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).

The Flipper as your stock Ball

Originally drafted May 15th 2019

If you’ve read the post about the game with Rainham, you’ll see that I wasn’t happy with my bowling and the fact that I primarily have to rely on people taking catches... I was dropped 3 times. Any of the 3 if they'd been snaffled would have won us the game with the final wicket required. At the end of the analysis of the game I concluded that this week I’d focus on bowling exclusively Flippers.

Years ago, I spent 2 or 3 seasons bowling loads of flippers coupled with Googlies as I had Googly syndrome and couldn’t get the ball to break to off. As a part of re-learning the Leg-Break I had to scrap bowling Flippers and lost them. Since then and more recently, I’ve started bowling them in practice, but have rarely brought them to the game scenario. After the Rainham game and on reflection I made the decision to only bowl Flippers this week with the idea that, if I got it right and it looked like it might be a delivery I could execute with more consistency, I might bowl them in the next game?

I started on Saturday as soon as I got home from the game because I wanted to look at whether my poor bowling was a fitness and stamina issue, it wasn’t. I got through 240 balls that evening and went back to the 20’ run-up and bowled with far more pace.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I did the same thing 200 - balls at least each session. Thinking about why I bowl so badly in the game scenario compared to the practice, I made the following observations. In practice you generally bowl ball after ball – up to 200 and you get a general sense of consistency over the 200 deliveries. What if you focus on the first 6 deliveries in isolation as in a game? In a game it matters – those 1^st six deliveries are judged by you, your captain, your team and the batsman and if you get it wrong it’s a long psychological haul back that you might not make or you may not get the chance to pull back because you could be taken out of the attack.

So, in the practice situation I started focusing on the first 6 balls and the subsequent 36 or 42 that followed as in a spell. I then thought that there may be an argument to replicate the game scenario further still and by tonight I was doing the following...

(1). Before I even started, I did some vigorous exercise to replicate the faster heart rate that I get as a result of being nervous about bowling the first delivery. I then bowled in that ‘Excited’ condition.

(2). I then did further exercise – throwing a ball and catching it, in doing so, delaying the time between each delivery, trying to replicate the delay between each delivery you see in a game scenario. Thus, not bowling one ball after another developing a rhythm as I do in a usual practice situation.

(3). Once the ‘Over’ was bowled, I then did fielding drills for several minutes -run and pick up a static ball and throw down the stumps for the amount of time that would constitute the other blokes over from the other end and then repeat form stage (1).

I did this for 6 or 7 overs before going back to general practice where I bowl one ball after another. Overall it went well, and it has been going really well as a rule. Coming off a 7-metre run-up, my movement through the crease is far more dynamic and my bowling is considerably faster than my usual 2-3 steps to the crease.

There have been leg-side balls that would need a bloke at fine leg and some might evade the keeper and go for byes, so I was thinking about what I might do to reduce the frequency of those as it was about 1 in every 6 balls which could easily spoil a decent over. I then recalled some advice from Stuart MacGill about bringing your leg through towards the batsman up and over your front foot – Not around your front foot. As soon as I implemented this, there was a marked improvement in both accuracy and speed, so tonight was a good session.

The only other aspect that I’ve not explored is whether there’s any impact with regards what I wear on my feet. When I practice, I wear trainers, so there’s difference in the grip compared to cricket shoes with their studs. There’s an analogy that says you can’t fire a canon-ball off a rowing boat as there’s an obvious stability issue. Theoretically with cricket shoes and their studs when I bowl there’s a potential difference in the torque that is generated compared to when I bowl in Adidas Sambas. Might it be that my bowling is honed to work effectively wearing trainers, but then once I don the cricket shoes, the additional grip suddenly increases the torque so creates all the issues?

So, this might be the next step in trying to ascertain what the issues are. Can I bowl as well wearing cricket shoes or is this a part of the problem?

That aside though, the way it’s going at the moment I’m looking at bowling Flippers primarily in the next game off this 7-metre run-up. With the Flippers there’s sub-variation – the ball I’ve been bowling the most is either a cross-seamed or scrambled seam ball. That’s mixed with the off-spinning version which does come in like an off-cutter. I then also have bastardised version of Grimmett’s Wrong-Wrong Un which just seems to do what it wants it goes either way. But all of them bring LBW into the game and more pace and… I can bring in the occasional Leg-Break with this extra speed as a variation and so far it’s looked useful.

Old dog new tricks

So tonight was the last net session before the start of the 2019 season. This was a Basildon and Pitsea club net facing the bowling of Phillip Took, Joe my son, Harrison Birch and Craig Thompson who are 1st and 2nd XI bowlers and I did pretty well against them. Craig who I've not batted against since last winter was the first bowler I face and I adopted my new approach which I've developed over the winter. He was surpised. Joe said when he got back in line he said "Whoa, I wasn't expecting that" and there-after in stark contrast to last year when he bowled me again and again I kept hitting the ball back past him again and again irrespective of any change ups. Phillp Took  was a different prospect he got me first ball, but thereafter was frustrated.

I'm hoping that the standard and speed of the bowling I'll be facing in the new league will of a much lower standard than seen in the nets over the winter and therefore this new approach will put me in good stead? The theories there and the practice has been put in, all I need to do now is execute it in a game situation and I'm aware that is very different. We'll have to see...

March Diary

Nets went well through February - getting a fair few hours under my belt, but more importantly with input from a variety of coaches who look after the Essex disability players. Very few people at my own club offer any advice, so it's difficult to make any progress. Over March it looks like I'll net with my club for 2 sessions totaling four hours and with the disability players somewhere between 8 and 12 hours with input and a variety of drills as well as bowling machine work and throw downs with specific goals, so all is good. From all of this work I'm now moving my feet a lot more and generally feel a lot more confident.

As mentioned last month the captain of the 3's has been announced and it's a bloke called Alistair Hayton...

I'm not so sure about what he thinks of my bowling whenever I've been around playing in any teams that he's been in I've not got to bowl that much. He's a decent bowler himself right arm orthodox as I recall - accurate and wiley, changes in pace, length and speed with a little bit of spin. I kind of half expect that I wont get to bowl that much, in which case I'll be off to another club. We'll have to see how it goes.

The end of February was amazing with some incredibly warm weather with records being broken, we sat in the garden for two days in shorts with temperatures up around 22 degrees centigrade over one weekend! March has started with blustery winds, hail stones and a little rain. I've continued with the hollow tiner - aerating the paddock, there's no obvious benefit as yet, but the seeds that I sowed last autumn have come through okay as a good new sward of grass. The shady stuff though - not so good.

9th March

Had a good net this Saturday was at Writtle for three hours, the additional hour at the end was with the Boreham cc blokes. Ken the chairman who is the opener in the first XI? commented on how well I bowled at him. I got him a couple of times - stumped once and potentially mis-hit balls to mid on and off. He also helped with the batting - giving me some pointers.

Fitness/exercise_________________________________________________________

This resonated with me... I watched this video about Glen Hoddle having a heard attack and surviving because there was a 1st aider around who administered CPR. But it was some of other stuff. Hoddle saying that he considered himself as being fit, but then alluding to the fact that his exercise regime possibly wasn't up to it because doing exercise is dreary unless you're kicking a ball around (With the grandchildren). I'm of the same opinion. It is dead dreary - really boring and because of that my exercise regime with regards - aerobic exercise is virtually non-existent, but this was a bit of a wake-up call. Watch the video if you're 40 + especially if you have as I have a family history of people dying from heart attacks. Double click on the image to open it.

One of the things that puts me off is the monotony of the circuit you run or walk, but today I tried a circuit around the local woods right out the back of my house - mud and all and it worked for me. The woods are beautiful and peaceful, I don't run, I just power walk, I don't want high impact exercise that ruins my knees, just something that works my legs, glutes and heart and it was spot on perfect. So, hopefully I'll be able to keep this up and do it daily. We'll have to see how it goes. When it dries out I may vary it a bit - by adding short sprints every minute or so to re-create the running and resting between wicket, so that its more cricket specific.

17/3/19

Later in the month I started to look at my recovery rate after exercise and it seems that looking at the data my recovery rate at the moment isn't particularly good.

My blood pressure data today from stopping normal activity and sitting down for a few seconds was... 114 - 79 - 57.

Which is in the ideal section. I then went for a walk - this isn't a normal walk this is walking as fast as I can without actually running and includes a couple of meaty hills. The walk is about 21 minutes and my measurement once I got in was...

117 - 67 -90 . I then took another measurement a minute later and then every minute thereafter. (The end number 90 is my heart rate.

111 - 66 - 84

113 - 68 - 81

116 - 70 - 79

113 - 68 - 78

114 - 69 - 78

So it seems the jump from 90 down to 84 in the first minute is the one that needs to improve and this is an indication that my hearts not in tip top condition. Almost certainly down to lack of exercise. At least I can take one thing from the readings - my blood pressure is okay!

The other thing that concerns me is my lower back. When I sit when relaxed I slouch and then when I go from a slouched sitting position to straightening to stand I get what feels like a trapped nerve or some sort of spasm. Associated with that just bending over to do stuff brings on similar reactions. This is all due to the fact that I've been less active over this winter than I ever have been and now it looks like I'm paying for it!

Plenty of nets this month - every Thursday had 2 hours at Woodlands with my club and then on Saturday mornings 3 hours - 2 with Graham Davies,  Paul Jones and the Essex disability players and then an hour with Boreham cc's boys. The Boreham boys are mostly 1st XI players from Division 6, I'm playing in Division 10 this year. They're decent players of the standard seen at 2nd XI in the old league and appropriately they'll be up against our 2nd XI. So I'm having a really challenging work-out in the nets against good standard players - bowlers and batsman. 

The same thing is happening at the clubs nets, so few people go to nets, the only people who are there are generally blokes that are much better than the standard I have to bowl against and bat against, so it's a real challenge and potentially beneficial. 

The paddock_________________________________________________________

Made a start on the Paddock this is where my son and I practice during the summer, so over the weekend of 23/24th I've cut the grass at the batting end and had the roller on it. Over February I've been aerating it using a hollow tiner, but this hasn't had any obvious impact. I'm hoping the council over the next few days will be in there and they'll cut the rest of the grass and I'll be able to get the other half of the wicket cut.

29th the council cut the grass allowing me to cut the entire length of the wicket on the 30th I had a bowl. Weirdly I didn't seem to be able to bowl as well as I have been in the nets, but they might have been because I'd bowled and batted for 3 hours this morning and just cut an entire wicket with a cylinder mower, so I may have been a bit knackered?

Later I did some fitness drills and they didn't go that well either, but I have been ill over the last 2 weeks with a cold and therefore not doing much exercise.

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2nd week of pre-season nets

This week just the net session at Writtle.

What happened ___________________________________________________________
 Batted and bowled much in the same mode as last week with pretty much the same scenarios. Intended to have a look at different aspects of my bowling.

How do I feel it went?_______________________________________________________
Any batting practice for me is good batting practice, the bowling is always going to be sketchy in nets and it's difficult to remain focused on any plans made, but it did go okay. Generally it was good.

What was good/bad?________________________________________________________       Apart from partly being put off my intentions by the way the batters bat, I did get to the stage where I executed some of my intentions, so that was good. Batting I was also happy with for the most part.

Analysis____________________________________________________________________
So, there was a plan (See last weeks net post). I'd seen the bloke batting and he had a definite approach whereby he was hitting almost every ball through the off-side and doing so with relative ease. All the shots were between the area indicated by the mustard colour whereas I'd have preferred him playing through the region B, but this was obviously his preferred approach as he played almost everyone in the same way.

I kind of have to dismiss what happens in the nets to some extent, because (1). The bounce and the way the ball comes off the surface is consistent. (2). The batters don't generally play in the same extravagant way in a game.

The amount of turn off the wicket was petty consistent and my speed being what it is the bloke was playing the line, assuming the ball was going to pitch outside of off stump and either play a straight forward cut shot or a late cut back of point. All the time I bowled this line, he was more than up to getting the ball through the off-side zone indicated with relatively powerful shots, some were in the air and would have risked being caught.

Looking at the shots he played, the bloke at 3rd man (5) could have come squarer - more deep backward point, but slightly in off the boundary.

There's an adage that I came across recently with regards fielding it may have been in Bob Woolmers Art and science of Cricket... "Don't move a fielder in response to something the batsman has done unless it's an attacking option". So to bring the 3rd man into the backward of point position would I guess be far more pro-active in this scenario?

Having seen how strong he was through the off-side I threw up a couple looking to come in from just out-side of the leg-stump attacking the middle stump, one I remember - trusting the bounce and knowing how much I was turning my stock-legbreak he stepped across the stumps to the off-side and hit the ball through the square-leg zone which would have been fielded for a single by No.3 fielder in the deep.

Having seen all this, as discussed previously in last weeks blog post, this is where I needed at least one variation. So early in the season with no real opportunities as yet to practice, this was going to be the opportunity to try the top-spinner. It worked - first ball, expecting the ball to turn away from him he stepped back to play one of his aggressive cut-shots and the ball (1) didn't turn so he was immediately cramped up (2) the bounce was exaggerated because the top-spinner dips. The shot was completely mis-timed and ballooned up into the air to potentially be caught by the fielder at 8 (Cover). In a game scenario, you'd imagine that the batter would then become a little more circumspect with regards playing in such an aggressive manner thereafter if he valued his wicket.

Action Plan________________________________________________________
This reinforces the need for at least one variation if not two. As with last year, I'm probably going to work with 2 variations as well as a series of leg-break sub-variations . The one delivery that I want to be able to execute well and be confident to bowl in games is the Top-Spinner, so in the short term over the coming weeks as I work on my fitness I'll be bowling more top-spinners. So, at home while I'm flicking the ball keeping the fingers supple and always working on muscle memory for the wrist and flick action and in the nets I may look at only bowling top-spin this coming session to try and develop and improve the release and the seam alignment.


Needless to say there are shed loads of people that know far more than me so you should have a look around and read more on the theories and tactics https://www.pitchvision.com/complete-guide-to-cricket-field-settings#/

First net this year

Gibbs Reflection

What happened _________________________________________________________
The first two nets of the year, one at Woodlands school and the other at Writtle. Bowled and batted. No expectation or plan for the bowling, with the batting an intention to be more positive. Was bowled by my son Joe and Alistair Hayton. (fast and off-spin respectively).

Feelings________________________________________________________________
Given that this was the first net of the season I was happy with what happened apart from the fact that Joe who was bowling in the 1st and 2nd XI nets came across to my net when I started batting and knowing full well that in the best of circumstances I struggle with the ball coming into my legs - bowled into my legs. He came around the wicket and hit me in the side of the knee where there's no pads and no straps even. 2 days later it looks like this...

This is the back of my knee - the ball hit the side of the knee on the boney bit of the left of the image. Yes it did hurt and yes it did swell up and it is still tender know and this is having iced it when I got back of the nets.

What was good/bad_________________________________________________________
Bowling at the first net session (Club nets) was bad, primarily because there were a load of blokes in the nets and you're rotating your turn with 8 others and there's no way that you're going to get any rhythm. Good in that session was that my line was pretty much spot on, I was able to bowl the line I wanted, length was okay too. 2nd net at Writtle that was good with regards the batting, but that's in part down to the fact that the group I'm there with (Disability players) included Graham Davies AKA G-Man who's the coach for them at Essex as far as I'm aware. So that meant the batting was done with purpose and scenarios.

Analysis __________________________________________________________________
Bowling, at both sessions, the majority of my bowling was was on or outside the off-stump, so with the ball turning away from the batsmen. They have a look at a few balls and then see the consistency of my line and turn see and that its not actually threatening the stumps. They then play cut shots of different varieties, drives and back-foot drives. All of these can be countered as I keep arguing in my other blog here by having a strong and organised off-side field.

One of the blokes that I bowled at... Alistair Hayton I asked about this approach (He also bowls) and he said "if I saw that the field on the leg-side was offering more scoring opportunities, I'd be stepping across the crease and trying to score through the leg-side". It's then that you need a straight ball or some other variation which is something I need to work on. I do bowl a Flipper and I did try one or two, but both went leg-side. Flippers are a variation that I need to work on a lot before using in a game. But preferably, I'd have a good Top-Spinner, again, this is a ball I have to work with a lot in order for it to be usable and last year my attempts at a Top-Spinner were indifferent. A perfectly straight one would be ideal, but just a leg-break with only a little turn would be more than useful. Googlies for me are out of the question.

So for the moment the basic plan when bowling this summer will involve the field here...

This field is reliant on being accurate with your bowling line in order to not concede runs on the leg-side. Added to this your length and speed needs to be such that you're able to land the ball on a length that encourages the batsman to drive off the front foot and not slow enough to play back foot shots.

The key thing here is to be able to bowl variations in line and length, if you've got something that doesn't turn - bring it out early show the batsman. I have a number of sub variations of my leg-break - As well as the bog- standard leg-break I can vary it's flight, dip and the amount of turn by either getting up on my toes at FFC (Front foot contact). Generally I bowl without going up on the toes for my standard leg-break, but simply going up on the toes creates more dip and turn. The same speed ball will have a trajectory initially that looks similar, but will then suddenly dip and then bounce more.
There's a caveat to this though, this kind of accuracy and control of variation isn't the norm and only comes about when I'm totally relaxed and 3 overs into the game when I'm bowling well in practice. Generally I need to be fully fit and practicing a lot. (See 'Action Plan' below.

Batting Analysis Batting is something I need to work on as you can see from the picture above - cricket friends on Facebook have helpfully suggested that I should hit the ball rather than let it hit me. Other than my son Joe nearly breaking my leg and getting me LBW, I continued to struggle against the blokes that bowled off-spin mixed with a straight ball (There's that combination again). Against anyone that bowls with some pace I've been working on moving my feet and in the last year or so in practice in the paddock with Joe I've been walking down the crease to the bowler in the same way that England Women's Tammy Beuamont does in this video here at 4'.45' (double click on the image below). 

and is seems to work for me if the wicket it relatively sound and the bowler is bowling in a consistent manner. The good thing is, If I'm able to get to the Writtle nest every week heading into the season I reckon this may make some difference especially with Graham Davies's coaching. This is first time in 12 years that someone has helped me with my batting!

Action Plan________________________________________________________________
In the next session try and work on the top-spinner or at least have a look at it and see if there's any chance at all of bowling with the seam relatively straight. At home keep flicking the ball from hand to hand and look at the wrist position adjustment to produce a ball with more over-spin, but with the same amount of revs on the ball seen with the leg-break. 

https://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/cricket/10964720/tammy-beaumont-masterclass

Someblokecalleddaves January wrist spin diary

The month starts with very mild weather here in the UK and the grass in the paddock where I practice across the road is actually growing! The temperature during the day has been well in excess of 10 degrees centigrade for the last 2 weeks over the Christmas holiday.

Early Jan made a decent start to the exercise regime and my diet's improved now that all the Christmas food's been eaten or thrown away. The main weakness still seems to be my lower back, but with the little bit of exercise that I did do towards the end of Dec I've now been able to do the head-stands again for well in excess of 2 minutes. Current record still stands at 4 minutes and 10 seconds.

Mid January and the back soreness still prevailed and was starting to worry me, so I upped the exercise regime and focused on my Glutes and core strength. There's a lot of commentary on the internet relating to the fact that if you do a job where you're relatively inactive - sitting at a computer, you lose the muscles in your butt. If that happens, then all of the surrounding connected muscles and joints start to suffer leading to problems with the hips, back and knees. So, core strength and butt muscles it is for me at the moment.

End of January whilst doing a headstand (Good for core strength and balance) I over-balanced and where my fingers are locked together behind my head, my head rolled over the fingers and completely mangled them. That's put a stop to the exercise, it also coincided with the weather taking a turn for the worse so any activities like cycling would have been been thwarted anyway. I reckon it'll be early February before I start again.

Blogs and stuff

I've also started to delete some of my blogs and consolidate them as I'm trying to generate traffic to this one, but it seems pretty difficult and slow at the moment. The other blog with the first series of pitch maps here is still getting loads of hits, but ideally I'll delete these, because I want the traffic coming to the new pitch map and plans blog (See link in the top-right side bar) here, or click on the page image below...
Over the weekend of Jan 6th I discovered that the blogs weren't showing adverts because I had an ad-blocking extension set up and it looked as though I needed to re-set the adverts. So I'm going through all my blogs at the moment checking to see that they've all got adverts on, but I'm only too aware people use ad' blocking software, which is a shame.

Here are some of the other activities that I've been up to.

The batsman's analysis blog has some examples in albeit from the old league (SNEL). I've included these just to see how it looks and establish a way of producing the diagrams that'll be consistent and coherent. Previous manifestations have been very popular with tens of thousands of hits, but they've taken shed-loads of time to produce because of the heavy use of Photoshop. The new approach will hopefully mean I can up-load the wagon wheel diagrams and plans the same weekend as the games.

Click on the image to go to the website.

The other deals with another aspect of strategy and the formulation of a bowling plan and includes a link to a Youtube video you can pretty much guarantee will be deleted because SKY will hunt the up-loader down and threaten to destroy him if he doesn't delete it and then people wonder why crickets decreasing in popularity eh?

That link is here http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.com/2017/10/1-best-of-wrist-spin-bowling-2.html

My other active blogs include…

https://bowlingplans.blogspot.com/

http://theoldwristspinner.blogspot.com/

http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.com/

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBodRls5i80&t=21s

The hits on this blog are steadily growing and the nice thing is I'm getting really positive feedback from different people from all around the world. The original post on the other website where all the batsmen were in one post is gradually being reduced as I transfer them to the blog above.

The club had its AGM on Jan 25th and that was attended by a much bigger crowd than usual. We're almost certainly going to be fielding 3 teams in the new T-Rippon league, but there's an option to field 4 if there's a sudden surge in players as the season starts it seems. There's a real feel of optimism around the club after 2 years of misery caused by the loss of so many key players over one winter. The word is some players who have left over the last 3 or 4 years are looking to come back and play some games on and off and there seems to be a few new blokes. The new blokes also reckon they've got mates that'll play the occasional game as well.

We've lost some key players as well because of the change in game format, but the fact that we're initially fielding 3 teams rather than four offsets that.

We'll find out what division we'll be playing in by mid February and early Feb we'll be getting into the nets. In recent years nets have been a bit sparse with regards attendance, so it'll be interesting to see who turns up? With regards nets Joe and I haven't been to Writtle at all this year other than the one session. This is primarily due to the fact that whenever I ask him if he wants to go he's never up for it.

Other than, that not a lot happened over January.

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.