Flipper - off-spinning variation

 The last two seasons I've been playing at a much higher level than I ought to be playing in my opinion and I've had to adapt to the situation and change my bowling. So I've been bowling flippers coming in off a much longer run-up than I have ever done and it's worked for the most part. Only once have I been aware that anyone's sussed out what I've been doing and that was young bloke from one of the Southend teams who I heard say to his Dad 'He's bowling back-spinners' and he was taking me and everyone else to the cleaners.

I've kept it really simple, mostly I'm bowling cross-seamed with the occasional up-right seamed delivery. I vary the speeds and how much spin I put on the ball and rarely I try the one out of the front of the hand with a bit of off-spin, but I've found that rarely turns and if it does it's minimal. Recently at home I was thinking about the potential of the off-spinning variation and realised that it would probably work so much better with a lower arm angle. I bowl with a very upright arm and getting the wrist into an appropriate position to release a flipper with off-spin is tricky, but my initial experiments indoors seem to indicate that simply by lowering my arm may yield benefits. Another observation is that it still retains the back-spin aspect, so it does actually work it'll be an off-break with back-spin which is an unusual delivery. 

End of season 2019

It's the end of the season and its been pretty miserable for me as I seem to be reaching the age where my body is not up to it. The worst thing is it seems to have happened when I have had a epiphany moment with the use of Flippers.

The start of the season was marred by issues with my hips and core strength which I put down to the fact that I'd done some building work on my house and nearly killed myself physically. As a result I thought I'd completely rest over the winter in order to recuperate.

By January I was still feeling the affects of the building work and added to that I'd lost all my usual fitness. So I started to work on my fitness and flexibility. That's the point where it transpired that my hips and butt were weak and everything below that point was out of sync. So a lot of work was done trying to get all that sorted. Meanwhile I had the opportunity to net a lot over Jan and February and I bowled my usual Leg-Breaks exceptionally well and looked to be starting the season on a high.

First game went okay with 2 wickets in a pre-season friendly, but thereafter it went down-hill very quickly and my new captain started to leave me out of the attack. Being a bowler I was now turning up basically just to field. The club had changed leagues and we'd lost our fourth XI where I normally resided and basically had moved up a level and I was being left behind. I concluded I needed to join a bigger club with a 4th,5th or 6th XI that played at my level. I started to look around and found a club and my intentions became clear to my own club and they rang me and virtually pleaded with me to stay.

Meanwhile, having been carted around the park by these blokes here I'd already started to explore how I might address the fact that my bowling was so ineffective. It had  been noted in the first game of the season that I'd have done so much better than my 2 wickets if I had a straight ball. So I started to look at my use of the Flipper combined with my leg-breaks. Practicing with my son Joe he said one of the biggest issues was the lack of pace with my leg-breaks. So I started to adopt a run up of about 9-10 steps. The Flippers immediately looked promising with consistency of line and length being markedly better than the Leg-Breaks, so I committed to working almost exclusively with the Flippers as it seemed to be very obvious that I could bowl these with good accuracy.

The red dots went on to hit the stumps

I then bowled the Flippers in a game and was kept on to bowl all 9 overs and went for very few runs. The runs that I did go for were down to attempting to bowl leg-breaks off the new run-up and was easily hit for 4 each time. At one point towards the end of my spell, the bloke that had been freely scoring before my spell ran a single and ended up at my end and commented... "Mate what are you bowling.... I can't get you off the square"! So that then provided the incentive to continue with the Flipper experiment.

But, the run-up was taking its toll on my body particularly my hips it seemed. I then had what seemed like a really innocuous minor accident walking along a dark corridor in my sons flat at Uni. I didn't realise that his dark corridor had a drop down to a new level equivalent of 1 stair step. I stepped down it and jarred my knee with a sensation of a strain in the back of my knee. It hurt slightly, but I didn't think much of it.

I then bowled in a couple more games and the Flippers went well again and I got carted when I tried the Leg-breaks. But I was noticing that I was struggling with my legs - seemingly with regards strength. I then started training with Sumo squats on a wobble (balance board) but going right down to an Asian squat and then one session I sensed a strain in the back of my knee and some subsequent swelling and soreness. This seemed more significant and happened just before my holiday in Cornwall, so I committed to taking things easy whilst away and stuck to it.

Once back in Essex and looking forward to a game of cricket I discovered that this week there was no game because of the uneven numbers in our league and everyone in the league at some point missed a game and it was our turn. So I contacted Orsett and Thurrock who I nearly defected to earlier in the year and got a Friendly game on Sunday.

I bowled superbly - probably the - if not the most controlled and consistent spell I've ever bowled. I got one wicket, that of a significant batsman and bowled my full allocation of 10 overs. Again the only time I was hit was the 2-3 times I bowled leg-breaks and both times I was hit for 4. Again the batsmen came up to me at the end of the game and asked "What the hell was you bowling"?

I realised that I was onto something here, as if it wasn't for the leg-breaks I'd have gone for about 2 an over and realised that in the short term I needed to cut the leg-breaks out totally and work on them in practice. But, that was never to happen.

By the time I'd packed my bag and got in the car my knees were feeling as though they were now suffering from the pounding of the run-up. I'd extended the run up in this game as it seemed a lot more rhythmic, previous games I'd been suffering from stuttering in the run-up, but extending it to about 14-15 steps had resolved that and added more pace. But having driven for about 10 minutes I got home and basically staggered to the front door with my right knee really suffering.

I iced it as best I could and then got it up above my head (Elevation). The next morning it wasn't any better and over the next 4 or 5 days I was in bad way and had even been to the Doctors. The doctors were fairly inconclusive. Xrays indicated that it wasn't arthritis and the doctor recommended I see a specialist and have a MRI scan. This was way back in mid August and I'm still waiting for the MRI scan appointment to come through.

In the meantime I've been taking it easy - no cricket, no running, no bowling and its been slowly improving. I get twinges in the back of the knee and it feels 'Delicate' generally. But I've been doing physio - strengthening the muscles above and around the knee and today I went over the paddock and bowled 7 balls off of a 9 step run-up with a decent bound. I bowled 100 or so balls off of a 2-3 step walk-in as well and I seem to have come away from that un-scathed. The plan is to carry on with the physio and to cycle through the winter and resume light bowling at winter nets. I'm hoping that come May I'll be able to run-in off of a 12-14 step run-up and bowl my Flipper variations and get some wickets.

The Flipper as your stock ball part II

After May 15th I continued bowling Flippers. I tested the change of shoes idea (See previous post) and it seemed inconclusive. That following Friday I bowled 200 + balls wearing my cricket shoes and there didn't seem to be any significant difference in whether I bowled well or not.

I've been trying to get my son Joe to bat and face the new bowling, but as yet he's turned me down every time. So it looks like the proof will have to come in the game this weekend.

Tonight the first over or two were a bit scratchy, some wides, but once I got going it got better. Tomorrow I'm just going to practice hitting the stumps or hitting the target length consecutively and see how that goes. What I'll do is set a target of doing either 40 times in the session and see how long or how many balls it takes to do it.

Follow up
_______________________________________________________

On Saturday 25th we played against Great Waltham and I deployed the Flipper as my stock ball see the account here and it went well. So at the moment I'm enthused by the situation and I'm going to keep working with it looking to improve further.

Over this last week I've continued to practice every night bowling 150 + deliveries and I've started to mark out the wicket with markers so that I can monitor the consistency of line and length  as well as calculate the percentage of wides. Interestingly, I read last week in the Guardian that Jofra Archer wanting to get into the England team realised that one solution might be to practice on his own and he cut his own strip somewhere across the road from his house, just as I have.

“He went away and trained incredibly hard, to the point where he rolled his own wicket in the yard across the road and put a net around it and did all his drills into that. He came back nine months later and he was a different-looking athlete – pretty much the bowler you see today with that speed and accuracy".

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/19/jofra-acher-england-bowling-cricket

Once back indoors the rough diagrams that I mark while I'm practicing I then digitize using Photoshop. 

This is the result... 

Pitch map - SomeblokecalledDave practice with Flippers 27.5.19

The coloured balls represent the following -

Red - Are balls that go on to hit the stumps.

Blue - Are deliveries that are decent, these vary quite a bit, as the Flippers I bowl vary in a number of ways. 90% of them are cross-seam flippers, so they have the potential to break either left or right especially if its a diagonal seamed release. There's also the bounce variation potential - if the ball lands on the seam it can rear-up dramatically and if it lands on the smooth surface it does what a Flippers does - stays low. The back-spin that is imparted on the ball makes it act differently through the air and when it hits the surface it actually stalls noticeably. So even if the ball goes down when it hits the surface its anyone's guess where it'll deviate to.

Yellow - These are wides. You'll see from the pitch map below and to some extent the two above I have this proclivity to bowl yorkers right onto the bowling crease out-side of the leg-stump. Not so clever if it's right-hander, but might be useful against a left-hander? The only issue is, its not something I have control over at this point. That's something I'm working on at the moment.

Black - These are the Leg-Breaks (below) which at the moment I'm still bowling few and far between, but as this week goes on I'll introduce more of them. So far almost all of them turn much more than the Flippers that break to leg and in practice my control of them is pretty good.

The measurements are imperial - No.s across the bottom are yards and the grids are 1' (12"x12"). The green rectangle at 4 yards is my target mat that I use which is 20" x 39". At the moment you can see that my bowling seems to vary without too much intervention from being really full to a good length. 

The batsman in the last game  said that he was unable to get me off the square and if it wasn't for trying to bowl two leg-breaks which went wrong and were hit for a 4 and a 2 my figures would have been decent. I'd like to think that it's the back-spin that makes the Flippers difficult to hit. I'm not tall, so they're going to come in from a low starting point and if the physics of the back-spinning  ball holds up they're going to hold their line through the air despite the relatively slow speed (Bernoulli affect)? They then vary in the way they come off the surface dependent on what delivery I use!

So at the moment I'm quite pleased with how they're working.

 I haven't bowled Flippers so consistently in a game since the days when I was bowling Googlies as my stock ball and then I used them as the variation to the Googly and this was one of the most effective periods of my bowling. So the plan is to carry on with the Flippers and hone them further and then start to introduce Leg-breaks off this faster approach to the crease. Initial experiments apart from the two in this game at Waltham show real promise.

28.5.19

Today 28.5.19 I've bowled two session both around about an hour with a 3 hour break in between. The 2nd session below was about 80 balls so I guess the one above was similar?

You might have noticed the weird cluster of balls on the leg-side right up on the bowling crease. If I could somehow get my radar right these would be bottom of the stump yorkers, so this is something I need to look into and rectify as mentioned earlier.

I've started to introduce more frequent Leg-Breaks and these seem to be working well with this run-up and as you can see in the middle pitch map, I'm landing them on the mat. 

What I might do in the next day or so is cut the mat down in size so that it's 3' x 1.5' so that it fits into the grids more accurately and I can an even more accurate assessment of what I'm doing when practicing. 

If you're looking to do this yourself I'll post a picture in the next few days of the set up showing how I manage to figure out the length and width.

Update September 13th 2019

After years of bowling primarily leg-breaks and Googlies and doing so with a lack of control much of the time, this summer has been a revelation. As the summer went on I bowled more and more Flippers and as I did so my economy went down and down and I got to bowl more and more overs. In the last game at the end of August, I played a friendly game for another team and got to bowl 10 overs back to back. I only bowled 3 leg-breaks, the first being a good-un and the two follow-up leg-breaks got tonked for 4 through the leg-side. Other than that I reckon I went for 2 an over on risky runs. The conclusion at the end of the game was that next season I'll bowl exclusively Flippers and work on combining the leg-breaks as a variation in practice. Then, and only then - when I can land the leg-breaks consistently on, or about the off-stump I bring the leg-breaks back and see how it works. (Providing I'm fit enough to play next season).

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.

 

 

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...

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.

Basildon & Pitsea 2nd XI v Walthmstow 2nd XI

I have to make it clear this wasn't the usual 2nd XI. For me to be in the 2nd XI means something is up! Apparently 6 blokes in the 1st XI weren't available, so everyone had to shift up a grade or two with me moving up from my usual place in the 4th XI. Also from the 4's... Lee Dutton, Al McIver, Mitchell Robinson.

The only 2nd XI players were Mike and Charlie Blerkom, the rest of the team were 3rd XI players. As a result the 4th XI game was called off for lack of players as far as I can make out. I won't bother with any analysis because the likely-hood of me coming up against these players again is minimal. For a short while I did think there might be some hope because this team were skittled in their last game of the season last year - all out of 14, with one bloke taking 9 wickets in that game against Billericay. 

Before the game was started I was disappointed to hear our blokes saying that they wanted to win the toss and bat, because they had already conceded defeat and just wanted to get it over and done with. What about the bowlers? Why not bowl first and see how we get on and at least have half a game if the batsmen are not up to it. Thankfully they won the toss and put us in which was the same scenario, but at least it wasn't orchestrated by us to the detriment of the bowlers. 

The game commenced in very light rain - spitting and the whole game was played in rain of varying degrees and not once did we come off. As expected it didn't go that well with only Mike Blerkom the captain putting up any resistance. We  were all out for 54 after about 23 overs or so. I survived facing about 5 balls batting with Lee Dutton. I was out bowled by a good off-cutter, Dutton said it was a good delivery.

We made a reasonable start getting two early wickets. Joe (My son) got their captain caught at fine leg and then Joe took a catch off of Alistair Hayton's off-breaks while he was at Fine Leg. Chris Debond took a wicket, but from then on a really good batsman came out and took the game away from us. I got the last over and went for 10 off of 5 balls it, in the middle of the over I bowled a flipper and beat the bat just wide of the off-stump much to Sean Healey's appreciation in the slips. 

The details are here on Play Cricket.

Tea was nice and we came home about 4.30 in the rain. I was very pleased to have played a full match albeit short and in constant light rain, most of the other matches in the area were probably called off because of the rain and we even got a bowling point for the league table.

I also managed to get a picture of their Pavilion for my pavilion project here which was a result. I'll be adding more pictures to that blog page as the season goes on and it remember to do so.

Practice and game this coming weekend

Had an email tonight from Dave Ayres tonight saying that there's a Friendly game at the weekend Joe and I can play in (2nd XI). Joe was offered a place in a game next weekend as well in the Presidents XI, but he can't make that one as we've got commitments Saturday morning. To be honest Joe as a cricket player at the moment is a situation in a state of flux. This Saturday prior to the match he's going to be doing a trial at KFC for a part time job while he's at college. So far, it's panning out okay, when he made the initial inquiry he made it clear that he wouldn't be able to work on Saturdays because he plays cricket and the bloke seemed fine with the idea. Perhaps he plays sport and understands the situation? What it does mean though is I'll have to pick him up at 12.00 sharp and then get the match north of Chelmsford by 1pm which'll be a tight call.

Just before posting I've been doing some Photoshop work ready for the analysis of the batsmen which hopefully I'll be posting in my 'Batsmen and how to get them out' blog page here Whether I'll get to bowl or not is another matter and whether I get any wickets remains to be seen. Looking at the weather prospects though I doubt if the game will happen to be honest.

In the meantime I've been getting out and practicing for the last two weeks or so and it's coming together okay. Initially I was really rusty - bowling very slowly, but I'm back to my usual pace. I was hoping to work on an off-spinner of some sort, but my attempts at Wrong uns come out as really good leg breaks, which I'm not worried about. The wrong un is always a sketchy delivery, so I'm never going to do loads of work on it for fear of losing my Leg-Break. That aside I've been trying to get a good top-spinner together as well as a Flipper and both these seem to be going okay. The way I'm feeling at the moment I might be tempted to try the Flipper out in the match this Saturday.

Hopefully if your following the blog, you'll have seen the posts about the preparation of the wicket that I practice on across the road from where I live. We've had some really warm and dry weather of late and only in the last few days has it cooled down and become more akin to April in England. That said it's still been dry and because of the dryness the grass seed on the wicket hasn't taken. So, a couple of nights ago because of the prospect of some light showers I put down some more seed and covered it over with some top soil.

Coming home tonight I noticed that all the verges in our area had been cut again, see here for what happened last time. So went over and had a look and was pleased to see that this time the bloke on the mower had noticed all the work I'd done and had cut around the wicket and not gone across it once. Good man!

Back Yard pitch preparation - The Paddock

It rained a little this morning - very light shower so I thought I'd have a look at how the paddock is getting on and roll it again before the seeds sprout. Having had a look at it, the earth is still wet and malleable and I decided that I'd roll further up the wicket towards the bowlers end and look at the prospect of extending the cut strip further.

Having rolled it with reasonable success, I decided that I'd also cut the grass before it grows so much that cutting a full length wicket would be a mammoth task...

So for the moment It's cut to about 16 yards and rolled to that extent too. It's probably reasonably flat to about half way down the wicket - more than enough for our use. As you can see the weather is grey and over-cast and it's warm - 16 degrees, so ideal growing conditions. Ideally we'd have a bit of rain and that should get the seeds growing and the grass coming through.

Oh yeah, if you're interested in bowling the Flipper and it's variations have a look at my Flipper page here over on the other main blog as I've done some more work on it yesterday.