfo website (See link below) almost goes as far as claiming that it doesn’t actually exist. The writer purports to undo the ‘The Physics’ of Leg Spin bowling and the piece reads like the comments of an expert until it comes to The Flipper. The bloke points out some contradictions between Benuad’s and Jenner’s description of the Flipper and ends the article with…….

‘I'm reasonably convinced the ball is not just an exercise in mind-games, but I've yet to be convinced I've seen one’.

http://static.cricinfo.com/db/ABOUT_CRICKET/EXPLANATION/LEGSPIN_PHYSICS.html

Rest assured Mr Whittaker the Flipper does exist and it does so in several variations. With Wrist Spin Bowling there is a great tradition of bowlers claiming to have a mystery ball, one that no-one else bowls or one that the bowler bowls better than all the others for some reason or another. Much of it is bluff and hot air, but it’s all a part of the psychological game. Maybe because of the very nature of the bowling e.g. slow there’s always been a need to compliment the ability of the bowler with the ability to deceive the batsman into pre-empting the delivery in a number of ways and one of those is the talking up of the individuals abilities and variations and setting an expectation prior to the duel on the pitch. Shane Warne in our lifetime has proven to be the master of this, using every opportunity to sell his abilities to every batsman that’s ever faced him. Warne claims again and again before each series to have an array of deliveries that will see him rip through a batting order like like an adult bowling at a bunch of 7 year olds. We all know that more often than not he succeeds and in my opinion this is down to the way that his career started out with the ball to Gatting that has gone on to be described as the ball of the century. This ball set him up to be super-human, but it wasn’t entirely bluff, because he did go on to repeat similar deliveries again and again, but he never let up with the psychological bombardment, promoting himself in anyway possible to always be at the forefront of a batsman’s nightmares – a slow bowler that would make virtually any batsman look like fools. The Flipper fitted into this scheme nicely, a delivery that probably hadn’t been seen on a regular basis since Abdul Quadir a ball that most of the batsmen had never faced in their careers – a mystery ball. It would have had the commentators scrambling around looking for obscure references to it and probably unable to find any descriptions of it other than the briefest of mentions. Benaud I’m sure would have been at the centre of any clarification on the matter and it may have been around this time that the notion arose that Benaud was the inventor of the delivery? The emergence of the Flipper would have fitted into Shane Warne’s smoke and mirrors approach to talking about his bowling, never quite telling the truth, always playing with the anxieties of the batsmen, talking up his mystery balls and playing with the fact that Wrist Spinning deliveries are extremely esoteric and un-impenetrable. But, as a Wrist Spinner with a copy of Clarrie Grimmett Getting Wickets I can tell you that not only does the Flipper exist in the form that Both Warne and Jenner demonstrate in several video demos on-line, but it exists in 3 or 4 other variations! Including one variation that Clarrie Grimmett would tell you is the better of the four which has been lost in the annals of time.

The Basic Flipper

The Zeitgeist Flipper of the moment is back-spinning Flipper as demonstrated by both Warne and Jenner on a number of videos to be found on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfZgFi9Q9gc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7YC7SF71Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWYcuaTosc&feature=related

The general consensus is that the click between the fingers and thumb is done with the use of the index finger and the middle finger and this will work quite well. When Grimmett first conceived the idea of the Flipper back in the 1920’s he had no idea that he’d be able to convert the concept into a bowling delivery. He initially came up with the method as a means to demonstrate how the mobility of the wrist worked in conjunction with the regular Wrist Spin deliveries – Leg-Break, Googly etc. Not able to demonstrate a full wrist spin delivery in seminars and to friends, Grimmett realised that by twisting the ball out of the thumb and fingers in the Flipper manner he could show that by rotating the wrist as you do with the regular wrist spin deliveries, he could demonstrate on a table top that the ball would spin forwards, backwards, to off and leg. By the 1930’s when he published Getting Wickets he had explored the possibility of bowling his new Flipper deliveries on a wicket and wrote that he was able to affect Top/Back/Off and Leg-Spinners over a distance of ten yards. Writing about the development of the Flipper later in his book Grimmett on Cricket, Grimmet says about the Flipper ………..

By this means I could apply much more spin than I could in bowling my Leg Break. To apply this kind of spin to overarm bowling was difficult, however. I was comparatively easy to get it to spin this way, but extremely difficult to bowl a ball that made pace off the pitch: and I had long since decided that it was useless bowling a ball that did not make pace from the pitch except as an occasional variation. For twelve years, summer and winter, I practiced, goaded on by the fact that I could do it for a short distance. It was difficult but I kept at it, bowling a few yards first and then and then increasing the length. I discovered that the position of the hand at the moment of release was what I had to concentrate on. As I spun the ball the hand had to be pointed to the left across towards cover. The wrist had to be bent, and the ball allowed to leave over the top of the hand, the back of which was facing the batsman.

Clarrie Grimmett: Grimmett On Cricket: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd: Edinburgh:1948.

The thing that I find amazing about this is the fact that with no fore-knowledge of whether there was any guarantee that this would pan out to be successful, it took Grimmett twelve years of trial and error making sense of what he was trying to do. Once the discovery is made and someone is able to tell the next person how to do it with the fore-knowledge that there will be a positive outcome. The time in the new scenario, that is required to develop and master the delivery is exponentially reduced. Warne I’m pretty certain talks about picking it up in a matter of a month or so. I picked up the basics over a period of about 2 months and found it pretty easy bowling the basic back-spinning version and it was for some time my stock ball.

Anyway, so for arguments sake we’ll refer to the Basic Flipper as the one demonstrated by Warne and Jenner. If you’ve followed the initial instructions with regards developing your finger and thumb action the next stage is relatively easy assuming that you bowl with a fair degree of accuracy anyway. By way of not wanting to give away the fact that you are bowling a variation – your movement through the crease should be identical to your Leg Break bowling action. I bowl with a fairly high, almost vertical bowling action and bring the arm over quite close to my ear. As the arm comes over in the action the batsman would see the hand coming over in a similar manner to a Top-Spinner except that the grip of the ball would be that of Flipper grip.
See image.

The basic Flipper is modeled on Shane Warne and Terry Jenners versions as seen on line as that’s the most easily referenced illustration of how it’s bowled, although there is at least two videos of Warne explaining and demonstrating the method in a slightly different way, which I’ll examine later. Their Basic version is very slightly different to Grimmetts back-spinning version, but I’ll address that later too. When bowled in this manner the seam is presented up-right and back-spin is imparted with the use of the click release. The amount of spin that can be imparted will be down to the individuals strength and dexterity, but it’s interesting to read(1) that Grimmett claimed that he could impart more spin using the flipper click than he could flicking the ball with his fingers and wrist in the conventional Wrist Spinners method.

Flight

Because of the up-right seam and back-spin, the ball is subject to similar aero-dynamics as seam bowling deliveries and where we saw that Top-Spin with the Top-Spinner made the ball dip, the reverse happens with the Flipper because of the back-spin. Through its trajectory from being propelled from the hand, the ball takes a far straighter line seemingly being held in the air longer and strikes the ground on a fuller length. Mixed in with your stock Leg-Break which would have a proportion of Top-Spin and therefore dip, the Flipper could see that batsman playing for a ball that would be expected to bounce and catch them unawares? There’s also the potential for the delivery to be bowled a great deal faster than the conventional wrist spin deliveries because of the exclusion of the wrist flick, but the down-side to this is the delivery is potentially picked because of the different level of exertion put into getting the ball up the wicket at a faster speed. A recent discovery I’ve noted only in the last season is that the ball swings massively in certain atmospheric conditions. Initially I thought that I was bowling badly, but on closer examination I noticed that the ball was swerving radically about half way down the pitch moving from Off-to leg swinging into the RH batsman.

Many people that bowl the Flipper also note that the ball breaks slightly when bowled in this way, my own personal experience is that it tends to break like a small Leg Break and might simply be due to bad seam presentation during the release, but this slight turn off the pitch coupled with the in-swinging properties presents a ball that can surprise the batsman and catch him off-guard. Bowled with prodigious back-spin on grassy or damp wickets the ball also stalls and loses momentum and batsman play through the shot before the ball has even arrived.

The Top Spinning Flipper

The jury is still out for me whether Grimmett favoured the Top-Spinning Flipper or the Off-Spinning Flipper combined with some Top-Spin. Grimmett, I think would be surprised at seeing Warne and Jenner promoting the back-spinning version of the delivery over and above the Top-Spinner and the Off-Spinner. There are no records as far as I’m aware of Grimmett ever using the back-spinner in first class cricket and he seems to have disregarded it as having any potential. The evidence suggests that Grimmett favoured a ball that increased in pace on hitting the pitch so he would have gone for a ball that was overspun. Interestingly it does seem that at least up until 1930 he wasn’t and I’m assuming the rest of the slow bowling fraternity wasn’t too, aware of the potential of bowling back-spinners. As nowhere in his Getting Wickets book does he ever go anywhere near exploring a ball that sounds anything like the Orthodox Back-Spinner.

The same theory of going round the loop as exemplified by Peter Philpott in The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling can be applied as mentioned earlier in the execution of the Flipper deliveries, so with that in mind you might be asking why have I gone 180 degrees round the loop straight to the Top-Spinner, shouldn’t there be an out the front of the hand delivery first? Well, yes, but the out the front of the hand delivery I think is far more difficult to execute than the Top-Spinning variation. My own experience was that on trying the out the front of the hand (Off-Spinner) it was virtually impossible to bowl and caused all sorts of issues with Medial Epincondylitis and I had to stop. With further reading of Grimmetts books and through discussion on line with an Australian wrist spinner from NSW Chris McDonnel the consensus seemed to be that Grimmett was an advocate of the Top-Spinner. There’s also evidence that Bradman was impressed with the Top-Spinner referring to it as Grimmetts Mystery Ball with stories of him being dismissed by it. So, I went 180 degrees and skipped the off-spinner in favour of exploring the potential of this version.

If you’ve mastered the back-spinning variety I’ll assume that you’ve developed the muscles in the thumb and forearm to put the revs on the ball. To produce the Top-Spinner I would advise that you put in some time – 2 weeks or so flicking a smaller light weight ball such as a tennis ball using the new wrist position. In the same way that you practice for the Big Leg Break and the Orthodox back-spinner with your bowling arm extended out in front of you – do the same with this Flipper. If you were to stand looking down the wicket have your arm extended forwards pointed towards the batsman. Your wrist should be presented so that your palm faces the Off-side and the back of your hand naturally the On-side. With the ball in the hand the thumb will be on top and the fingers beneath the ball. Now click the fingers and you’ll see that the ball clicks out of the hand and if allowed to fall to the floor will bounce forwards e.g. making pace off the pitch. If you get a lightweight ball mark a circle round the ball with a marker pen or a piece of tape to emulate the seam. With this action you can flick the ball so that it spins forwards and catch it in your other hand. Do this again and again until you’re able to do it with your ‘Seam’ aligned so that it rotates perfectly upright to produce the Top-spin that we’re looking for.

Over a period of time, you’ll start to feel the stress on the new muscles as you stretch them enabling you to hold the wrist in position and affect the spin. If you sense the stress is too much, as with any of these variations err towards caution as the Medial Epicondylitis condition is painful and debilitating for you as a bowler. Once you get the hand of it try turning your arm over across a short distance and see if it is working for you. Once you get the necessary mobility and flexibility in the arm, wrist and thumb to release the ball with some accuracy over a decent distance move on to a 4 ¼ ounce ball and work with that gradually working up to 22 yards eventually bringing in the 5 ½ ounce ball and the full length.

If you’ve already got the back-spinner and you practice it consistently you may find that you convert the Top-Spinner into a promising prospect relatively easily and quickly as I did. The attribute that I liked about this delivery was that very quickly I was able to bowl it with very good accuracy and far more speed than my stock ball. Theoretically because of the Top-Spin it should dip, but I’m not 100% certain that I’ve ever been aware of the dip being a key factor in my own bowling despite the fact that I say that it is an attribute of the ball in my video clip on Youtube.

Unlike the back-spinning Flipper I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed this swinging or doing anything through the air. Its best feature I find is that it’s easily bowled with very good accuracy and increased speed and in amongst my stock balls this is a wicket taker. An interesting note is that Terry Jenner has been quoted by both Ashley Mallet in his biography on Grimmett that the Top-Spinning Flipper is physically impossible to bowl and at best you might be able to get it a few yards up the wicket. Interestingly there’s been a few newer demo’s of Warne bowling the Flipper and these have differed from those as demo’s by both Warne in the example shot talking to Mark Nicholas and Jenners demo’s for the BBC and the Cloverdale series. In those cases the variation that both these blokes show us are the back-spinning variety whereas the newer uploads show us deliveries more akin to the Top-Spinner, but are probably a hybrid of the next variation.

The Off-Spinning Flipper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAwAs35zT4g

Again, another pretty obscure variant of the Flipper, but one that I’m fairly convinced that Warne demo’s in at least one of the on-line video clips although without mentioning the fact that it is a variant of what is seemingly perceived to be the common version of the Flipper (The back-spinner). Again using the theory first identified by Grimmett in 1930 that if you bowl with the wrist in different positions you’ll get the ball to spin all ways – Back, top, off and Legspin. This was then taken up by Philpott using his round the loop explanation. Assuming that you’ve followed my advice and gone 180 degrees from the back-spinner to the top spinner and got that sussed? I’m now going to suggest going back round the loop 90 degrees towards the back-spinner. You use exactly the same grip as any of the other Flippers, but with this one you present the wrist so that as your arm comes over the palm of the hand is facing the batsman and herein lies this balls magic the delivery looks like a Leg Break delivery, but because of the method of imparting the spin the ball is going to leave the hand rotating clock-wise to effect off-spin!

I found this a very difficult delivery to master and as you’ve read previously eventually came to it by learning the top-spinning delivery first which helped to train the hand and the wrist to become more dexterous so that I click the fingers and hold the wrist up-right and present it with the palm facing the batsman. I then added another aspect to the delivery after reading Bob Woolmers analysis of Shane Warne’s now partly discredited Ball of the century http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com/2010/11/warnes-ball-of-century-was-fluke.html

In the analysis of the ball, Woolmer observes that in order for the ball to drift as much as it does in this instance the ball needs to have been spinning through a tilted axis. It’s normally assumed that in order to produce the most devastating Big Leg Break the seam needs to be spinning 90 degrees to the direction of flight
With the seam rotating on the same plane as the direction of flight. Woolmer suggests that this isn’t the case and comments –

If the axis of rotation of the delivery is the same direction as the direction of the forward movement of the delivery, then the delivery will not drift. Thus to bowl his ‘Ball from Hell’, Warne had to have the axis of the rotation of the delivery at an angle to its direction of movement. Most likely, the seam was tilted slightly backwards from vertical (When seen from above), with the seam on the left side of the ball slightly ahead. In this position, the axis of rotation (seen from behind the ball) is upwards and to the leg side.

Art & Science of Cricket; Bob Woolmer; New Holland Publishers; London; 2008.

Rotation Diagram A.

The image here below indicates the 90 degree seam presentation to the direction of flight. Woolmer suggests along with physicists that have conducted tests in wind tunnels that the ball spun perfectly from the hand with the seam rotating perfectly at 90 degrees to the direction of flight will not drift. Whereas the image above (rotation diagram A.) with the seam angled forwards towards the direction of flight rotating off axis and with the seam angled slightly forwards of 90 degrees, the ball will produce the most pronounced amounts of drift.

Rotation diagram B.

With this in mind and realising there was potential to impart drift with a Flipper and with potentially more ease (for me at least). The position of the wrist when bowling this delivery seems to be subject to more rigidity through the arm, elbow and wrist than the conventional Wrist Spin deliveries and for some reason in order to tilt the ball backward or forward so that the axis differs to the horizontal plane of flight is only a matter of maintaining rigidity through the wrist and angling it slightly different. My experimentation through the last season seemed to suggest wholly different characteristics with the ball definitely drifting in flight and possibly dipping as well in a fairly dramatic manner and this is with an Off-Spinner that looks like a Leg Break.

I wouldn’t say that I’m anywhere near being an expert at this, but in a year bowling sporadically in nets and practice situations, my ability levels with it have increased exponentially and I have taken at least one wicket with it where the batsman read it as a Leg Break and it went the other way and hit the stump between bat and pads. It’s definitely one that I’ll be working with and exploring further.

Sub variations and accidents
For the purpose of the blog and trying to explain things as clearly as possible when talking about these variations in relation to going round the loop, I’ve tended to talk in terms of moving from one variation to the other in 90 degree jumps focusing on what would be the perfect delivery. It’s obvious that all of these deliveries would work in intermediate forms in some way or another, the classic example being with the Leg Break. The leg break is generally a ball that is spun with the seam aligned at 45 degrees further round the loop if you move on from the top spinner, anything with lesser angle has more Top-Spin emphasis and may dip more, but will still turn a little. So anything that goes further than 45 degrees is still going to dip a little but have an increase in the amount of turn off the wicket as it’s moving towards the realms of being a Big Leg Break. The Flippers are exactly the same, so it’s entirely likely that you may bowl with a scrambled seam and might not be able to get absolutely perfect seam presentation, but it will still be a valid variation if it’s bowled with your Stock ball.
2 Fingers or 3?

In my experience at club level and watching Warne and partly because Wrist Spin Bowling is such an underrated and dark art not many batsmen have been subjected to the Flipper, so if used with scarcity this can be a devastating delivery that can take the batsman by surprise. The Flipper can also be used as a slow ball as well and this works particularly well with not very experienced batsmen. I find the slower and loopier the ball is thrown up, the more it tends to turn (Towards the off-side) but better still the back-spin causes the ball to almost stop which can catch people out.

At club level I’ve only ever come across it used by one other person, my mate ‘The Wizard’ and he bowls it as I have till recently as the Bog Standard Flipper as seen on Youtube demonstrated by Warne & Jenner. (BBC, Channel 9, Cloverdale videos). But if you delve further into crickets history you will come across the balls originator a bloke called Clarrie Grimmett arguably the best Wrist Spinner ever. Between 1928 and 1940 he spent 12 years developing the ball using the same principle as Peter Philpotts ‘Around the loop’ theory but applied to the ball being spun using the Index finger and thumb to ‘click’ it out of the hand.

Grimmetts Flipper is slightly different to Warnes and Jenners who’s version owe more to Richie Benuads adaption of Grimmetts original. Benuads bowling action was near vertical with the seam being upright like a seam bowlers delivery. Whereas Grimmetts action was far more round armed almost to the point where it resembles Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga but then corrected by the fact that he then dipped his head and body through the action so that the arm came through in a more vertical manner. Grimmetts grip as described by himself and Philpott meant that his hand through the delivery was over the top of the ball whereas Benauds version is virtually the same as the one demonstrated by Warne and Jenner. The intricacies of Grimmetts grip I’ve not fully grasped, but Benauds version is easily understood.

Experiments

This variation is possibly the way that Murali bowls his Doosra but requires ridiculous flexibility in the wrist and arm, but Philpott describes it in the Flipper section of his book. Start at the ‘Mystery ball’ position and rotate your wrist another 90 degrees clockwise so that at the point of release the palm of your hand is facing up-wards with the flipper grip. The more the hand is bent inwards towards the body at the point that you flick the ball the more it’s going to produce a Leg-Break action when pitching on the wicket. To be honest without you being able to bowl with the same inward arm/wrist action that Murali uses this variation looks physically impossible.

Supple wrist and strong thumb.

The key to these deliveries is the practice that you’re able to do off the field. In his book Peter Philpott advocates spinning the ball back in towards yourself initially and the description reads as though he is going to take you on to explain ‘The Mystery Ball’ but he doesn’t. So why you would go through the process of spinning the ball in towards yourself as you do when learning The Big Legbreak I’m kind of baffled when he doesn’t then go on to describe the ‘Mystery Ball’. I think most people would practice bowling the ball from one hand to the other across the body marvelling at the amazing backspin you eventually get through the clicking of the fingers.

Once you’ve got the back-spin, go back to Philpotts description of how you should learn the action. Hold the ball out at arms length in front of you holding it with the Flipper grip. Cock the wrist so that the back of the hand faces away from you almost and the thumb is under the ball and the fingers over the top with the seam up facing you. The clicking of the fingers in this position will now propel the ball back towards your face with over-spin (Top-spin). Keep doing this being careful not to strain any tendons (Medial Epicondylitis). In his book Philpott overlooks the potential of this as a way of bowling and then suggests that you go from this practice action to the hand to hand action which then produces back-spin. But it’s this spinning towards yourself producing Top Spin that is Clarrie Grimmetts ‘Mystery Ball’ action that Grimmett was so protective of and held in high regard. The same practice action also has the duel purpose of being good training to enable you to bowl the awkward Variant 4.

The Wrong Wrong Un

Probably the most obscure wrist spin variation and possibly the most difficult to bowl with any effectiveness. I stumbled across this a few years ago before reading Grimmetts Getting Wickets. Frustrated at losing my Leg Break to the Googly Syndrome I was aware of Philpotts Round the Loop theory and how it’s applied to the position of the wrist in order to effect the different variations – Leg-Break, Googly etc. I’d already looked into the potential of the Off-Spinning Flipper, but discarded that idea as seeming almost impossible having tried it. But with the Wrong Wrong Un I had instant success because of the combination of the principles and action of the Wrong Un combined with the Flipper finger and thumb click technique used to impart spin on the ball.

I’d completely lost my Leg-Break so only bowled Flippers and Wrong Uns, both of which I’d become pretty adept at. My Wrong Un was very strong being able to bowl a delivery that was like the Big Wrong Un and because of the constant practice with the delivery I had increased mobility in all the joints making it possible. The Flipper in the exact same way was pretty good too and I was able to impart a lot of revs on the ball by clicking the finger and thumb together. On the day in question I was bowling and thought what would be the outcome of me combining the Flipper and the Googly – looking at the position of the wrist, fingers and thumb it struck me that this would potentially produce a ball that would break towards the Off-side like a Leg Break but would come out of the hand and be delivered looking like an extreme version of the Wrong Un and sure enough the first attempt at it, although very short across 22 yards turned almost square to the wicket!

That same day practicing over another half an hour or so I managed to get the length and line right several times producing a ball that turned like a big slow loopy leg break. Because of the combining of the two deliveries Googly and Flipper, I christened the ball The Gipper completely unaware that Clarrie Grimmett had explored the same delivery in the 1920’s and identified and explained it in his book Getting Wickets in 1930.

To get some understanding of the delivery look at the image here,

which is an approximation of the view the batsman would see at the point of delivery. If you think of the wrist position in the image being rotated 180 degree anti-clockwise, you’ll see that the wrist and fingers would end up being poised for the classic Flipper.

In order to get the rotation of the wrist round 180 degrees it necessitates the additional twisting of the arm in the manner that the Wrong un requires to bowl the bigger turning Wrong Un. With the distortion of both the wrist and the arm the delivery position is then attained.

I practiced with the ball over a winter in the nets and across one season exploring its potential, but at the same time I was also looking to overcome the Googly Syndrome and was focusing on bowling the Leg Break the majority of the time. This may have affected the outcome of whether there is any real merit in this delivery because I gradually lost the ability to twist my arm and wrist as far as I could when I was bowling massively turning wrong uns. Because of the focus on re-attaining the Leg Break and limiting the amount of variations that I bowled, I discarded the Wrong Wrong Un, dropping it with the general feeling that it didn’t fit with my overall strategy and wasn’t required.

Grimmett explaining the principle of using the Flipper action to impart variations in break off the pitch……….

It is possible, however, to bowl a Leg-Break with a Googly action in this way, and also an Off-Break with a Leg-Break action.

Clarrie Grimmett; Getting Wickets: Hodder & Stoughton:London; 1930.

By Varying the hand position slightly at the moment of release I could bowl several different balls, but they were slow off the pitch and I hardly ever used them. If I twisted my hand right over as for the Googly I could make the ball turn from the leg, in what I call a Wrong Wrong Un, coming out of the back of the hand is usually deceived a batsman, but it was so slow off the pitch he had plenty of time to play it.

Clarrie Grimmett: Grimmett On Cricket: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd: Edinburgh:1948.

As you can see I eventually came across the description of the very same ball that I thought I’d discovered and christened The Gipper, Grimmett too drew the same conclusions with regards the usefulness of the ball in that it was difficult to propel down the pitch with any great speed. There’s a pay off between speed and break and the initial feeling with this variation is that its key attribute is the amount of break caused by the Flipper technique to impart the spin. But I found that the more speed you put into the delivery the less it turned which is pretty obvious. The other issue I had with it is that I couldn’t bowl it that well without having a pre-positioned arm at the start of the gather, so when winding up for the delivery it signaled something odd was going to happen and alerted batsmen to the fact that I was about to bowl a variation of some kind. As Grimmett says it’s one of the balls you might use once in a spell against a batsman. Very difficult and possibly not worth the effort learning it, but a variation none the less.

The Orthodox Back-Spinner, Slider & Zooter

2010-12-12T08:39:00.000-08:00

The Orthodox Back-Spinner: Copyright Dave Thompson 2010

Introduction - In this section I’m going to be looking at Back-Spinning deliveries other than the Flipper. Anecdotally, there’s potentially a handful of different back-spinning deliveries, but when you try and pin them down and establish which is what, who invented them and how they evolved, you’ll find that the information out there is very limited, vague and contradictory. In this section I’m going to try and clarify the deliveries that do exist and can be verified and makes sense of the confusion out there regarding the terms Slider and Zooter.

Research – My approach to trying to get to the bottom of the murky origins of the back-spinners was to do so in the manner that an academic might use. Within academia it’s recognised that any serious research needs to quote established and recognised texts on the subject in order to be taken seriously. As I’ve intimated previously throughout the blog the information with regards to the origins and techniques of Wrist Spin Bowling are extremely limited – probably restricted to two sources, Grimmetts book Getting Wickets from 1930 and Peter Philpotts book The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling from 1996. Between these two books we’re able to establish that there are only two recorded and explicitly described back-spinning variations, the Flipper and the Orthodox Back-Spinner. Thereafter, all other variations of back-spinners I would argue are evolutionary deliveries that have yet to still be pinned down and described in print in the same manner that the two established deliveries have been.

Other people will argue that there are several other deliveries and that these are well recorded and established. One of my aims is to present an argument that says that this is not the case. One key aspect of presenting your findings is that with secondary research - using the internet, to try and establish fact from fiction (and this does include this blog) you cannot trust the content. Using the internet for serious research is simply not acceptable because the writers are usually journalists or enthusiasts like myself. Another point that will be raised is that a lot of the commentary on these deliveries is made by the protagonists – Warne, Jenner, Benaud and other professionals. I’ll also make a case as to why this information is also sketchy at best.

The problem with accessing learning materials on Wrist Spin Bowling is that there are so few books written on the subject by the innovators and experts in the field. I’m only aware of one other body of printed work that attempts to explain the deliveries in great detail and that’s Woolmers book 'The Art and Science of Cricket'. The book covers the subject fairly well looking at Shane Warne’s Delivery of the Century in detail, coming up with a very convincing theory as to how and why. But then he acknowledges that he isn’t an expert in the field and resorts to quoting Grimmetts Getting Wickets and Grimmett on Cricket, the very books from which much of my own material here is based on.

I would argue that the most comprehensive book on the subject has still yet to be written by Warne. Potentially amidst all the bluff and psychology used by Warne over the years, there are definitive explanations of a handful of deliveries that either he invented or have been handed down over the generations since Grimmett. It wont be until Warne or Jenner perhaps sit down and collaborate and write definitive and published descriptions and explanations of the other deliveries will we ever be able to pin down exactly what a Zooter, Zinger or a Slider are.

How to Bowl the Orthodox Back-Spinner

Throughout the blog I’ve written about the fact that the Wrist Spinners armoury is made up of two distinct methods of bowling, the traditional Wrist-Spinners action with the 2 up and 2 down grip with the ball being spun off the 3rd finger which is described through the use of Peter Philpotts round the loop theory. And Grimmetts squeezed between the finger and thumb Flippers. Both actions are able to produce balls that spin to Off, Leg, Forwards and Backwards using the variation of the wrist position when releasing the ball.

Throughout the blog I’ve advocated that one of the most important things that you need to do is to take every opportunity to flick the ball from one hand to the other across the body and to flick the ball from an outstretched arm in towards the body catching it with the left hand at the chest

If you’ve been following these guidelines and drills you should by now be able appreciate the differences in how the ball spins in response to the position you present your wrist in as you flick……

The thumb pointing at the batsman and the ball flicked with the 3rd finger and wrist forwards – The Top-Spinner.
The Thumb pointing anywhere towards Slips and Gully with the palm of your hand now slightly facing the bat as you flick should produce a Leg Break.
The thumb pointing towards edge of the square directly to your left as you bowl with your palm now facing directly at the batsman will produce the Big Leg Break.

As you’ve probably seen, the wrist position has moved further and further round through 90 degrees and there’s still potential for it to go further still. Hold you hand up and have it facing palm towards the batsman and flick the wrist and see that you will be rotating the ball with the spin anti-clockwise to the Left to get the big leg break. Now turn the wrist further round inwards another 90 degrees so that your thumb is facing you and the ‘Karate Chop’ edge of your hand is facing the batsman. If you now flick your wrist you will be Top-Spinning the ball in towards yourself (The 2nd drill). The ball is flicked back towards yourself with an up-right seam. Now the difficult bit; As you bring your arm over you need to keep the wrist in this acute position – your forward body motion as you explode through the crease and your arm coming over will propel the ball forwards and down the wicket as you flick the ball putting top-spin on it as in all your other deliveries, but you need to allow the ball to be released out of the back-off the hand and down the pitch. Because you’ve spun the ball hard in towards yourself, as you look at it, it will have forward spin, but as the batsman sees the ball, it will have back-spin.

The seam should be dead straight and the back-spin will mean that the ball will hold its trajectory through the air far longer than your stock ball, so if bowled as a variation, the batsman will be expecting the ball to dip in the same way that your Leg Break should landing several feet in front of him. Instead the Orthodox Back-Spinner will land on a fuller length potentially catching the batsman out. Additionally with a perfectly upright seam there’s the potential that like the Flipper the ball may also swing? Finally, because of the upright seam and the back-spin the ball on hitting the wicket will stall and bounce irregularly. The suggestion is that a back-spinning ball will in most instances stay low and sneak under the bat where the batsman might be playing for a Leg Break and far more bounce. My own experience is that the bounce is irregular and dependent on a number of variables the ball will sometime rear up rather than stay low. Needless to say, all of this is subject to experimentation and trying it out to see what happens in your own situation.

In my opinion this is possibly the most difficult of all the deliveries because of the acute angle of the wrist required in the delivery. With practice using the Inward Spinning Drill you’ll get a feel for it. Once you’ve got a sense of being able to do that with a good degree of control – take it outside and flick the ball up in the air and forwards either against a wall to watch how the ball spins on hitting the wall or off of the flat ground. You should be able to propel the ball forwards and observe that it then bounces back towards you. This is easy enough and looks very promising, but trying then to convert that into a full 22 yard delivery is another matter. A positive though that may come out of it though is, if you can get the accuracy and speed in the delivery and land it on a good length, you may find that attempting to get your wrist round so far with the inward flick, you’ll improve your Big Leg Break as the work that’s gone into learning the Orthodox Back-Spinner is an extension to the wrist position for the Big Leg Break. Another observation from people that bowl the Orthodox Back-Spinner and the Big Leg Break is that when these deliveries go wrong, the ball will come out of the hand with a scrambled seam and frequently land on the smooth surface of the ball and Slide On. Far from being a complete disaster, what you’ll end up doing is bowling an unintentional variation. Looked at in a positive manner you could argue that this is an attribute of bowling the Orthodox Back-Spinner?

Smoke and Mirrors

The difficulty in trying to establish the facts with regards the more obscure back-spinning deliveries is the fact that a key part of Spin Bowling strategy is the psychological aspect of the game. From the earliest days bowlers have claimed to possess a mystery ball and this is especially true of Spin Bowling. From the Internet………..

Here’s an article written by Bob Simpson who trained Warne in the early days.

A clever bluffer on the field, he didn't mind using the media to his advantage, especially at the start of each season when he'd announce the discovery of his latest "mystery ball".
His opponents would see the headlines everywhere about something that didn't exist. In reality, there was never a new trick, only a revamping of the name for Peter Philpott's "back spinning toppie".
Shane originally called it his zooter, now he calls it his slider and over the last decade or so the ball has brought him numerous lbw decisions. What there was, though, was a further improvement in his accuracy and flight. He was always fine-tuning his bowling and increasing his arsenal.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/tss/tss3001/stories/20070106000201700.htm

It has to be recognized that the popularity of Wrist Spinning and therefore the proliferation of these supposed new variations since the 1990’s is probably down to Warne as the article above indicates. The suggestion by Bob Simpson is that there never has been a Slider, Zooter or whatever and that the back-spinner that Warne bowled was always the Orthodox Back-Spinner. Warne and the team that surrounds him, be it trainers, captains, marketing men or the Australian cricket board have obviously been involved in hyping him up as much as possible. For instance in 2005 prior to, or during the matches in London a giant effigy of Warne was driven around the streets of London on the back of a lorry in an attempt to remind England, that ours was a lost cause.

http://bp2.blogger.com/_Dc8q8nuzrHw/RnjReYvLL8I/AAAAAAAAAog/5_VjtpPI5AA/s1600-h/bigwarnie.jpg

Just type in 'Big Warnie' in Youtube and you'll get some sense of the extent Warnes marketing/propaganda machine used to go to.

There have been adverts, documentaries, books and articles throughout Warnes career that serve to remind everyone about his genius and proliferation of deadly variations. But some of his most powerful media weapons I reckon are those based around his associations with Mark Nicholas and Terry Jenner. There was for a while a clip from years ago of Warne doing his now familiar demo of his deliveries. The clip appeared to be no-where near as slick as the ones that he did much later in his career, but did feature Mark Nicholas in exactly the same role – asking questions of Warne and then Warne showing the kids. But then look in the background of this old clip and who else is there amongst the kids – some of the English batsmen! They appear to be there trying to learn and un-ravel what it is that Warne does, so that they can possibly hold out some hope of surviving against him next time around? It strikes me that in the great tradition of Wrist Spinners this would have given Warne the perfect opportunity to weave his web of deceit….. ‘Yeah I’ve got em all mate….. Leg Break, Toppie, Wrong Un, Orthodox Back-Spinner, Slider, Zooter, Flipper and the Zinger’. You can just see Graham Gooch walking back to the dressing room and telling the rest of the England blokes ‘He’s got variations coming out of every orifice’!!! But, if you go looking for these other variations you start to see a pattern arising. Certainly when they get mentioned in books by third parties – authors on the subject of cricket in a generic sense, invariably they’re mentioned in conjunction with a handful of names – Warne, Jenner, Benaud and Doug Ring. But mentioned in a manner that has no clarity or certainty, as Philpott mentioned earlier, most of these bowlers had at least 2 back-spinners, but they would never divulge their technique. The Flipper and Orthodox Back-Spinner perhaps?

So it does seem that all the other variations that go by a number of different names cannot be pinned down and verified in the same way as the two ‘Prime’ back-spin deliveries. Warne himself describes in videos and articles written by 3rd parties all of these newer variations in a number of different ways, contradicting himself and generally confusing the issue and establishing very little that can be described as concrete. He mentions them in a number of different ways, making references to bowlers in the 1950's who as Philpott writes were also in the business of keeping these deliveries secret as a part of their guile and strategy. It strikes me that the more you investigate, the more the truth becomes murkier when applied to the new variations.

The Zooter

The Zooter and The Slider are the two main contenders vying for recognition as deliveries in their own right with some kind of pedigree. Neither Grimmett or Philpott use the term Zooter to describe any of the established Wrist Spin deliveries. With Philpotts book being first published in 1995 there's the possibilty that the term Zooter isn't used within cricket until after this date. But towards the back of Philpotts book on page 112 in the 2006 edition in the advanced tactics chapter Philpott writes..........

5. The front foot commiter who wants to get down the track at you all the time: With 5, I would have kept on spinning hard over the top, throwing the ball up and gradually widening on him. But as the years went by, I would have zooted back-spinners at him, holding him back and hoping to frustrate him/or change his plan of attack, then thrown up the Top-spinning Leggie a little wider of the Off-Stump.

In the context of this paragraph, the word Zoot is used as a verb in conjunction with the bowling of the Orthodox Back-Spinner. This led me to looking into whether the word was an Australian slang word that combined two words such as Shoot and Zoom/Zip to create a potentially more dynamic and energetic word....... Zoot. One suggestion was made (with no substantiation) that, Philpott who works tirelessly even to this day with kids teaching them Wrist Spin, may have used the word coloquially/Slang style to engage kids with their bowling. Maybe adapting the use of Zooting the ball in to Zooter to describe the Orthodox Back-Spinner? The name, Orthodox Back-Spinner is a right mouthful and at best a bit dull when teaching small boys how to bowl wrist spin. It's easy to see that many people coming into contact with Philpott having that sense of being within the inner circle of Australian Spin history would readily adopt the esoteric language of their great master Philpott. So could this possibly be one explanation as to why people confuse the Orthodox Back-Spinner with the term Zooter and even use the description?

Evidence of the Zooter

We'll now look at my findings with regards some of these potential newer deliveries and the confusing array of descriptions that surround them. First we'll look at the Zooter and its descriptions. Again I have to reiterate that looking at all the books that I could lay my hands on I couldn’t find one single reference to the Zooter at all. Even Woolmers seminal works The Art and Science of Cricket omits the Zooter and in doing so casts derision on the premise that the Zooter is anything new. But, having said that I have to also point out that Woolmer doesn’t even mention the Orthodox Back-Spinner. The following section I’ve collated a series of descriptions of the Zooter and you’ll see that there’s a fairly consistent description of one method which bears no resemblance to the Orthodox Back-Spinner, but could be seen as a delivery in it’s own right………………

(1). Zooter: The grip - The ball is held much further back in the palm of the hand, which holds the ball back as you let it go. The delivery - The ball is pushed out the front of the hand, from the palm, and either floats or skids through the air, maybe swinging in a little. The seam is straight up and down and the zooter does not spin.
http://www.liveindia.com/cricket/Bowling.html

(2). Zooter: A type of ball bowled by a leg spin bowler, which has little or no spin on it. cf. armball.
http://www.dangermouse.net/cricket/glossary/z.html

(3). Zooter – one of a leg spinner's subtler variations, this ball is slipped out of the hand without much spin imparted and tends to dip into the batsman. The term was coined by Shane Warne and his spin 'doctor' Terry Jenner, perhaps partly to enhance his mystique.
http://www.channel4.com/sport/cricket/analyst/jargon/ana_42.html

(4) Zooter: You have come to the right place, because I'm a legspinner, although not quite in the Shane Warne class (who is?). The flipper is a difficult-to-bowl delivery which is squeezed out under the wrist, with an action rather like that used to click the fingers. When it's bowled properly, the ball hurries on to the batsman, who can be beaten by the unexpected pace. Shane Warne has often dismissed Daryll Cullinan with this ball. Warne claims to have invented the "zooter", so we asked Mark Ray, the Australian journalist who helped write Warne's autobiography, how you bowl it. He said: "It's difficult to explain without drawings ... but basically the zooter comes out of the front of the hand, with the fingers running across it sideways, like a legbreak - but the ball is propelled more by the palm. It's not unlike a knuckle ball, but not as slow. The zooter does very little in the air or off the pitch - which is part of the point. It's not flatter like the flipper, which is under-spun - the zooter sort of wobbles down." So now we know!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2000/aug/24/cricket7

(5). Zooter: Fifteen years ago words like slider, zooter, back-spinner and toppie never existed - that was until Shane wrapped his fingers around the seam of a cricket ball.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sportacademy/hi/sa/cricket/features/newsid_3907000/3907623.stm

(6). Zooter - 11 % (A variation of the flipper, bowled by a leg-break bowler with little or no spin on it. Typically zoots along the ground with little bounce.)
http://www.todaytranslations.com/press-room/66/doosra-outscores-googly

(7). Zooter: A spin bowling variation, first devised by Shane Warne. This is a delivery that snakes out of the hand with little or no spin imparted, and so deceives through its very ordinariness. Some question whether the delivery has ever existed, for it could be another of Warne's mind-games to keep his opponents on their toes
http://static.cricinfo.com/db/ABOUT_CRICKET/EXPLANATION/CRICKET_TERMS.html

(8). Zooter: As a fledgling leg-spinner, he was coached by Terry Jenner, Shane Warne's mentor. He was reminded of how Warne would often begin a tour by announcing a new mystery ball — the zooter, for instance. "Oh, that's just a slider," said Rashid, all matter of fact. "They're just the same ball with different names."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jan/19/adil-rashid-england-cricket-yorkshire

(9) Zooter: During the training for the tour of Sri Lanka, Shane basically relied on his big spinning leg breaks and flippers. He didn't bowl the googly, and his normal top-spinner was only fair. When I asked him if he knew how to bowl a top-spinner through the front of his fingers he seemed surprised. He seemed even more bemused when I said Peter Philpott, the respected Australian leg-spinner of the 1960s, called it his "back spinning toppie". I could never understand why either. Perhaps my aerodynamics weren't as good as Peter's. I showed Shane how it was done and while I thought it would probably take him six months to master it, he was bowling it in a Test match three weeks later.
A terrible irony of his life is that the media have sometimes come down hard on him, exploiting those moments when he let himself down off the field. I say `irony' because, being a clever bluffer on the field, he didn't mind using the media to his advantage, especially at the start of each season when he'd announce the discovery of his latest "mystery ball".
His opponents would see the headlines everywhere about something that didn't exist. In reality, there was never a new trick, only a revamping of the name for Peter Philpott's "back spinning toppie".
Shane originally called it his zooter, now he calls it his slider and over. The last decade or so the ball has brought him numerous lbw decisions. What there was, though, was a further improvement in his accuracy and flight. He was always fine-tuning his bowling and increasing his arsenal.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/tss/tss3001/stories/20070106000201700.htm

This last bit here by Bob Simpson (9) is probably the most telling. This to me supports my argument that the term Zooter is anomalous and that there isn't really a clear definition of it and the confusion is all a part of the Warne/Jenner propaganda machine. If the Zooter is indeed just another name for the Orthodox Back-Spinner like Bosie/Googly/Wrong Un, which I'm quite willing to accept, there seems to be an awful lot of people writing about it and getting it wrong with all those 'Non-Spinning, out of the front of the hand' descriptions? The Orthodox Back-Spinner is ripped off the fingers using the wrist to impart the flick like all of the classic Wrist Spinning deliveries, so why the confusion? Simple….. As it says on the Cricinfo website “Some question whether the delivery has ever existed, for it could be another of Warne's mind-games to keep his opponents on their toes”. I would suggest that indeed this is the case.

There seems to be some recognition of a delivery that has attributes similar to the Knuckle-Ball used in baseball. Indeed, many Spin Bowlers have toyed with the idea of adopting some of the techniques used in Baseball and Philpott amongst others advocates exploring such ideas. It could be the case that Warne has used a variant of the Knuckle ball and this is where this description of a straight ball being pushed off the palm of the hand comes from? If you look into the Knuckle ball, you’ll possibly find that its reported as having the weird property of ‘Wobbling’ through the air appearing to turn one way and then another through its trajectory. Further investigations explain this is due to the stitching pattern on the ball which is very much different to a cricket ball. Therefore the use of such a delivery is subject to personal investigation and experimentation.

The Slider

(10) The Slider: In cricket, a slider is a type of delivery bowled by a wrist spin bowler. Whereas a top-spinner is released with the thumb facing the batsman, a slider is bowled with the thumb facing the bowler. On release the wrist and ring finger work to impart backspin to the ball. A top-spinner tends to dip more quickly and bounce higher than a normal delivery. The slider does the opposite: it floats to a fuller length and bounces less than the batsman might expect. The classic slider heads with its seam aligned towards the batsman and may tend to swing in slightly. Sliders may also head towards the batsman with a scrambled seam (with the ball not spinning in the direction of the seam, so the seam direction is not constant, unlike in conventional spin bowling). This has less effect on the flight and bounce but absence of leg spin may deceive the batsman.

It is claimed that Shane Warne invented this type of delivery. However, this is inaccurate. The Australian spinner Peter Philpott used the technique in the 1960s, calling it simply an orthodox backspinner, while Australian all-rounder and captain Richie Benaud used what he called his 'sliding topspinner' which appears again to have been similar. Since he was taught the technique by Doug Ring, it may be more accurate to suggest that Ring is the originator. Either that, or the ball is one of those deliveries with no easily identifiable point of origin.
Although there is often a good deal of confusion on the subject, the slider is thought to be more or less an identical delivery to the "zooter".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slider_(cricket)

(11) The Slider; How to bowl a slider This article is an extract from Spin Bowling Tips. Master the art of spin bowling with the most comprehensive eBook on spin bowling ever produced, available now at PitchVision Academy. The slider or back spinner is the reverse of the top-spinner. Instead of bouncing and kicking as the top-spinner does, the back spinner delivery will skid onto the batsman. This delivery is great for trying to trap the batsman LBW. Grip - The grip is exactly the same as the leg-spin stock delivery. Two fingers up and two fingers down with the thumb on or off the ball as preferred. Release - The ball releases the hand rotating backwards. It is essentially the reverse of the top spinner (explained in previous chapter). The thumb must face the batsmen and the side of the hand (on the little finger’s side) must face the bowler, but with the back the hand facing towards mid-wicket.
http://www.pitchvision.com/how-to-bowl-a-slider

(12) The Slider: Slider is the delivery bowled by a Wrist spinner or a Leg Spinner and it is just the reverse of a Top-Spinner. The thumb faces the bowler in the slider delivery rather than facing the batsman as in Top-Spinner. The slider delivery floats to a fuller length and bounces less than the batsman might expect and also the ball skids towards the batsman making him difficult to connect.It is usually called as the terrific delivery for the Leg Before Wicket (LBW).It is claimed that the Spin legend Shane Warne of Australia invented this delivery.
http://www.cricketupdates.org/how-to-bowl-a-slider-in-cricket.html

(13) The Slider: This one is useful as it’s a section from the Pitch-Visions bloke and includes some decent images that explain the Orthodox Back-Spinner, but again and I can only summise that he’s chosen to call the Orthodox Back-Spinner a Slider because it just sounds sexier? Again, look at the webpage, look at the description and then go back to Philpotts The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling and you’ll see that this blokes Slider is in fact an Orthodox Back-Spinner, unless of course he’s got a book in print that precedes Philpotts and he can then potentially claim it as a Slider. See the link below………
http://www.spinbowlingtips.com/extract.pdf

(14) The Slider: The Slider: Well, generally a slider can be bowled with two different grips like it can be bowled with seam up and it can also be bowled with cross or scrambled seam. Most of the leg spin bowlers will choose to slide the ball with the seam up since it is easy to release or slide the ball from the edge of the fingers when it is seamed up rather than with the cross-seamed. E.g. Shane Warne has always bowled a slider with a seam up ball. Any ways grip the ball with the seam up in such a way that the two fingers index and middle has to be rested on the seam. The other two fingers thumb and ring has to be rested on both leather sides of the cricket ball. Now the bowling action will be similar to just as leg break bowling. Like the arm has to be at an angle of 45 degrees such that the back of the palm has to face towards the sky just like as seam bowling and thumb facing towards the bowler. Here you need to understand that the ball will not be released from back of the hand like googly, it simply comes out or slips out from edge of the fingers (from front of the hand) with the seam rotating in back direction just like as we see in seam bowling. Now when you release a ball from edge of the fingers, the fingers should be able to drag the seam in down or back direction such that there should be no spin on the ball. At the end of the day the ball after hitting the pitch will have to slide by holding its same line with out any spin. Similarly to bowl a slider with scrambled seam we need to just follow the same above application. But at the end of the day a genuine and smooth slider can be always bowled with the seam up.
http://www.questioncricket.com/2010/02/slider.html

(15) The Slider: Slider - A real wicket-taker for Shane Warne in his twilight years, the slider is basically the opposite of a top-spinner. It has a fuller length and bounces a lot less than expected. The slider is achieved with the thumb facing the bowler, the ring finger providing a substantial part of the spin, and the ball being released from the front of the hand.
http://www.talkcricket.co.uk/guides/cricket_skills_leg_spin.html

Slider conclusion

Again, you can see that like the Zooter, the Sliders origins and existence are as equally as murky. Description (11) from Wikipedia immediately states that it (Slider) is in fact The Orthodox Back-Spinner and its description is that of Philpotts ball. The conclusion at the end suggesting that the ‘Ball is one of those deliveries with no identifiable point of origin’. Entry No.15 is interesting again in exactly the same way that No.4 is. This website (No.6) describes all the Wrist Spin deliveries with a degree of reasonable knowledge listing them all, but instead of listing the Orthodox Back-Spinner by its real name, the bloke opts to call it the Slider. I was going to go through a number of websites, but to be honest they’re all virtually identical and almost without exception include the phrase ‘It’s the opposite of the Top Spinner with the Thumb facing the bowler in the delivery’, which basically tells you it is the Orthodox Back-Spinner.

So, I’m now moving towards a final conclusion, which I think I’ve offered enough evidence of and that is........... When it comes down to it the Orthodox Back Spinner (first recorded properly by Philpott) is exactly the same as Bosanquets Off-spinning delivery in that it no longer has one fixed name. Bosanquets ball is the Wrong Un/Googly/Bosie with Bosie seemingly being the most obscure term used for it, and possibly the original name? Philpotts ball is the Zooter/Slider/Orthodox Back-Spinner with the last name seemingly like the title 'Bosie' gradually disappearing into obscurity despite the fact that this is the deliveries real name.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that, in the same way Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first European to discover the USA, Peter Philpott probably wasn’t the bloke that invented the Orthodox Back-Spinner. In his own book Philpott writes about the existence of Back-Spinners over the period between Grimmett and himself……….

Outstanding Wrist Spinners since Grimmett have all developed their back-spinner, some innovative ones amongst them, and almost all these bowlers have persistently refused to discuss the mechanics of such deliveries. That's how important they were to them, and perhaps explains why so many non-wrist spin cricketers were and are totally ignorant of them.

He then goes on to virtually credit the ball to Benaud………….

Despite the innovators, however most Leg-Spinners have relied on the Orthodox Back-Spinner. This is the one I referred to with Richie Benaud, a delivery he bowled superbly and, at times almost used as a stock ball.

Peter Philpott; The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling; Crowood Press Ltd, Marlborough; 1995.

Again it’s clear that the origins of the Orthodox Back-Spinner like most deliveries are obscure, but as first mentioned at the start of this piece in order to pin the delivery down in an academic sense you need to find the first recorded definitive account of the ball in detail and despite the fact that Grimmett wrote three books, one of which includes the Flipper descriptions and probably some of the earliest accounts of the Wrong Un, Top-Spinner and Leg Break, there is no mention of an Orthodox Back-Spinner. The next easily traceable mention of a Back-Spinning delivery other than a Flipper is the story of Doug Ring showing Benuad a back-spinner……….

After the Lord's Test of 1953, Doug Ring picked up an apple on a train journey and showed a young Richie Benaud how he bowled the slider, pushed out of the front of the hand between the second and third fingers. And there, in essence, was Warne's armoury: the original legspinner and top-spinner, the googly, the flipper and the slider.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/287315.html

Interestingly this delivery doesn’t conform to the description of the Orthodox Back-Spinner as this delivery comes out of the front of the hand unlike the Orthodox Back-Spinner which comes out of the back of the hand and this delivery is credited with the name Slider making it very different to the Orthodox Back-Spinner. But, we’ll never know whether this explanation was called a Slider at the time and if it did, indeed differ from the Orthodox Back-Spinner. And besides that, Doug Ring and Benaud unlike Peter Philpott who followed them never committed an explanation and description of the delivery to text, at least not in a published and edited book. It then seems that just as we’re getting to a point where there may be some indication of an eminent bowler bowling a different ball and accrediting it with the name Slider you only have to dig around the internet and find other accounts that contradict the Doug Ring story above………

While Australian allrounder and captain Richie Benaud used what he called his 'sliding topspinner' which appears again to have been similar. Since he was taught the technique by Doug Ring, it may be more accurate to suggest that Mr Ring is the originator. Either that, or the ball is one of those deliveries with no easy to identify point of origin.
The slider (a straight ball delivered from the front of the hand) is to be compared with the zooter (a straight ball delivered out of the back of the hand).

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Slider+(cricket)

So, just as we’re about to get our teeth into something different – “the slider, pushed out of the front of the hand between the second and third fingers”. Further investigation muddies the waters again. I must admit, I’m not a big fan of Benaud and have read little on him, so I’m not sure as to whether he ever committed descriptions of his deliveries to text, but I’m fairly certain he never did.

The Real Mystery Balls

Prejudices aside though, I like the account of Benauds Slider, it sounds like the ball that I refer to as the Mickey Mouse Slider alluding to the fact that it’s an easily learned bastardised variation of the real thing. How I came across this, I don’t know, but it may well have been the account above. I’ve also heard Warne describe this delivery too and had discussions with people all round the world on forums who also relay the same experience and anecdotal references to Warne speaking about it. Throughout this research and putting this piece together I’ve noticed that there have been two descriptions that pop up here and there that allude to two mystery balls that get accredited with the name Zooter and Slider and yet their descriptions differ fundamentally to the Orthodox Back-Spinner which as we all know is a stable-mate of the Top-Spinner, Leg break, and Wrong Un as they all use the same grip configuration, wrist action and flick to impart the spin. My take on the Slider prior to writing this piece was that one of its key features was that – on hitting the surface of the pitch the ball would ‘Slide through’ rather than respond in an adverse way caused by hitting the seam. I always thought of the Slider as a ball that by design would hit the smooth surface of the ball more than it would the seam? Neither the Orthodox Back-Spinner or the Flipper if bowled correctly would do this and therefore the term Slider used in conjunction with these deliveries – especially the Orthodox Back-Spinner is wholly anomalous as far as I'm concerned.

The only descriptions of deliveries that I’ve seen described consistently with enough evidence to suggest that they would land on the smooth surface of the ball and therefore slide through and perhaps therefore merit being assigned the title of either The Slider or The Zooter are the Palm Ball (No.1) and the Fingers Rolled down the back delivery (Doug Ring/Benaud train journey account). These techniques could be adopted and described as genuine deliveries and incorporated into the Wrist Spin Bowlers armoury. The Benaud/Ring delivery which Warne had described before as having used, which I refer to as the Mickey Mouse Slider is this –

The Mickey Mouse Slider: Holding the ball using the two up two down grip, have all the fingers in place to bowl a Leg Break, but through the bowling action straighten the cocked wrist smoothly (Not a flick) and position the wrist ready to bowl a seamers ball by dragging the two up fingers down the back of the ball to impart the spin, the fingers will be across the seam and the seam will rotate over itself or come out scrambled. With this delivery there’s potential for the ball because of the seam presentation - for the ball to land hitting the seam sideways in which case the ball will bounce in an unpredictable manner or the ball will land on the smooth part of the ball and slide through. This allows a much faster flatter delivery that, because of the back-spin slides in and keeps low with the added potential of doing something unusual if it comes into contact with the scrambled seam.

Before writing this article this is the ball I always thought was a Slider by design. There are other potential Sliders which are accidental deliveries which come about through trying to bowl The Big Leg Break and the Orthodox Back-Spinner both of which are exceptionally difficult deliveries to master. In practice both in games and during training at all levels I believe that anyone attempting to bowl perfect deliveries of the ‘Advanced’ variations – (Big Leg Break and the Orthodox Back-Spinner) the execution is going to go wrong and the ball wont land on the seam and in these incidences the ball will Slide through. In these cases if the ball does something unusual you’re just simply going to claim it as one of your many variations and because of it’s attributes these accidental deliveries could be claimed as ‘Sliders’ in the generic sense of the term?

The other contender for a completely new variation is the one that conforms to the description here which crops up again and again being described as a Zooter. Again if we’re going to stick with the premise that the Zooter and the Slider are indeed different names for the Orthodox Back-Spinner, this ball here which is completely different but seemingly used by Warne needs to be assigned a name and described in detail by a professional in a book in order that it’s verified as a legitimate delivery…………….

The Un-named variation ; From Shane Warne’s biographer………. Basically this ball comes out of the front of the hand, with the fingers running across it sideways, like a legbreak - but the ball is propelled more by the palm. It's not unlike a knuckle ball, but not as slow. This delivery does very little in the air or off the pitch - which is part of the point. It sort of wobbles down.

These two obscure deliveries were the ones that I was hoping would prove to be the real contenders for the Slider and the Zooter, but all the evidence that I’ve been able to collate as previously mentioned point to the conclusion I’ve already made. So it seems as though these two deliveries could well be legitimate and useful deliveries with their place amongst a Wrist Spinner armoury, but as yet no-one has seen fit to describe them in a book and therefore are evolutionary balls.

The Knuckle Ball and Others

2010-12-12T08:38:00.001-08:00

The Knuckle Ball & Others
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!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0jqMpuTaGA&feature=PlayList&p=9B4109087C419763&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2

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.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.planetnz.com/palmheads/images/grips2_2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.planetnz.com/palmheads/myhacks.php%3Fpg%3Dbent_finger&usg=__adTe_YljuWYciu_TL5pSUIGwa-w=&h=367&w=580&sz=23&hl=en&start=27&um=1&tbnid=EQdbxRnVADtSLM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=134&prev=/images%3Fq%3Diverson%2Bbowling%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20%26um%3D1

Legspin Technical Aspects & Field Settings

2010-12-12T08:35:00.000-08:00

Work in progress

Legspin technical aspects
Warming up

Basic Stuff
I've found that if you explain to someone how to bowl Leg Breaks in very simple terms e.g. show them the grip across the seam using the 2 up 2 down fingers technique and explain they need to get the ball rotating many people can. Several people at my club who bowl seam up occasionally when they're mucking about practicing bowl half decent Leg Break balls that turn well, whether they do so well with regards the line and length is another matter, but the act of getting the ball to deviate off it's line using leg spin does seem to come fairly easy.

Why or how people come to Leg Spin I don't know, but for me it's one of those things that is black and white. You're either a Wrist Spinner or not, even if you never become that brilliant at it inside there's a passion for it and it's what you want to do, you're intrigued and challenged by it's complexity and it's this challenge that makes it so exciting to be involved in.

http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t58854-103/#post346049

Nets and practice

The more I learn about cricket the more contempt I have for batsmen, fast bowlers and clueless captains that do not understand spin bowling. All through crickets history it's viewed from the perspective of the batsmen. The impression I have is that all of the technical developments and game developments are there to improve the game from the batsman's point of view and the bowlers seem to be viewed as bit part characters playing second fiddle to the batsmen. It gets worse if you're a Spin Bowler as you're seen as a peripheral and risky luxury only given the chance to do your stuff under circumstances seen as being supportive rather than leading or attacking. So it's a tough old job and a lonely one if you're a wrist spinner and in a lot of clubs you wont find the support that you need because of the obscurity of this particular speciality in the game. You might find that the coaches know nothing of the art and might even try and persuade or guide you into bowling those other ways. Mate - stick in there, accept that it's going to be a struggle and that this is the hardest thing in cricket but when you get it together - man this is the best! You are one in a million if you can do it well and if you can do it well you will have your day, but it's going to take some work, a tough Constitution and a real desire to be a Wrist Spinner.

One area that you're going to have to accept unless you can find a like-minded spinner is that a lot of your practice is probably going to have to be done on your own. In fact Peter Philpott advocates that you only practice on your own because of the levels of concentration and application that are required.

As for bowling in the nets this is potentially one of the worst things you can do. A big part of Wrist Spin Bowling is psychological and as we've seen over the decades if not centuries all the support goes to the batsmen. They are seen as the Kings of cricket who everyone else supports, and we're just the minions. So the game and the way it's seen, perceived and viewed is Bat-centric. So much so that the Layman would invariably ask "How many runs were made"? Rather than how many wickets were taken?

So when you go to a clubs nets or practice you're entering these domains under the imposition of their view of what is important. A net session for instance might consist of 1 batsman who has 20 minutes facing the bowling of 4 or 5 bowlers. None of the bowlers are allowed to get into their rhythm and their successes in this batsmans paradise are not always quantifiable. But most important for the spinner is the realisation that you're playing to the batsmens ego just by being involved in a net session. Just as important is the realisation that by joining in with this Bat-fest you're potentially doing yourself a psychological dis-service. If you're learning why would you put yourself in a position where all the cards are stacked in the batsman's favour. Not matter what you do and how well you bowl the batsman is going to be playing in a manner that he would never dream of doing in a match situation. In a match situation as soon as you're passed the ball and he sees the nature of your run up he then thinks 'S**t it's a spinner'! He knows his days are numbered and that this is the real deal, this is where the S**t hits the fan. In a match if you've got your line and length together and can turn the ball away from the bat you have the psychological advantage. He on the other hand will pretend that he has, they all do - every last one of them - "I love playing spinners, hitting them for 4's and 6's it's what I'm best at". But a few seconds or overs later they're back in the sheds getting changed.

In the nets it's different, in the nets it's like the Free Mason's club. They posture around giving it the biggun, telling everyone how good they are and how they like to play spin and the whole situation then supports their ego's. The whole club and set up makes them feel good about what they're doing - in the nets they're brash and bold, they come charging down the wicket and smash the ball for 4's and 6's like it's easy. They square cut, they sweep, they drive and they show off. If they screw it up though...... No-one says anything or does anything, they all laugh and how they laugh so heartily, and he's still there with his bat. Hold on.... what's that all about? Where's the consequence or where's the reward for me? A fellow spinner, someone else that toils away at his craft hours and hours alone through summer and winter may nod or wink or say modestly 'Nice one mate you got him there'. But he's still there full of himself and again he's allowed to smash you once again into the nets and all over the imaginary park with impunity. Unless you're aware of this crap you can easily come away from such sessions feeling that your bowling is rubbish and that you were hit so many times all over the place and no matter what you did you couldn't get through and get his wicket. You can see why spinners especially wrist spinners can get so despondent and turn to the easy options.

I saw a kid that was trying to bowl finger spin. He looked like the type who probably did it only in the summer. He was having a terrible time of it getting it completely wrong all the time, but what then compounded the whole situation was the fact that he was in the nets facing a batsman that any time he did get it near the stumps the bat was heaving the ball into the nets with ease. I reckon when I see this kid next year he wont be bowling spin because he was getting very demoralised.

So I for one would suggest that you avoid taking net sessions seriously unless there is some kind of consequence for the batsman if he gets it wrong. It would be nice to be able to kick him in the nuts without his box if he screwed up - then maybe he'd show the same kind of respect that you get when you're in a game? Maybe something more civil could be used, prehaps if when they're facing spin and they screw up they pay a quid to the teams coffers? Anything just as long as some realism is introduced to net sessions!

One last note Clarried Grimmett possibly the greatest wrist spinner ever always practiced on his own and never bowled in the nets against batsmen. In his book 'Taking Wickets" 1930 he writes....

However, if it be arranged intelligently, much useful practice can be obtained. For instance, if nets are set apart for bowlers, with marks at varying lengths for the different types of bowlers a single stump to bowl at, and, where possible a wicket keeper to throw back each bal, thereby give him also the practice he hardly ever gets, except in a match - this would enable the bowler to work with a definite object, that of developing his length and direction.
This object is not so easily attained if a batsman is there to spoil the effect of the deliveries. Then again, batsmen rarely play as they would in a match which also makes it difficult for the bowler to practice under match conditions. If you tried in the majority of clubs, to have nets set aside for bowlers, you would be cried down. The batsmen could not possibly be deprived of their practice!

Other spinners of the ball

If you want to really to take Wrist Spin Bowling to a new level I really believe that you've got to explore the potential of looking at Baseball pitching. Just a simple trawl through youtube doing a search for instance for 'knuckle ball' throws up a plethora of ideas that are simply off the radar as far as most cricketers are concerned. But and this is a big but don't go there until you've got that Leg Break completely sussed and never neglect it, whatever you do dedicate 90% of your practice time to bowling the Leg Break.

Top Tips for Legspin

2010-12-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

Legspin bowling Top Tips
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

Legspin links and resources

2010-12-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

The Final Word

2010-12-12T08:11:00.000-08:00

As the new sections of the blog are put into place these sections will make more sense and will finally end up in order. In the short term all the old material will stay in place as the new sections are slotted in.

Update

2010-11-16T16:30:00.000-08:00

The blog is due for a massive update over the coming months leading up to the new season here in the UK. Parts of the new blog as it's being constructed can be found at www.mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com

Legspin bowling

2009-03-13T16:59:00.001-07:00

Legspin bowling Top Tips

This blog has now been superceded by the following blogs

http://spinbowling-wrongun.blogspot.com/

http://spinbowling-legbreak.blogspot.com/

http://spinbowling-flipper.blogspot.com/

Direct contact, questions, suggestions and feedback can be made here on this forum - http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t70231-65/#post378735

My main blog which is more or less a diary is here - http://www.mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com//
It's not everyones idea of a cricket blog, but some people like it.

Free Counter
Constant support and ideas when you're learning can be found at http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t58854/

Warming Up

Even though what we do is seen as slow bowling and needless to say it doesn't impact on the body in the same way as fast bowling does, it is still essential that we warm up. Having improved my technique recently with regards giving the ball a big flick it's now obvious that when I bowl my leg breaks the ball is being propelled and spun primarily using just my third finger supported possibly by my little finger. The tendons and muscles used in this delivery are rarely used for anything else and are certainly not used with the same repetitive tendency as when you're bowling. Needless to say the stress on the tendon and muscles has led to a mild case of Medial epicondylitis which has put me out of action for the best part of 2 weeks. Looking around the internet at websites to establish what I should do in order to prevent further injury I've been reminded that one of the most effective ways to avoid injury is to warm up and warm down prior to and after matches. See the following link with regards warming up generally.

http://www.pitchvision.com/how-to-warm-up-for-cricket#comment-20094

I've posted a message re advice regarding bowling, so hopefully I'll be able to link from here to pitch vision with something more specific. Looking around though I've come across this on youtube which seems to have some ideas that are applicable to recovery, but they also strike me as being suitable as a warm up exercise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qBRc7BJFKg

The Orthodox Back-Spinner:

Introduction - In this section I’m going to be looking at Back-Spinning deliveries other than the Flipper. Anecdotally, there’s potentially a handful of different back-spinning deliveries, but when you try and pin them down and establish which is what, who invented them and how they evolved, you’ll find that the information out there is very limited, vague and contradictory. In this section I’m going to try and clarify the deliveries that do exist and can be verified and makes sense of the confusion out there regarding the terms Slider and Zooter.

Research – My approach to trying to get to the bottom of the murky origins of the back-spinners was to do so in the manner that an academic might use. Within academia it’s recognised that any serious research needs to quote established and recognised texts on the subject in order to be taken seriously. As I’ve intimated previously throughout the blog the information with regards to the origins and techniques of Wrist Spin Bowling are extremely limited – probably restricted to two sources, Grimmetts book Getting Wickets from 1930 and Peter Philpotts book The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling from 1996. Between these two books we’re able to establish that there are only two recorded and explicitly described back-spinning variations, the Flipper and the Orthodox Back-Spinner. Thereafter, all other variations of back-spinners I would argue are evolutionary deliveries that have yet to still be pinned down and described in print in the same manner that the two established deliveries have been.

Other people will argue that there are several other deliveries and that these are well recorded and established. One of my aims is to present an argument that says that this is not the case. One key aspect of presenting your findings is that with secondary research - using the internet, to try and establish fact from fiction (and this does include this blog) you cannot trust the content. Using the internet for serious research is simply not acceptable because the writers are usually journalists or enthusiasts like myself. Another point that will be raised is that a lot of the commentary on these deliveries is made by the protagonists – Warne, Jenner, Benaud and other professionals. I’ll also make a case as to why this information is also sketchy at best.

The problem with accessing learning materials on Wrist Spin Bowling is that there are so few books written on the subject by the innovators and experts in the field. I’m only aware of one other body of printed work that attempts to explain the deliveries in great detail and that’s Woolmers book 'The Art and Science of Cricket'. The book covers the subject fairly well looking at Shane Warne’s Delivery of the Century in detail, coming up with a very convincing theory as to how and why. But then he acknowledges that he isn’t an expert in the field and resorts to quoting Grimmetts Getting Wickets and Grimmett on Cricket, the very books from which much of my own material here is based on.

I would argue that the most comprehensive book on the subject has still yet to be written by Warne. Potentially amidst all the bluff and psychology used by Warne over the years, there are definitive explanations of a handful of deliveries that either he invented or have been handed down over the generations since Grimmett. It wont be until Warne or Jenner perhaps sit down and collaborate and write definitive and published descriptions and explanations of the other deliveries will we ever be able to pin down exactly what a Zooter, Zinger or a Slider are.

How to Bowl the Orthodox Back-Spinner

Throughout the blog I’ve written about the fact that the Wrist Spinners armoury is made up of two distinct methods of bowling, the traditional Wrist-Spinners action with the 2 up and 2 down grip with the ball being spun off the 3rd finger which is described through the use of Peter Philpotts round the loop theory. And Grimmetts squeezed between the finger and thumb Flippers. Both actions are able to produce balls that spin to Off, Leg, Forwards and Backwards using the variation of the wrist position when releasing the ball.

Throughout the blog I’ve advocated that one of the most important things that you need to do is to take every opportunity to flick the ball from one hand to the other across the body and to flick the ball from an outstretched arm in towards the body catching it with the left hand at the chest

If you’ve been following these guidelines and drills you should by now be able appreciate the differences in how the ball spins in response to the position you present your wrist in as you flick……

The thumb pointing at the batsman and the ball flicked with the 3rd finger and wrist forwards – The Top-Spinner.
The Thumb pointing anywhere towards Slips and Gully with the palm of your hand now slightly facing the bat as you flick should produce a Leg Break.
The thumb pointing towards edge of the square directly to your left as you bowl with your palm now facing directly at the batsman will produce the Big Leg Break.

As you’ve probably seen, the wrist position has moved further and further round through 90 degrees and there’s still potential for it to go further still. Hold you hand up and have it facing palm towards the batsman and flick the wrist and see that you will be rotating the ball with the spin anti-clockwise to the Left to get the big leg break. Now turn the wrist further round inwards another 90 degrees so that your thumb is facing you and the ‘Karate Chop’ edge of your hand is facing the batsman. If you now flick your wrist you will be Top-Spinning the ball in towards yourself (The 2nd drill). The ball is flicked back towards yourself with an up-right seam. Now the difficult bit; As you bring your arm over you need to keep the wrist in this acute position – your forward body motion as you explode through the crease and your arm coming over will propel the ball forwards and down the wicket as you flick the ball putting top-spin on it as in all your other deliveries, but you need to allow the ball to be released out of the back-off the hand and down the pitch. Because you’ve spun the ball hard in towards yourself, as you look at it, it will have forward spin, but as the batsman sees the ball, it will have back-spin.

The seam should be dead straight and the back-spin will mean that the ball will hold its trajectory through the air far longer than your stock ball, so if bowled as a variation, the batsman will be expecting the ball to dip in the same way that your Leg Break should landing several feet in front of him. Instead the Orthodox Back-Spinner will land on a fuller length potentially catching the batsman out. Additionally with a perfectly upright seam there’s the potential that like the Flipper the ball may also swing? Finally, because of the upright seam and the back-spin the ball on hitting the wicket will stall and bounce irregularly. The suggestion is that a back-spinning ball will in most instances stay low and sneak under the bat where the batsman might be playing for a Leg Break and far more bounce. My own experience is that the bounce is irregular and dependent on a number of variables the ball will sometime rear up rather than stay low. Needless to say, all of this is subject to experimentation and trying it out to see what happens in your own situation.

In my opinion this is possibly the most difficult of all the deliveries because of the acute angle of the wrist required in the delivery. With practice using the Inward Spinning Drill you’ll get a feel for it. Once you’ve got a sense of being able to do that with a good degree of control – take it outside and flick the ball up in the air and forwards either against a wall to watch how the ball spins on hitting the wall or off of the flat ground. You should be able to propel the ball forwards and observe that it then bounces back towards you. This is easy enough and looks very promising, but trying then to convert that into a full 22 yard delivery is another matter. A positive though that may come out of it though is, if you can get the accuracy and speed in the delivery and land it on a good length, you may find that attempting to get your wrist round so far with the inward flick, you’ll improve your Big Leg Break as the work that’s gone into learning the Orthodox Back-Spinner is an extension to the wrist position for the Big Leg Break. Another observation from people that bowl the Orthodox Back-Spinner and the Big Leg Break is that when these deliveries go wrong, the ball will come out of the hand with a scrambled seam and frequently land on the smooth surface of the ball and Slide On. Far from being a complete disaster, what you’ll end up doing is bowling an unintentional variation. Looked at in a positive manner you could argue that this is an attribute of bowling the Orthodox Back-Spinner?

Smoke and Mirrors

The difficulty in trying to establish the facts with regards the more obscure back-spinning deliveries is the fact that a key part of Spin Bowling strategy is the psychological aspect of the game. From the earliest days bowlers have claimed to possess a mystery ball and this is especially true of Spin Bowling. From the Internet………..

Here’s an article written by Bob Simpson who trained Warne in the early days.

A clever bluffer on the field, he didn't mind using the media to his advantage, especially at the start of each season when he'd announce the discovery of his latest "mystery ball".
His opponents would see the headlines everywhere about something that didn't exist. In reality, there was never a new trick, only a revamping of the name for Peter Philpott's "back spinning toppie".
Shane originally called it his zooter, now he calls it his slider and over the last decade or so the ball has brought him numerous lbw decisions. What there was, though, was a further improvement in his accuracy and flight. He was always fine-tuning his bowling and increasing his arsenal.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/tss/tss3001/stories/20070106000201700.htm

It has to be recognized that the popularity of Wrist Spinning and therefore the proliferation of these supposed new variations since the 1990’s is probably down to Warne as the article above indicates. The suggestion by Bob Simpson is that there never has been a Slider, Zooter or whatever and that the back-spinner that Warne bowled was always the Orthodox Back-Spinner. Warne and the team that surrounds him, be it trainers, captains, marketing men or the Australian cricket board have obviously been involved in hyping him up as much as possible. For instance in 2005 prior to, or during the matches in London a giant effigy of Warne was driven around the streets of London on the back of a lorry in an attempt to remind England, that ours was a lost cause. http://bp2.blogger.com/_Dc8q8nuzrHw/RnjReYvLL8I/AAAAAAAAAog/5_VjtpPI5AA/s1600-h/bigwarnie.jpg

Just type in 'Big Warnie' in Youtube and you'll get some sense of the extent Warnes marketing/propaganda machine used to go to.
There have been adverts, documentaries, books and articles throughout Warnes career that serve to remind everyone about his genius and proliferation of deadly variations. But some of his most powerful media weapons I reckon are those based around his associations with Mark Nicholas and Terry Jenner. There was for a while a clip from years ago of Warne doing his now familiar demo of his deliveries. The clip appeared to be no-where near as slick as the ones that he did much later in his career, but did feature Mark Nicholas in exactly the same role – asking questions of Warne and then Warne showing the kids. But then look in the background of this old clip and who else is there amongst the kids – some of the English batsmen! They appear to be there trying to learn and un-ravel what it is that Warne does, so that they can possibly hold out some hope of surviving against him next time around? It strikes me that in the great tradition of Wrist Spinners this would have given Warne the perfect opportunity to weave his web of deceit….. ‘Yeah I’ve got em all mate….. Leg Break, Toppie, Wrong Un, Orthodox Back-Spinner, Slider, Zooter, Flipper and the Zinger’. You can just see Graham Gooch walking back to the dressing room and telling the rest of the England blokes ‘He’s got variations coming out of every orifice’!!! But, if you go looking for these other variations you start to see a pattern arising. Certainly when they get mentioned in books by third parties – authors on the subject of cricket in a generic sense, invariably they’re mentioned in conjunction with a handful of names – Warne, Jenner, Benaud and Doug Ring. But mentioned in a manner that has no clarity or certainty, as Philpott mentioned earlier, most of these bowlers had at least 2 back-spinners, but they would never divulge their technique. The Flipper and Orthodox Back-Spinner perhaps?

So it does seem that all the other variations that go by a number of different names cannot be pinned down and verified in the same way as the two ‘Prime’ back-spin deliveries. Warne himself describes in videos and articles written by 3rd parties all of these newer variations in a number of different ways, contradicting himself and generally confusing the issue and establishing very little that can be described as concrete. He mentions them in a number of different ways, making references to bowlers in the 1950's who as Philpott writes were also in the business of keeping these deliveries secret as a part of their guile and strategy. It strikes me that the more you investigate, the more the truth becomes murkier when applied to the new variations.
The Zooter

The Zooter and The Slider are the two main contenders vying for recognition as deliveries in their own right with some kind of pedigree. Neither Grimmett or Philpott use the term Zooter to describe any of the established Wrist Spin deliveries. With Philpotts book being first published in 1995 there's the possibilty that the term Zooter isn't used within cricket until after this date. But towards the back of Philpotts book on page 112 in the 2006 edition in the advanced tactics chapter Philpott writes..........

5. The front foot commiter who wants to get down the track at you all the time: With 5, I would have kept on spinning hard over the top, throwing the ball up and gradually widening on him. But as the years went by, I would have zooted back-spinners at him, holding him back and hoping to frustrate him/or change his plan of attack, then thrown up the Top_spinning Leggie a little wider of the Off-Stump.

In the context of this paragraph, the word Zoot is used as a verb in conjunction with the bowling of the Orthodox Back-Spinner. This led me to looking into whether the word was an Australian slang word that combined two words such as Shoot and Zoom/Zip to create a potentially more dynamic and energetic word....... Zoot. One suggestion was made (with no substantiation) that, Philpott who works tirelessly even to this day with kids teaching them Wrist Spin, may have used the word coloquially/Slang style to engage kids with their bowling. Maybe adapting the use of Zooting the ball in to Zooter to describe the Orthodox Back-Spinner? The name, Orthodox Back-Spinner is a right mouthful and at best a bit dull when teaching small boys how to bowl wrist spin. It's easy to see that many people coming into contact with Philpott having that sense of being within the inner circle of Australian Spin history would readily adopt the esoteric language of their great master Philpott. So could this possibly be one explanation as to why people confuse the Orthodox Back-Spinner with the term Zooter and even use the description?

Evidence of the Zooter

We'll now look at my findings with regards some of these potential newer deliveries and the confusing array of descriptions that surround them. First we'll look at the Zooter and its descriptions. Again I have to reiterate that looking at all the books that I could lay my hands on I couldn’t find one single reference to the Zooter at all. Even Woolmers seminal works The Art and Science of Cricket omits the Zooter and in doing so casts derision on the premise that the Zooter is anything new. But, having said that I have to also point out that Woolmer doesn’t even mention the Orthodox Back-Spinner. The following section I’ve collated a series of descriptions of the Zooter and you’ll see that there’s a fairly consistent description of one method which bears no resemblance to the Orthodox Back-Spinner, but could be seen as a delivery in it’s own right………………

(1). Zooter: The grip - The ball is held much further back in the palm of the hand, which holds the ball back as you let it go. The delivery - The ball is pushed out the front of the hand, from the palm, and either floats or skids through the air, maybe swinging in a little. The seam is straight up and down and the zooter does not spin.
http://www.liveindia.com/cricket/Bowling.html

(2). Zooter: A type of ball bowled by a leg spin bowler, which has little or no spin on it. cf. armball.
http://www.dangermouse.net/cricket/glossary/z.html

(3). Zooter – one of a leg spinner's subtler variations, this ball is slipped out of the hand without much spin imparted and tends to dip into the batsman. The term was coined by Shane Warne and his spin 'doctor' Terry Jenner, perhaps partly to enhance his mystique.
http://www.channel4.com/sport/cricket/analyst/jargon/ana_42.html

(4) Zooter: You have come to the right place, because I'm a legspinner, although not quite in the Shane Warne class (who is?). The flipper is a difficult-to-bowl delivery which is squeezed out under the wrist, with an action rather like that used to click the fingers. When it's bowled properly, the ball hurries on to the batsman, who can be beaten by the unexpected pace. Shane Warne has often dismissed Daryll Cullinan with this ball. Warne claims to have invented the "zooter", so we asked Mark Ray, the Australian journalist who helped write Warne's autobiography, how you bowl it. He said: "It's difficult to explain without drawings ... but basically the zooter comes out of the front of the hand, with the fingers running across it sideways, like a legbreak - but the ball is propelled more by the palm. It's not unlike a knuckle ball, but not as slow. The zooter does very little in the air or off the pitch - which is part of the point. It's not flatter like the flipper, which is under-spun - the zooter sort of wobbles down." So now we know!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2000/aug/24/cricket7

(5). Zooter: Fifteen years ago words like slider, zooter, back-spinner and toppie never existed - that was until Shane wrapped his fingers around the seam of a cricket ball.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sportacademy/hi/sa/cricket/features/newsid_3907000/3907623.stm

(6). Zooter - 11 % (A variation of the flipper, bowled by a leg-break bowler with little or no spin on it. Typically zoots along the ground with little bounce.)
http://www.todaytranslations.com/press-room/66/doosra-outscores-googly

(7). Zooter: A spin bowling variation, first devised by Shane Warne. This is a delivery that snakes out of the hand with little or no spin imparted, and so deceives through its very ordinariness. Some question whether the delivery has ever existed, for it could be another of Warne's mind-games to keep his opponents on their toes
http://static.cricinfo.com/db/ABOUT_CRICKET/EXPLANATION/CRICKET_TERMS.html

(8). Zooter: As a fledgling leg-spinner, he was coached by Terry Jenner, Shane Warne's mentor. He was reminded of how Warne would often begin a tour by announcing a new mystery ball — the zooter, for instance. "Oh, that's just a slider," said Rashid, all matter of fact. "They're just the same ball with different names."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jan/19/adil-rashid-england-cricket-yorkshire

(9) Zooter: During the training for the tour of Sri Lanka, Shane basically relied on his big spinning leg breaks and flippers. He didn't bowl the googly, and his normal top-spinner was only fair. When I asked him if he knew how to bowl a top-spinner through the front of his fingers he seemed surprised. He seemed even more bemused when I said Peter Philpott, the respected Australian leg-spinner of the 1960s, called it his "back spinning toppie". I could never understand why either. Perhaps my aerodynamics weren't as good as Peter's. I showed Shane how it was done and while I thought it would probably take him six months to master it, he was bowling it in a Test match three weeks later.
A terrible irony of his life is that the media have sometimes come down hard on him, exploiting those moments when he let himself down off the field. I say `irony' because, being a clever bluffer on the field, he didn't mind using the media to his advantage, especially at the start of each season when he'd announce the discovery of his latest "mystery ball".
His opponents would see the headlines everywhere about something that didn't exist. In reality, there was never a new trick, only a revamping of the name for Peter Philpott's "back spinning toppie".
Shane originally called it his zooter, now he calls it his slider and over. The last decade or so the ball has brought him numerous lbw decisions. What there was, though, was a further improvement in his accuracy and flight. He was always fine-tuning his bowling and increasing his arsenal.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/tss/tss3001/stories/20070106000201700.htm

This last bit here by Bob Simpson (9) is probably the most telling. This to me supports my argument that the term Zooter is anomalous and that there isn't really a clear definition of it and the confusion is all a part of the Warne/Jenner propaganda machine. If the Zooter is indeed just another name for the Orthodox Back-Spinner like Bosie/Googly/Wrong Un, which I'm quite willing to accept, there seems to be an awful lot of people writing about it and getting it wrong with all those 'Non-Spinning, out of the front of the hand' descriptions? The Orthodox Back-Spinner is ripped off the fingers using the wrist to impart the flick like all of the classic Wrist Spinning deliveries, so why the confusion? Simple….. As it says on the Cricinfo website “Some question whether the delivery has ever existed, for it could be another of Warne's mind-games to keep his opponents on their toes”. I would suggest that indeed this is the case.
There seems to be some recognition of a delivery that has attributes similar to the Knuckle-Ball used in baseball. Indeed, many Spin Bowlers have toyed with the idea of adopting some of the techniques used in Baseball and Philpott amongst others advocates exploring such ideas. It could be the case that Warne has used a variant of the Knuckle ball and this is where this description of a straight ball being pushed off the palm of the hand comes from? If you look into the Knuckle ball, you’ll possibly find that its reported as having the weird property of ‘Wobbling’ through the air appearing to turn one way and then another through its trajectory. Further investigations explain this is due to the stitching pattern on the ball which is very much different to a cricket ball.
The Slider

(10) The Slider: In cricket, a slider is a type of delivery bowled by a wrist spin bowler. Whereas a top-spinner is released with the thumb facing the batsman, a slider is bowled with the thumb facing the bowler. On release the wrist and ring finger work to impart backspin to the ball. A top-spinner tends to dip more quickly and bounce higher than a normal delivery. The slider does the opposite: it floats to a fuller length and bounces less than the batsman might expect. The classic slider heads with its seam aligned towards the batsman and may tend to swing in slightly. Sliders may also head towards the batsman with a scrambled seam (with the ball not spinning in the direction of the seam, so the seam direction is not constant, unlike in conventional spin bowling). This has less effect on the flight and bounce but absence of leg spin may deceive the batsman.
It is claimed that Shane Warne invented this type of delivery. However, this is inaccurate. The Australian spinner Peter Philpott used the technique in the 1960s, calling it simply an orthodox backspinner, while Australian all-rounder and captain Richie Benaud used what he called his 'sliding topspinner' which appears again to have been similar. Since he was taught the technique by Doug Ring, it may be more accurate to suggest that Ring is the originator. Either that, or the ball is one of those deliveries with no easily identifiable point of origin.
Although there is often a good deal of confusion on the subject, the slider is thought to be more or less an identical delivery to the "zooter".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slider_(cricket)
(11) The Slider; How to bowl a slider This article is an extract from Spin Bowling Tips. Master the art of spin bowling with the most comprehensive eBook on spin bowling ever produced, available now at PitchVision Academy. The slider or back spinner is the reverse of the top-spinner. Instead of bouncing and kicking as the top-spinner does, the back spinner delivery will skid onto the batsman. This delivery is great for trying to trap the batsman LBW. Grip - The grip is exactly the same as the leg-spin stock delivery. Two fingers up and two fingers down with the thumb on or off the ball as preferred. Release - The ball releases the hand rotating backwards. It is essentially the reverse of the top spinner (explained in previous chapter). The thumb must face the batsmen and the side of the hand (on the little finger’s side) must face the bowler, but with the back the hand facing towards mid-wicket.
http://www.pitchvision.com/how-to-bowl-a-slider
(12) The Slider: Slider is the delivery bowled by a Wrist spinner or a Leg Spinner and it is just the reverse of a Top-Spinner. The thumb faces the bowler in the slider delivery rather than facing the batsman as in Top-Spinner. The slider delivery floats to a fuller length and bounces less than the batsman might expect and also the ball skids towards the batsman making him difficult to connect.It is usually called as the terrific delivery for the Leg Before Wicket (LBW).It is claimed that the Spin legend Shane Warne of Australia invented this delivery.
http://www.cricketupdates.org/how-to-bowl-a-slider-in-cricket.html
(13) The Slider: This one is useful as it’s a section from the Pitch-Visions bloke and includes some decent images that explain the Orthodox Back-Spinner, but again and I can only summise that he’s chosen to call the Orthodox Back-Spinner a Slider because it just sounds sexier? Again, look at the webpage, look at the description and then go back to Philpotts The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling and you’ll see that this blokes Slider is in fact an Orthodox Back-Spinner, unless of course he’s got a book in print that precedes Philpotts and he can then potentially claim it as a Slider. See the link below………
http://www.spinbowlingtips.com/extract.pdf
(14) The Slider: The Slider: Well, generally a slider can be bowled with two different grips like it can be bowled with seam up and it can also be bowled with cross or scrambled seam. Most of the leg spin bowlers will choose to slide the ball with the seam up since it is easy to release or slide the ball from the edge of the fingers when it is seamed up rather than with the cross-seamed. E.g. Shane Warne has always bowled a slider with a seam up ball. Any ways grip the ball with the seam up in such a way that the two fingers index and middle has to be rested on the seam. The other two fingers thumb and ring has to be rested on both leather sides of the cricket ball. Now the bowling action will be similar to just as leg break bowling. Like the arm has to be at an angle of 45 degrees such that the back of the palm has to face towards the sky just like as seam bowling and thumb facing towards the bowler. Here you need to understand that the ball will not be released from back of the hand like googly, it simply comes out or slips out from edge of the fingers (from front of the hand) with the seam rotating in back direction just like as we see in seam bowling. Now when you release a ball from edge of the fingers, the fingers should be able to drag the seam in down or back direction such that there should be no spin on the ball. At the end of the day the ball after hitting the pitch will have to slide by holding its same line with out any spin. Similarly to bowl a slider with scrambled seam we need to just follow the same above application. But at the end of the day a genuine and smooth slider can be always bowled with the seam up.
http://www.questioncricket.com/2010/02/slider.html
(15) The Slider: Slider - A real wicket-taker for Shane Warne in his twilight years, the slider is basically the opposite of a top-spinner. It has a fuller length and bounces a lot less than expected. The slider is achieved with the thumb facing the bowler, the ring finger providing a substantial part of the spin, and the ball being released from the front of the hand.
http://www.talkcricket.co.uk/guides/cricket_skills_leg_spin.html
Again, you can see that like the Zooter, the Sliders origins and existence are as equally as murky. Description (11) from Wikipedia immediately states that it (Slider) is in fact The Orthodox Back-Spinner and description is that of Philpotts ball. The conclusion at the end suggesting that the ‘Ball is one of those deliveries with no identifiable point of origin’.
Entry No.15 is interesting again in exactly the same way that No.4 is. This website (No.6) describes all the Wrist Spin deliveries with a degree of reasonable knowledge listing them all, but instead of listing the Orthodox Back-Spinner by its real name, the bloke opts to call it the Slider. I was going to go through a number of websites, but to be honest they’re all virtually identical and almost without exception include the phrase ‘It’s the opposite of the Top Spinner with the Thumb facing the bowler in the delivery’, which basically tells you it is the Orthodox Back-Spinner.
So, I’m now moving towards a conclusion, which I think I’ve offered enough evidence of and that is that when it comes down to it the Orthodox Back Spinner (first recorded properly by Philpott) is exactly the same as Bosanquets Off-spinning delivery in that it no longer has one fixed name. Bosanquets ball is the Wrong Un/Googly/Bosie with Bosie seemingly being the most obscure term used for it, but possibly the original name? Philpotts ball is the Zooter/Slider/Orthodox Back-Spinner with the last name seemingly like the title Bosie gradually disappearing into obscurity despite the fact that this is the deliveries real name.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that, like Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first European to discover the USA, Peter Philpott probably wasn’t the bloke that invented the Orthodox Back-Spinner. In his own book Philpott writes about the existence of Back-Spinners over the period between Grimmett and himself……….
Outstanding Wrist Spinners since Grimmett have all developed their back-spinner, some innovative ones amongst them, and almost all these bowlers have persistently refused to discuss the mechanics of such deliveries. That's how important they were to them, and perhaps explains why so many non-wrist spin cricketers were and are totally ignorant of them.
He then goes on to virtually credit the ball to Benaud………….
Despite the innovators, however most Leg-Spinners have relied on the Orthodox Back-Spinner. This is the one I referred to with Richie Benaud, a delivery he bowled superbly and, at times almost used as a stock ball.

Peter Philpott; The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling; Crowood Press Ltd, Marlborough; 1995.
Again it’s clear that the origins of the Orthodox Back-Spinner like most deliveries are obscure, but as first mentioned at the start of this piece in order to pin the delivery down in an academic sense you need to find the first recorded definitive account of the ball in detail and despite the fact that Grimmett wrote three books, one of which includes the Flipper descriptions and probably some of the earliest accounts of the Wrong Un, Top-Spinner and Leg Break, there is no mention of an Orthodox Back-Spinner. The next easily traceable mention of a Back-Spinning delivery other than a Flipper is the story of Doug Ring showing Benuad……….
After the Lord's Test of 1953, Doug Ring picked up an apple on a train journey and showed a young Richie Benaud how he bowled the slider, pushed out of the front of the hand between the second and third fingers. And there, in essence, was Warne's armoury: the original legspinner and top-spinner, the googly, the flipper and the slider.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/287315.html

Interestingly this delivery doesn’t conform to the description of the Orthodox Back-Spinner as this delivery comes out of the front of the hand unlike the Orthodox Back-Spinner which comes out of the back of the hand and this delivery is credited with the name Slider making it very different to the Orthodox Back-Spinner. But, we’ll never know whether this explanation was called a Slider at the time and if it did, indeed differ from the Orthodox Back-Spinner. And besides that, Doug Ring and Benaud unlike Peter Philpott who followed them never committed an explanation and description of the delivery to text, at least not in a published and edited book. It then seems that just as we’re getting to a point where there may be some indication of an eminent bowler bowling a different ball and accrediting it with the name Slider you only have to dig around the internet and find other accounts that contradict the Doug Ring story above………

While Australian allrounder and captain Richie Benaud used what he called his 'sliding topspinner' which appears again to have been similar. Since he was taught the technique by Doug Ring, it may be more accurate to suggest that Mr Ring is the originator. Either that, or the ball is one of those deliveries with no easy to identify point of origin.
The slider (a straight ball delivered from the front of the hand) is to be compared with the zooter (a straight ball delivered out of the back of the hand).

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Slider+(cricket)

So, just as we’re about to get our teeth into something different – “the slider, pushed out of the front of the hand between the second and third fingers”. Further investigation muddies the waters again. I must admit, I’m not a big fan of Benaud and have read little on him, so I’m not sure as to whether he ever committed descriptions of his deliveries to text, but I’m fairly certain he never did.

The Real Mystery Balls

Prejudices aside though I like the account of Benauds Slider, it sounds like the ball that I refer to as the Mickey Mouse Slider alluding to the fact that it’s an easily learned bastardised variation of the real thing. How I came across this, I don’t know, but it may well have been the account above. I’ve also heard Warne describe this delivery too and had discussions with people all round the world on forums who also relay the same experience and anecdotal references to Warne speaking about it. Throughout this research and putting this piece together I’ve noticed that there have been two descriptions that pop up here and there that allude to two mystery balls that get accredited with the name Zooter and Slider and yet their descriptions differ fundamentally to the Orthodox Back-Spinner which as we all know is a stable-mate of the Top-Spinner, Leg break, and Wrong Un as they all use the same grip configuration, wrist action and flick to impart the spin. My take on the Slider prior to writing this piece was that one of its key features was that – on hitting the surface of the pitch the ball would ‘Slide through’ rather than respond in an adverse way caused by hitting the seam. My interpretation of the Slider was a ball that by design would hit the smooth surface of the ball more than it would the seam? Neither the Orthodox Back-Spinner or the Flipper if bowled correctly would do this and therefore the term Slider used in conjunction with these deliveries – especially the Orthodox Back-Spinner is wholly anomalous.

The only descriptions of deliveries that I’ve seen described consistently with enough evidence to suggest that they would land on the smooth surface of the ball and therefore slide through and perhaps therefore merit being assigned the title of either The Slider or The Zooter are the Palm Ball (No.1) and the Fingers Rolled down the back delivery (Doug Ring/Benaud train journey account). These techniques could be adopted and described as genuine deliveries and incorporated into the Wrist Spin Bowlers armoury. The Benaud/Ring delivery which Warne had described before as having used, which I refer to as the Mickey Mouse Slider is this –

The Mickey Mouse Slider: Holding the ball using the two up two down grip, have all the fingers in place to bowl a Leg Break, but through the bowling action straighten the cocked wrist smoothly (Not a flick) and position the wrist ready to bowl a seamers ball by dragging the two up fingers down the back of the ball to impart the spin, the fingers will be across the seam and the seam will rotate over itself or come out scrambled. With this delivery there’s potential for the ball because of the seam presentation - for the ball to land hitting the seam sideways in which case the ball will bounce in an unpredictable manner or the ball will land on the smooth part of the ball and slide through. This allows a much faster flatter delivery that, because of the back-spin slides in and keeps low with the added potential of doing something unusual if it comes into contact with the scrambled seam.

Before writing this article this is the ball I always thought was a Slider by design. There are other potential Sliders which are accidental deliveries which come about through trying to bowl The Big Leg Break and the Orthodox Back-Spinner both of which are exceptionally difficult deliveries to master. In practice both in games and during training at all levels I believe that anyone attempting to bowl perfect deliveries of the ‘Advanced’ variations – (Big Leg Break and the Orthodox Back-Spinner) the execution is going to go wrong and the ball wont land on the seam and in these incidences the ball will Slide through. In these cases if the ball does something unusual you’re just simply going to claim it as one of your many variations and because of it’s attributes these accidental deliveries could be claimed as ‘Sliders’ in the generic sense of the term?

The other contender for a completely new variation is the one that conforms to the description here which crops up again and again being described as a Zooter. Again if we’re going to stick with the premise that the Zooter and the Slider are indeed different names for the Orthodox Back-Spinner, this ball here which is completely different but seemingly used by Warne needs to be assigned a name and described in detail by a professional in a book in order that it’s verified as a legitimate delivery…………….

The Un-named variation ; From Shane Warne’s biographer………. Basically this ball comes out of the front of the hand, with the fingers running across it sideways, like a legbreak - but the ball is propelled more by the palm. It's not unlike a knuckle ball, but not as slow. This delivery does very little in the air or off the pitch - which is part of the point. It sort of wobbles down.

These two obscure deliveries were the ones that I was hoping would prove to be the real contenders for the Slider and the Zooter, but all the evidence that I’ve been able to collate as previously mentioned point to the conclusion I’ve already made. So it seems as though these two deliveries could well be legitimate and useful deliveries with their place amongst a Wrist Spinner armoury, but as yet no-one has seen fit to describe them in a book and therefore are evolutionary balls.

The Legbreak

2009-03-13T16:56:00.001-07:00

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.

To see the emphasis and action of the 3rd finger on the ball watch the two sequences of Shane Warne in this video in high quality (HQ). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x72rFy1YmU&feature=related

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.

A good website link http://www.activatecricket.com.au/content_common/pg-Activate-Cricket-Spin-Bowling-Part-4-Angles-Flight-Turn.seo

Length

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.

The Big Legbreak

2009-03-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-13T16:42:00.001-07:00

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.