Wrist Spin Bowling - Top-Spinner Updated 31st Dec 2018

Wrist Spin Bowling - Top-Spinner            Updated 31st Dec 2018

The Top-Spinner or 'Over-Spinner' is one of the variations bowled by Wrist Spinners. The ball is flicked out of the hand using a combination of wrist and fingers to impart the spin, the seam of the ball is released so that it's upright, as per the diagram below seen from above.

 

The grip is the exactly the *same as the Leg Break ...2 fingers up, 2 fingers down as described by both Jenner and Warne the view that the batsman would see would be as in the image below (fig 1). This I would describe as an orthodox wrist spinners grip with the ball cupped in the hand and the 3rd finger (ring finger) rested on the seam.

The thumb plays little or no part in the release generally, the 3rd finger is rested on the seam highlighted here below in fig 4. This finger on the seam is the means by which the spin is imparted, combined with the flick of the wrist.

 

 

 Characteristics

Delivered as nears as possible in the same way as your stock ball, the wrist position is changed so that the side spin on the ball is negated, the seam rotates over itself aimed directly down the wicket. The harder the ball is spun, the more the ball will be effected by the Magnus Forcemaking the ball dip as it reaches the batsman. The impression from the batsman's perspective would be that the ball is going to be a lot fuller, landing a lot close to his position in the crease. With the top-spin, the ball would then dip late in its trajectory dropping short, the result is that often the batsman would play the shot timing it incorrectly resulting in the ball spooning up in the air. 

The flight of the ball would appear based on its release height and speed to be a much fuller ball (Indicated by the white line), but with the top-spin the ball would suddenly drop short as indicated by the red line. One of the better descriptions of the Top-Spinner can be found on Pencil Crickets blog, he writes...

Wrist-spin Applications #1: The Top-spinnerI've started with the top-spinner rather than the stock legbreak as this is by far the easier delivery to describe, so it's a good starting point. I'm assuming it's a "pure" top-spinner, i.e. that the seam is vertically upright and pointing down the wicket.

Essentially, all you have to do to work out what the Magnus effect will do with this ball is take the golf ball and turn it upside down, so that instead of pushing the ball up it pulls it down instead.

Now here, for once, I have to take issue with Peter Philpott. In his otherwise flawless book "The Art of Wrist-Spin Bowling" he describes the effect of top-spin (he calls it overspin) saying that "overspin increases the effect of gravity", a bit of sloppy science that will have all the physics teachers rolling their eyes. The effect of gravity is unchanged throughout - what top-spin does is add an additional effect which accelerates the ball in the same direction. So the ball has the downward acceleration due to gravity AND some more downward acceleration due to the Magnus effect on top of that.

So as the batsman sees the ball come out of the bowler's hand, he will judge the speed and angle and intuitively estimate where the ball will pitch based on downward acceleration due to gravity alone. Thereafter the Magnus effect will make the ball dip faster in the air, and bounce further away from the batsman than he originally thought it would. That's not all, however. Because the ball has dipped it will now hit the ground at a steeper angle, and therefore it will bounce higher.

Now anyone who has ever spun a ball onto the floor in front of them will find this last part counter-intuitive. If you gently chuck a top-spinning ball onto the floor in front of you the traction as it lands will accelerate it away from you, making the angle it bounces up at shallower. Likewise a back-spun ball will seem to sit up, and if you give it a really good rip you can even get it to bounce right back towards you despite its original momentum. However - and spinners need to get their heads round this - at any significant speed the Magnus effect's ability to make the ball hit the ground at a steeper angle and thus bounce harder and higher far outweighs this effect. It's not that the effect doesn't exist, after all it's the same force that makes a leg-break turn, it's just that it is dwarfed by a counter-acting force in this situation.

So the Magnus effect will make a top-spun ball dip more during flight, meaning it will pitch shorter than anticipated, and hit the ground at a steeper angle, making it bounce higher.

http://pencilcricket.blogspot.co.uk/p/magnus-effect-in-leg-spin-bowling.html

Relatively easy to bowl if you have a high arm action as opposed to a low action. A lower 'Round Arm' action requires a potentially more difficult wrist position if you're looking to bowl the delivery making it indistinguishable from your stock Leg Break. 

How to use it? I've seen it used in a variety of ways, especially effectively by older bowlers who've got very good control over their line, length and speed. If you've got that kind of accuracy and you're bowling against tail-enders or someone who's desperate to stay in for whatever reason, this ball can tie an end down, dry up runs and put pressure on the other batsman. 

But generally you can vary it with the afore-mentioned aspects - line, length, flight/speed, more or less spin. Mixed in with your Leg-Breaks - to suddenly bowl one, when the batsman is looking to play the break off the wicket, the fact that it's straight will potentially cause problems and with the extra bounce the ball may come off the gloves, bat handle or the shoulder of the bat to be caught behind. 

New Batsman in.  On SKY during a break in a test match in 2012/13 Warne did a piece where he discussed his initial approach to bowling to a new batsman using the crease. (See the link above). This is kind of reliant on your ability to bowl a decent line and length, but he advised to bowl from different positions on the crease, either side of the stumps for the most part attacking the stumps. There are further thing you have to consider, field placement for one. Because it's a new batsman you have to consider when you've been brought on and how you faired in the previous over if you've already been bowling. But if you've done okay in the previous overs, this'll be your licence to go on the attack. Bring the field up and right from the outset give the impression something is going to happen. 

Warne's exact order or approach I've not revisited or replicated here, but I've adapted it for my own use, but it was pretty simple, something along the lines of...

1. Over the wicket, Stock Ball, off-stump line coming off of a normal position on the popping crease, close to the stumps. The ball is delivered attacking an off-stump line (C), with the expectation that the ball will break off the wicket (B). In the first over your tactic could be to hold back the Top-Spinner which would take the red dotted line route (D) hitting middle and off. 

2. Over the wicket, Stock Ball, off-stump line, but go wider on the wicket further from the stumps. Again your targeting the stumps forcing the batsman to play a shot, all the time creating chances with your leg break turning it away from the edge of the bat.

3. Over the wicket, Stock Ball, but wide of the stumps on the off-side, going back to the close to the stumps delivery approach. This is useful to see how much the batsman moves his feet, giving some indication as to how confident they are. Again all of these balls are reliant on the consistency of your stock ball, if your moving around on the crease, but bowling a regular pace and flight, there'll be a growing confidence in some aspect of the batsman own perception of what is happening. He maybe thinking at this stage "Right... this bloke is moving his position on the crease, but the flight and pace are pretty much consistent"... Which is pretty much what you want him to be doing? 
If he's not that good, he may not move his feet at all and may swing at the ball, or lean out to hit it, again all potentially clues to how well he's going to play the ball once you get going. 

4. Over the stumps, Stock Ball, wide on the crease, but a leg stump line. This is where you'll start to see if the batsman is strong off his legs. I find this a riskier line along with the final two approaches which see me go around the wicket attacking the leg-stump. 

5. Around the stumps, Stock Ball, close to the stumps, leg-stump line. Now really mess with his head and your team mates if you don't rearrange your field! Go around the stumps attacking the leg-stump, again don't forget you're still bowling your stock ball leg break, so you're turning it into the batsman, but forcing them to play the ball because you're attacking the stumps. I find this the riskier of all the tactics so far, as often the batsman will come after you if they've got any real confidence with the bat, but alternatively, you might find that bowling around is a loophole that you can definitely look to exploit? But set your field accordingly - again how you do this either supports your own sense of confidence or indicates some concern, so again I go with giving the impression that something is going to happen for me, rather than giving the impression that the batsman is going to smack you over the boundary. Maybe bring blokes over from the off-side and have close in fielders, I have a bloke in my team who loves fielding at silly midwicket, so he'd be brought in to that position and be right under the batsman's nose.

6. Around the stumps, Stock Ball, wide of the stumps, wide of leg stump. Again change your line go wide on the crease away from the stumps, if you have just been hit over the boundary, take this line but do something additional - you've already bowled 5 stock deliveries - maybe change the pace as well as the angle? Or stick with what you've been doing ready to deliver the sucker punch in the next over? 

Having now bowled a whole over of Stock Ball leg breaks and seen the response, go back to the approach that looked the most promising, chuck a couple up and see what happens and then bring in the Top-Spinner. Hopefully the delivery will be so different with extra dip and bounce, added to the fact that you've discovered the best line of attack, the Top-Spinner might be the ball that gets you the wicket?

The amount of variations that can be bowled, simply by moving around on the crease and bowling different lines, lengths, pace gives the batsman something to think about. I think Warne also suggests supporting this probing approach with also tweaking the field settings, moving a bloke a few paces here and there, again to give the impression that you know what you're up to and you're putting a plan together. Again with the field settings added to the fact that you're attacking from different positions on the crease, this all adds up to adding potential pressure to the batsman.

This idea of moving around so much on the crease is that (1). It has the potential to not allow the batsman to feel as though he's in control. (2). You're exploring real options, one of these approaches might give some indication early on that there's a weakness that you can exploit in the batsman's technique. Once you've had a look and there does seem to be a particular approach that looks as to be an attacking option that might bring a wicket, in your next over explore that option and vary your stock ball and then bung in the Top-Spinner as a variation? 

The ball is generally used sparingly amongst the stock leg-break with the intention that the characteristics of the delivery catch the batsman out.

Other Factors None of this is easy, but one thing you do need to have in place before you're able to put these plans into place is a good degree of control over your leg break. First and foremost almost everyone will tell you, you have to master the leg break before moving on with any conviction with the variations. If you can try and get your coach or club to lend you a copy of the ECB's video 'Wings to Fly' and have a listen to Warne's coach Terry Jenner. Similarly check out all of the videos on-line that feature Jenner talking about wrist/leg spin bowling. 

Pitch Conditions - These have to be considered in relation to how and what you bowl, but this comes with experience. If the wicket is bouncy or has irregular bounce your away and this should produce successful outcomes. If the wicket is a batting wicket and there's no variation in it and the bounce is true and consistent, you might have to look to another plan.

Stage of the game - I tend to come on after about 20 - 25 overs, if the openers are still there, they're generally well set and seeing the ball well. In which case a different approach might be needed? The ideal situation is to bowl to the new batsman and you need to work with your team to get the new bloke on strike, set the field and bowl your stock delivery to allow the 'Set' batsman to run a single, getting the new bloke on strike. But, there is the caveat that if your 'Set' batsman looks to be struggling, then implement your bowling plan against him as well as the new bloke. 

Sub Variations - Having posted this blog entry and discussing variations on-line here, one of the forum contributors posted this Youtube video of Warne's releases/deliveries recorded in slow motion. Included amongst the deliveries is one that is particularly interesting in that it features a Top-Spinner that is released with a slightly scrambled seam. Watch the video, it's in two sections, the latter footage is slower than the initial footage. At 1.39 seconds the Top-Spinner is released and you can see that the seam doesn't rotate perfectly and there's an element of the seam being scrambled. In the latter stage of the drop at about 1.49 seconds the ball 'Drifts' dramatically towards the leg-side and then hits the ground and goes on as a Top-Spinner should.

As a diagram it would look something like this.

For me as someone that doesn't get the ball to drift that much, I've been led to believe that in order that the ball drifts there has to be a combination of over-spin (Top-spin) and side spin. I've always assumed that the side spin needs to be 'Clean' as opposed to scrambled, so this video footage is a bit of a revelation, meaning that this coming season I'll be looking at trying out Top-Spinners with a scrambled seam looking for the Holy Grail that is 'Drift'. 

 

*Grip Variations - One of the things that Philpott warns against in his book The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling Is the notion that the grip has to be one way or another. I've introduced the idea that the images above represent an orthodox approach to gripping the ball to produce the Top-Spinner, it maybe the case that for most of us this works fine? I've found that, no matter how hard I try and get my wrist so that it produces a perfect top - spinner, the 'Orthodox' approach as described above still breaks a little towards the off-side.

 

Recently looking to get the ball to bounce straight with no break and increased dip, I experimented with a slightly different grip. I've developed a release that looks pretty much the same as the grip in the image (Figure 1) when bowled.

 

But when looked at more closely (Image A) you'll see that the ball doesn't sit so deep and cupped in the hand as in the case of the orthodox grip. This approach feels a lot more "fingery"and uses the middle finger as opposed to the 3rd (ring) finger to impart the spin (see below)...

The flick of the wrist is imparted in a slightly different way to the leg break because the wrist has to maintain the 'straightness' aspect to get the ball to over-spin. Instead of the wrist being cocked down and inwards, I cock my wrist backwards and the wrist flick as in the diagram here below is as indicated by the arrow, and this combined with the finger action helps to put the spin on the ball. It does require a certain level of dexterity and suppleness of the wrist.

The finger action is also very different to the orthodox method and uses all of the fingers to put the spin on the ball.

You can see the thumb has a big role to play in this method, the thumb and fingers combined with the flick of the wrist twists the ball; the thumb rolls under the ball and all four fingers roll around the ball over the top imparting the top spin. It'll probably feel ridiculously hard to do this initially but with practice it'll come. This is a classic case of requiring the approach that Philpott advocates - spin anything, any where at any time... Sitting watching the television? Pick up an apple and rip the apple from hand to hand using this method and bit by bit you'll feel it coming together and you'll soon see that you're able to impart a fair bit of spin on the ball using this technique.

 

I'm writing this pre-season and I've used this method in its early stages of development against a number of different batsmen in the nets with very promising results. I'm hoping that going forwards with more practice this is going to be a very useful ball, I've also noticed that with a little angling of the wrist, I can also get it to come in to the right handed batsman for a little Googly, which is potentially very useful too.

 

Bibliography

The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling - Peter Philpott, The Crowood Press, 2006
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM9UpUV3fHM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfZgFi9Q9gc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFwhAsoax7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFwhAsoax7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFfcCsQyqpw
Check out my other blog here - this is all about Leg-spin bowling and nothing else. Double click on the image below.

 

 

Some Bloke called Dave - December 2018

It's nearly Christmas and I've got a bit of time off and I've been able to catch up a bit. Since the demise of my original mega- blog and the experiment with websites I've been a bit lost as to how I can move forwards with my cricket blogging. At the same time, one of the methods I used to promote the blog and inter-face with other wrist-spinners started to lose its way and that too seems to have gone south. So the question has been what content do I have - do people still want to hear me waffling on about wrist-spinning? In the last 2 years I tried to have a pre-populate 50 post blog where I intended to put all the best content from the mega-blog, but I haven't got round to it and have felt more inclined to work with this blog, although at the moment it doesn't get many hits. The 50 post version though includes one page which gets more views than any post I've ever produced and since then I've tried to modify that into something else again despite how successful that page is.

Today though, with the fact that I'm going to be playing wholly new teams blokes, there seems to be the potential to create something new again, so alongside this blog, which is the only blog these days that has new content, I've come up with something specific to the new league...

Double click on the image above to access the blog.

It's basically an improved model of the aforementioned post that has had more hits than any other post... Analysis of batsmen. Potentially, because this blog is targeting the new league which is much larger than the previous one, it may take off and be equally as successful?

The other thing I might look at re-establishing is my old forum here http://spin-bowling.boards.net/ which in the past has been really popular? We'll have to see how enthused I am by the new league and teams in the coming summer. In the meantime I'll try and get monthly content in here over the next 4 months leading into the new season.

Joe_________________________________________________________________

He's still hanging in there. We had the annual awards night early in December where there were further revelations relating to the club which are below. But with regards Joe he won an award which I collected on his behalf from Elvis. Joe won Under 18's player of the year which will go some way to keep him on board. He, like many of us had a tough year playing way above his level and came out as the 4th best at the club behind Tony Keep and some 1st XI blokes

It has to be said that Tony Keep is an old bloke and has been playing cricket for decades and he is a very good bowler - accurate, variable speed and flight - seam up bowler - slow/medium pace, he might cut it a bit as well and bowl off-cutters. He took bowler of the year which has been Joe's for the last couple of years if I'm not mistaken.

Writtle Nets

Haven't been so many times this year, the price has gone up, almost pricing us out of being able to go, but we've been twice. I've been batting slightly differently - more gung ho and it seems to work in the nets. I'm a massive fan of England Women's player Tammy Beaumont's batting and her controlled aggressive approach to taking on the bowlers, especially the walking down the crease to the fast bowlers early doors approach and this is something I started to do last year with some reward. In addition, just playing in a more relaxed and confident manner, looking to be aggressive seems to be working. Whether it'll convert to a cricket pitch and a real game remains to be seen, but if we manage to be placed in the new league at the right level and standard, it might come off?

The funny thing is in the nets Joe doesn't do that well and gets really frustrated and I play far better than him, but he's able to take it to the game with far better results than me?

T Rippon news. (The new league)

At the awards night there was another revelation. The Zimbabwean contingent who looked poised to take over the club seemingly changed their minds and suddenly lost all their commitment to Basildon and took themselves off to Benfleet cricket club along with their kids. As a result some of the old committee enthused by the events of November I would imagine, combined with an influx of some new committee members have taken the reigns again to guide us through the new season with 3 teams as opposed to 4 teams which has been the case in the past.

The really disappointing thing though about this league is the length of the games. I'm not 100% certain, but for the 3rd XI team it may be as short as 40 overs which is ridiculous in my opinion and may yet to prove to be 10 overs too little for me and Joe like-wise as I think he'll be bowling in 45 over games. The argument for this is that anything longer is too long for the concentration span of kids. It's a dilemma for cricket, but its to the detriment of the game. Maybe there should be a league whereby kids and adults that want to play crap formats like T20 and The hundred are given the opportunity to do so and the rest of us who want to play proper cricket do so in 50 over games? Maybe once these kids get into it, they'll think I want some of that, I want to prove I can bat long, I want to show that I too can score a century and bowl a long spell. Surely that's what male teenager do? It's certainly how I would have looked at it, I'd have wanted to be the Alpha male among my peers when I was their age... most stamina, most focused, strongest, most agile etc.

There seems to be an acknowledgement of the fact that we're still struggling to get players, although there is a belief that once we find a level that we can be competitive at, that'll bring in players and already there's been a few names mentioned of players who'd retired that have said they'll come back. But longer term, there's a desire to get more of the kids to come through to the 14, 15 year old age bracket. They've got this idea that some of the younger blokes including my own so Joe (17) and others in the 16-19 age group will get involved in training the younger kids, thus demonstrating that kids do get past that age group and do filter into the adult games and excel. There's about 4 of them that are able to execute that role, although one did disappear off the radar mid summer last year, so he might have been lost to the game. I've not mentioned this to Joe, I'm going to leave it to the club to spring it on him and see how he reacts, personally I don't think he'll be up for it and I don't think he sees any value in it. Additionally, he works and he'll be in a situation where he would have had to negotiate Saturdays off to play cricket and will feel like he owes the company, e.g. be available to work at other times... the evenings.

December ends with my weight being 11 stone and 11lbs which I was surprised about given I've eaten a fair bit of crap over Christmas. Started to exercise today 30th Dec, man am I unfit. I can usually do head-stands for over 4 minutes, but at the moment I can't even get my legs up vertical because all my lower-back and core strength has gone! There's a fair bit of work to do!

https://trmecl.blogspot.com/

November 2018

Cricket Nov

November got under way relatively mild, I always think of Bonfire night as being one of the first nights to be frosty, but it wasn’t. As a result, the paddock grass is growing well, only thwarted by the fact that it’s in the shade for a considerable time during the day. But most days have been sunny up till mid Nov – so good for the grass. I’ve been keeping an eye on it and at least once a week I go over and rake off all the dead leaves and it’s looking pretty good.

Despite the fine weather the ground is far too wet to practice on, so there’s been no practice. On the 11^th Joes work shifts panned out so that Writtle nets may have been an option and I tried to cajole him into going on the basis that he could drive and get some driving practice in driving up the A130, but he didn’t go for it.

Over the back end of last winter, I toyed with the idea of adding off-break bowling using finger spin as opposed to Googlies and did some work with it. But then as the season started noticed that the off-spinning flipper was also an option and discarded the idea of finger spin.

I worked on the Flipper a lot last year in practice… the Warne ‘Bog standard’ back-spinner, trying to get it accurate at different lengths at different speeds (See video here). But, also kept trying the off-spinning version intermittently. The issue I had with it was that for the most part it didn’t really turn a great and I was looking for something that would turn. Tonight, I’ve been watching the Women’s T20 match between England & Bangladesh and was really impressed with their captains (Salma) opening wicket - Danni Wyatt for a Golden. Salma bowls Wrist-Spin, so I guess Wyatt was expecting the ball to turn and it didn’t – Salma just bowled a nothing ball out of the front of the hand – Mark Butcher quite rightly calling it an Arm-ball as opposed to the ridiculous notion of a Slider the ball going straight on to hit middle of the off-stump. So, perhaps I should also work on a ball that doesn’t do anything – as it’s very effective if the bat is expecting the ball to turn? But, the same thing could be achieved by bowling a slow off-spinning flipper with the bonus that it may come back in a little to the RH batsman? That seems like the best option, just keep working on the flipper, and just get the line and length right.

I had planned to try and keep my fitness maintained, but during the half-term break at the end of October before the good weather had completely gone I had some work to do on the roof of the house and stripped off half the tiles, batons and the lining so as to put some insulation in between the rafters and put a new lining on. As a result of doing that I went down with a cold and felt inclined to rest in order that it passed and so the exercise regime went to the wall. As a result, my fitness has lessened, and I need to get back on it, but at the moment still lack the motivation.

25^th Nov

The weather got wetter and a little colder, but nothing radical, if anything still relatively warm so the paddock did well up till the first few frosts which occurred around Nov 20^th At the weekends I went over and raked the leaves off the wicket and it looked pretty good up till this weekend 25^th… The grass having been subjected to a frost looked knackered and the poxy foxes had dug holes in the bowling zone – fairly wide though, so not a problem. Looking at the trees around the edges – particularly the ones that over hang the batting end, it looks as though I should cut some of them back to let some light on the wicket. The seeds that I sowed at that end which are supposed to be the ‘Shady’ type don’t seem to have grown at all.

Still not had any net sessions at Writtle, but have been talking to Tim Brown from the club about going. I keep asking Joe and he keeps coming up with excuses not to go primarily around the fact that he works so much these days and is always knackered.

There’s been some news on the T-Rippon league application which as a club we were slightly concerned about as there was a chance that we would be black balled it seemed and prevented from joining the league. Towards the end of November there were a couple of key events happening in the background, one we’d hear how the SNEL would react to our leaving and then whether we’d be expected be black balled by the T-Rippon league.

The first good new came from the SNEL they allegedly said that it wasn’t a problem us leaving and they’d leave the option for us to come back if we changed our mind at a later stage in the new year. So that was a positive, all we needed now was for the T-Rippon league to accept us and then we got an email…

Dear members,

We are delighted to advise that at their AGM last night the T Rippon Mid Essex League voted unanimously to allow us to join them with immediate effect.   As a result, we have informed the Shepherd Neame Essex League that we have left.

Further details will of course be discussed at our Presentation Night on 1st December and at our AGM in January, but the committee are confident that this move will will be the start of an exciting new chapter for the club.

If you have any questions in the mean-time please get in touch with a member of the committee.

Kind Regards

The Committee

So, we’d done it, we’d made the transition and we now had the prospect of playing cricket next year with a new and positive out-look.

At the end of November my fitness regime was non-existent.

September - October 2018

I'm writing this in December a few months later, so the memories are a bit vague. I've said it before, but increasingly I have less time for this because of a number of reasons and the fact that I don't have as many problems with my bowling any more I seem to write a lot less these days.

The last two seasons have been difficult for our club and as another season ended with the mood and morale around the club being at a possible all-time low their were rumors that the club was facing a crisis.

A quick re-cap... Over the winter of 2016/17 some significant players in the 1st XI announced that they wouldn't be playing again because of newly emerging commitments, these are blokes in the late 20's for the most part and the impression I got was that they had work relate opportunities or had young families. I don't know how many of them made the decision initially, but it seemed that once these blokes had made their intentions clear, others followed suit on the basis of not wanting to play in a team without the blokes that they'd been playing cricket with since they were 11 or 12. The resulting domino affect almost wiped out the 1st XI meaning that all the other teams below them had to move up a level.

The consequence of this was that a great many of the games that we played in over the summer were over before the coin was flipped. My own team the 4th XI was affected the most. Everyone moved up to the 3rd XI and that meant that every 4th XI game the club struggled to get players for. Some how we got through 2017 and were looking to recruit new players over 2018.

2018 was worse and within a couple of months the 4th XI team was dropped from the league because we failed to get a team out on three occasions. I had my toe broken early in the season, but found myself playing in the 2nd XI with a broken toe two weeks after the break occurred. Loss after loss, meant that people were less inclined to play and even I hit a real low and considered moving to another team. The primary reason for this was, the bloke I played under adopted the strategy of were possible batting first to basically get it over and done with as soon as possible, trotting out the adage... "Who wants to be chasing leather around the field for 3 or 4 hours in this weather". To be fair there was something in it from the weather point of view as this was one of the driest and warmest summers ever. But his approach meant that we'd go in and score a ridiculously low total... and the only people that would get a look in with the bowling would be the seam-up pace bowlers.

On the odd occasion he'd share the bowling around, but invariably it meant that maybe we'd get 2 or 3 overs each at best. Most games I didn't get a bowl and all season I managed to bowl 31 overs - 50% lower than most years. In essence most of us were turning up to field and then go home after having tea, many of the games were over before tea!

There was no influx of new players, a few Dads got involved thankfully, but by the end of the season it was grim. There was talk of the club disbanding and the majority of them going to Benfleet, other people said that there was talking of leaving our current league and trying to join the T Rippon mid Essex league but it was all hushed up as people were worried that if the league got to hear about the situation we might get kicked out and there was no guarantee of the T Rippon league accepting us. Ironic when this was the 50th anniversary of the teams existence.

Bank Holiday anniversary event 

The August Bank holiday sees the club put on a fun day and the kids wing of the club get their parents and everyone to come along and the players from the adult teams turn up and show their faces. Usually, it's a pretty good marketing event and kids that come along with their cricket playing mates get the bug and turn up the following season. In recent years the event has been a bit lack-luster. This year there seemed to be a concerted effort among the players to turn up - it might have been preceded by a meeting where the committee said that we all needed to pull together for the sake of the club. As the day neared it was obvious that the day would be ruined by rain - predicted to start at 10.00 and rain all day thereafter. Sure enough it did, but... a lot of players turned up including me I might add to lend support to the kids branch of the club and the people behind the kids section were very appreciative.

Again at the event there were the rumors of this being the last season, but there was news that there was going to be a meeting to discuss the clubs future in the coming weeks.

The meeting

Brutal was the description I gave it when I came away. The meeting seemed to be made up of three groups. (1). The committee (2) The players (3) The youth arm of the club.
The Youth arm of the club seemed to have an agenda - wholesale change. The youth arm of the club is big, with tons of 'Pre-phone owning kids' e.g. under 14 with no sense of autonomy. Over 14's is another matter, they're as rare as Dodo's - two maybe and they'd been playing in the 3rd and 2nd XI facing the same situations as us the adults, there is no Under 15's team. But this faction wanted action. They made the case that there was no filtration of kids into the under 15's because there was no interaction between the players and the kids and that this needed to happen and that the club would die if the kids didn't stay on and go on to play in the 4th XI and so on. The players needed to be involved in the youth arm of the club.

The committee early in the piece openly admitted after 2 years of decline that the situation had got to the point where they had exhausted all ideas and were now in a position where there was nothing left and asked the club whether they felt that they should stand-down and let a new batch of people take over and inject some new life into the club?

It was obvious from the discussions that the the youth arm were up for it - fronted by a bloke and his wife who had moved to Basildon from Zimbabwe and now had kids playing at the club. In addition they had previous experience back in Zimbabwe. They made a case for potentially taking over and it was put to the audience and we all agreed in principle that they could, providing there was some form of transitional arrangement where the out going committee was involved in an organised hand-over.

Further discussions were had on the future of the adult arm of the club and whether it was going to make the move to the T Rippon league. It seemed that there were protocols to follow and that there wasn't a precedent for the situation and it seemed uncertain how the existing league would react. Furthermore it also seemed that there was no guarantee that T Rippon would accept us. Despite all this it was agreed that we'd leave the existing league and then try and join the T Rippon league. The main benefit seemed to be that the T Rippon league was much larger and there was scope for a team such as us to move up or down within the league if we managed to be accepted.

That seemed to be it with everyone having to wait now until November to find out the outcome of leaving out existing league and whether T Rippin would accept us.

_________________________________________

Other stuff

September and October were unusually warm again. The Paddock was parched throughout Sept and October with deep cracks all over the wicket still with virtually no rain.

This was from October 14th.
Usually by this time I'm seeding the wicket and looking for there to be lush green grass, but it was still parched and yellow.

I'd put some seed down on Oct 6th, but it hadn't taken...

Weekend 13/10/18

Very warm weather 24-26 degrees c. The wind was southerly and was blowing warm – it was like a hot summer day! I sat in the garden in my shorts sun-bathing at breakfast it was lovely! Later in the afternoon I took my crate of balls over to the paddock along with my G9 camera and had a bowl and videoed it. As I hadn’t bowled in 2 weeks or so, I wasn’t sure how it would go. To be honest I felt a bit knackered – it’s always surprising how quickly you lose your fitness. 

Leg-spin accuracy drill video

This is a drill that I do all the time - put a mat down and aim to hit the mat. This helps you work with your line and length. In this video I've slightly changed things up and put the mat wide of the leg-stump. This tests your ability to spin the ball hard, the wider the mat, the more you need to put revs on the ball, but all the time you're also working on maintaining your length. Peter Philpott I'm sure would approve as you're practicing with purpose with specific aims and goals...

Leg Breaks and Flippers

Cricket making notes - post match

Over the years reading the odd book here and there I've heard accounts about Wrist-Spinners that make detailed notes about the batsmen that they have to face. Clarrie Grimmett being one of them as I recall.

These days I guess the statisticians do a lot of that for them and you hear stories about bowlers and coaches reviewing footage of batsmen prior to and after games. Unless you've got a very committed Mum/Dad or friend who know their way around a digital camera, this isn't going to be possible to this extent. But over the last couple of days I've heard about some good 'Old school' practice that is conducted by some fairly surprising bowlers.

Today is the 2nd day of the 2nd test - England v Virat Kholi's India at Lords and it's the 2nd day where it's rained all day so far, although this morning about 20 minutes were played and 3 of India's wickets fell. So, with no play yesterday, BBC Radio 5 Live test match special did a series of interviews with players and ex-players with a focus on Spin Bowling. One of the things that came out of this was Ravi Ashwin mentioning that every time he plays, as soon as he can - after the game he makes detailed notes with regards what the batsmen did - their strengths and weaknesses etc. He said as this helps him make critical adjustments to his approach to the individual batsmen - increasing his chance of winning the battle.

In the same studio Graeme Swanne and Michael Atherton (who bowled a bit of Wrist-Spin in his time), both reiterated how important this is as part of your Reflective Practice and development as an effective bowler.

We even as club players can do the same.

1. You need to be watching the game and the batsmen even before you bowl - maybe talk to your captain and or talk to more experienced players around you and get their opinions quickly between overs and definitely at the end of the game or during drinks breaks... "What do you reckon his strongest shot is"? or "Where do you reckon he's most vulnerable"? Those kind of questions. The more you play the more you'll start to recognise such things and be able to put strategies into place.

2. Bowl your spell to your plan - based on what you've observed before bowling and make a mental note of what happens during your spell.

3. As soon as you've finished - write your notes and draw diagrams by way of explanation.

4. Maybe even consider approaching the batsmen and talk to them about your bowling and their batting, make sure you flatter them to some extent to bring them 'On-side' so you can extract any good nuggets of feed-back that might be useful or even a compliment or two! I find at my level they're happy to talk to you as a Wrist-Spinner because they rarely see it in games and it provides a good test and battle for them. Make notes on what they say if it's useful.

5. Finally make a note of their name or - if you're as mad and obsessive as me take a photograph of them to keep with your notes, to help you remember next time you come up against the bloke.

Next time you play that team dig your notes and in the meantime you'd have come up with a plan. Keep your fingers crossed that it's you that bowls to him - beg the captain for a chance to bowl at him and put your plan into practice.

Obviously, me being me I take it a whole step further, the notes are converted into digital versions and I share the whole thing with the rest of the world - see here...

https://battinganalysis.blogspot.com/

and here...

http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.com/2017/10/batsmen-of-sedcb-region-and-how-to-get.html

It's rained at last!

It's been hot and dry here in the UK and it's been pretty much the same elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere. The result is the wickets are dry and hard.

Nearer to home the Paddock where Joe and I practice and have a knock about has suffered from the long dry spell with massive cracks on the wicket. Thankfully at the end you bowl to and bat on, it hasn't been anywhere near as bad as the areas mid-way down the wicket. We've had to resort to bowling really full and do some running repairs on the area "good" to "full", but this rain today has meant that I've been able to do something more significant.

In the garage I have a load of clay ready to be mixed with organic matter (Compost). The clay is graded through the use of a couple of Sieve's with the intention of re-seeding or repairing.

 
This image here below is indicative of how bad the cracks have been. What's surprised me this summer elsewhere, is how sound the cricket wickets have been that I've seen, none of them have cracked in the same way which is either down to the correct ratios of clay with organic matter and care and attention from the local council?

So today with it scheduled to rain all day I've put down some of the slightly rougher and bigger mix with some seed in. I don't think the seed will take as it'll dry out again and we'll probably use it through till September for batting. What I'm hoping will happen, is the rain will break down the earth further still and it'll bind/stick to the existing earth 

 Over-night the rain is due to stop and tomorrow cloudy/bright with a good breeze, so before it has the chance to dry out I'll roll it and with a bit of luck it'll bind with existing surface. There was a little bit of a dip in the surface - a bit of a bowl, so hopefully I'll have rectified that to some extent.

Another blog!

One of my posts on what I consider to be my main blog these days has gone mental with regards to how many hits it receives just recently. The blog was only started a year or so ago when I realised that I wasn't going to stick with my website and decided that I needed a blog more in the format of the website.

The website was an experiment which I always felt might fail because it was going to cost money and in the meantime while it was up I couldn't figure out how to monetize it in order at least to cover my costs. So at the end of the 2 year period I scrapped it in favour of the new blog here...

http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.com/

For the most part it's still an on-going project where I'm trying to collate all the best bits of my old blog which has the weird and not obvious name of www.mpafirsteleven.blogspot.co.uk

The new blog though had a feature which I started on the website... articles about the batsmen I face with plans and diagrams for field settings. This individual post on its own is massively successful...

Probably one of the most successful post ever and I can't be sure why? What I do know is that it's endorsed by Stuart MacGill because he +'s it on Google which is massively helpful and very much appreciated. But I think more than that it's the images of the field settings and the plans.

But this month I've realised that I need to update these batsmen each time I meet them in the games and add more data and I really that to do this in just one post is going to make the individual post too big and cumbersome to navigate especially if are from my region and you use it. So a separate blog has been started today dedicated to this aspect of wrist-spinning with each of the batsmen with their dedicated pages that can be updated year on year. 

That can be found here. 

Hopefully people will be able to negotiate the batsman via the side-bar facility.

Cancelled Cricket games

No-one likes to see a cricket game cancelled because of the lack of players, but it happens and seemingly more frequently these days in the area where I live. I was looking forward to the game this weekend in the 3rd XI and then the night before the other team Orsett and Thurrock contacted the club to say they couldn't get a team together.

Instead of moping around and being disappointed I said to myself -  If this weekend is anything like most of the weekends this year and last for the team I play in, somewhere out there at 12.30 there's going to be a game starting with one of the teams short of at least 1 bloke, if not 2 or 3! 

When you play in games like that the lack of that 1 player has a significant impact on the game, to the point that it must leave players thinking - Why do I do this every weekend losing game after game? It may also lead to people giving the game up or people looking at their clubs team-sheets and thinking -  so and so isn't playing I'm not going to bother either and so there's a domino effect.

So if we assume that our team had all 11 players ready for a game Orsett and Thurrock may have had 6 or 7 blokes also ready too. Surely if those people really want to play like me, they could potentially do a bit of searching and find a team at short notice that they could make up the numbers for? There's so many games being played at the weekend with a player missing, potentially all of those blokes could have been accommodated?

I went over to my nearest ground... The Rec where Grays CC were playing Bow Green CC (From London) and found a team of West Indians (The Bow Green boys) already there at 11.45 and asked if they had a full team. They said they were fairly certain that they'd be a man short and said, come back at 12.30 ready to play and I reckon you'll get a game. I went home got my gear ready and drove back over at 12.30 and sure enough I was in. I reckon any team will be more than happy to have an extra player if they're short.

If these lads hadn't been short I could have driven to numerous grounds in the area and probably would have found a game in that hour between 11.30 and 12.30. I reckon you'd be guaranteed a game if you were prepared to drive a few miles for instance to Fairlop Waters and walk around these pitches below...

Everywhere I look I find articles about how much of a state cricket is in because of falling numbers. Maybe it's time for the administrators within cricket at District level to come up with some kind of a hotline or website that can match players with teams that are short when there's either (a). A match cancelled as in the case of my scenario this last weekend or (b). Your clubs got so many players that they fill the team every weekend and blokes get left out on a regular basis.

Surely if you want to play cricket there's a game somewhere you can slot into?

To the game...

Bow Green won the toss and decided to bat much to the dismay of some of their players. The Captain Bernard asked me where I normally batted and I said 10 or 11. There was some discussion with some of the other senior players and I was put in at No.5.

Wickets fell quickly at the start with Grays CC pace attack, but Bow Green were initially scoring at 5 an over. I found myself in quite quickly with a young bloke Rayon Younge he was pretty good. I did okay with the pace attack, but then they brought in the Spin bowlers and I was all at sea. I managed to fend off the leg-spinner, but a 2nd spinner who appeared to be bowling finger spin suddenly began turning the ball both ways. Grays set a very obvious trap that I fell for - a field with virtually no-one on the leg-side and I changed from playing with a straight bat to trying to swing across the line to strike the ball down the slope on the leg-side at The Rec. I was out straight away. Bow Green posted a total of 140.

Bernard even gave me a few overs that were quite expensive, but I bought them a wicket. Bernard cam on and took two crucial wickets at the very end of the game and almost got them home, but Grays got the winning runs with 2 wickets to spare.

It was hot and sunny and a lovely day for a game of cricket, so I was so glad to have been able to play and it was a very different game to ours. Bow Green are a very vocal team with a lot of differing opinions among the senior players!

What was good to see though was the fact that where Grays and Chadwell CC seemingly fizzled out for some reason having become Thurrock CC and then eventually merging with Orsett to become Orsett and Thurrock; Into that void has come Grays CC primarily made up of Asian players of probably Pakistan family origins. So within just a few years where seemingly a club associated with a town and area has disappeared, a whole new club has emerged which is brilliant to see especially when you hear so much bad news around cricket and its future.

Weirdly I'd just watched this video the day or so before (Click on image).

the essence of which is the fact that crickets future lies to some extent in the hands of South Asian players. The other point in this video is the demise of West Indian cricket clubs, so it was good to see a club that in this instance that was primarily West Indian players. I had a chat with some of them at the end and asked about whether they had young players coming through and unfortunately it was pretty much the same story at that depicted in the video above. 

At the end of the day I exchanged numbers with Bernard and said that if in the future I was scratching around for a game I'd give him a call and see if he was short.

Hutton 4th XI game

Working on this now 30/7/18

I've not been on here much of late having had my little toe broken by a young fast bowler in a game against Chelmsford about 6 weeks ago. It's been sore for the whole time and the thought of getting another ball on it while it's been healing doesn't bare thinking about! Anyway, it's pretty much healed - still swollen it seems and it's healed in the wrong position - about 45 degrees facing the wrong way, so my nail isn't on the top of my toe any more, it now faces diagonally outwards. I reckon it may cause issues later in life.

Loads of other things have been happening - especially at our club. All season right from the outset we've struggled to get all 4 teams out because of the massive exodus over the winter of a lot of 1st and 2nd XI players. As mentioned previously everyone has had to move up a level, so I've been playing 3rd and 2nd XI games along with the rest of the 4th XI regulars. As a result a number of the 4th XI games have been cancelled and in the end the league expelled the 4th XI team. Thankfully the teams that we were due to play have said they'll still honor the games for the rest of the season if we can get a team out and play Friendly games. To be honest though given the fact that when I turned up today for the game Holy Cross it looked liked even with only three teams to fill we were still a man short!

So this was the first game this season at Holy Cross for me having played primarily away games for the 3rd and 2nd team. So I was happy to be at home for once and playing on this ground which I prefer to our main ground Mopsies, these wickets generally are more conducive to spin.

With a man down at this stage the assessment of the wicket was that it was going to crumble and that if we won the toss we should opt to bat, which kind of makes sense in my opinion if you had some semblance of a chance of winning. But by virtue of the lack of players and looking around and only seeing primarily 4th XI players, the chance of us posting 100 + was looking slim. I'd rather opt to bowl and give the bowlers a chance of getting some practice in at least. That way the game would last a few hours and we'd get our £15 worth. The toss was won and the consensus was that we'd bat.

As predicted it didn't go that well other than Brian Waterman and Cole Murdoch's innings. Brian's the oldest player at the club and Cole's the youngest in the 4th XI only just able to be in the team by virtue of his age. The rest of us fell by the wayside as per usual. I was gutted, my last innings with Brian was one of my better scoring nearly 30. This time I was out 3rd ball, the ball coming in a bit and coming off the inside edge onto the stumps - Hills the bowler.

Sechak bowled well for them with 5 wickets for next to nothing.

I was really looking forward to having a bat, having just come back from a holiday where for much of the time we've been playing cricket using a narrow bat and doing well with it. So I was gutted to be out 3rd ball - inside edged onto the stumps with Brian at the other on a good score. Brian's shown some faith in my batting recently, so a shame to let him down.


Tea was had without any actual tea which was a shambles, the cups had been left last summer and were all moldy and at the start of the season and thrown away. No-one in the meantime has seen fit to replace them. If I remember I'll take a few in next time.

So, to the bowling... I'm not 100% sure of how many overs the game was 40 or 45, one of those games with a new set of rules this season relating to maximum spells per bowler - I think it's 8 which is crap. Looking around, it was obvious that we didn't have any seam up bowlers except for Cole Murdoch who's about 13 and primarily there for his batting as far as I was aware. Cole opened from the Estate end with the wind (see below) bowling at their opener Clive Franklin

Cole was taken to the cleaners by Franklin in the 2nd over and pulled out of the attack and replaced by Wily bowler Alistair Hayton, who was our 11th player who turned up just before the start of the game. From the Graveyard end bowling slow left arm orthodox was Michael Wilson he did okay. Hayton bowled from the Estate end, but with injuries wasn't his usual self and I was given that end having asked for it.

Unfortunately I hadn't looked at my previous analysis of the Franklin who'd smacked me and the others around the ground when we played them with 8 players some weeks back. But I'd been watching him and with a full team he didn't look quite so special (See updated analysis of Franklin here ). I got him this time with my 2nd ball LBW. The simple analysis is just bowl on or about the off-stumps or outside and fill your field on the off-side with decent fielders. Stray leg-side and he'll be sweeping you (See the link above).

Suchak was up next and we quickly saw that he was pretty much a one trick pony - swinging across the line at anything that was on or around the leg-stump. He was batting alongside Astles who was a different prospect. Suchak didn't last that long and I got him LBW, he may have got me away once through the leg-side for 4 before he was replaced by Holloway a younger bloke about 18-20 years old.

Holloway was one of those Left-Handers who I usually go round the wicket to and it normally doesn't go that well, but with the wind assisting me coming over my shoulder I continued to bowl over the wicket at or about his off-stump on a full-ish line. Initially when he came to the crease he played cautiously and I got the 2nd wicket maiden (5th over). My 6th over I bowled against Mike Astles who looked organised. Again he looked to be intent on putting away anything on the Leg-side and I'd seen him hit a couple of fours through there. He was happy and confident enough to come out of his wicket to me, but for the most part bowling to my field I had him covered. One ball did stray leg-side and that was hit for 6 over deep mid-wicket. I did beat the bat with a nice ball A la Adil Rashid v Virat Kholi  - that pitched on leg and only just missed his off-stump by literally a millimeter or two. At the end of the game he was decent enough to compliment me on my bowling saying "I've seen loads of spinners this summer Offies and Leggies, but that was something else.

The 7th over was against the left-hander Holloway, who having watched from the other end seemed intent to show me who was boss in this over. I stayed over the wicket targeting the off-stump bowling a Flipper or two, he looked like he was attempting to hit the ball back at me with straight drives, but with the ball turning off the wicket he kept inside edging it to fielders on the leg-side. Maiden off him. Mike Astle scored the last 4 off of me - again straying slightly leg-side he put it away through the gap between fine-leg and square leg.

For more analysis and bowling plans for some of these batsmen have a look at the link here

To be honest having bowled so little this season I was very pleased with how I'd done. I was slightly disappointed with myself in that I hadn't had a look at the plans for Franklin before coming out, but I'd read him whilst fielding and realised a basic plan of keeping the ball away from the Leg-side would do the trick. The only other thing to mention is that I've been considering changing my approach by going round the wicket and pitching the ball on the leg-side with the idea that (1). I know that they're going to then hit some of the balls with relative ease, so the field would be leg-side dominant and (2) use this approach on the basis that if they miss it, I'm going to hit the stumps so it's probably a more aggressive/attacking approach? I didn't implement it at all today and for me it seems like an approach that might require the potential to bowl more overs and work the batsman out, but with only 8 overs to work with, I may have to put this on hold for a while.