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
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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.

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.

Been doing some work on my Leg-Break basics page

On the other blog - www.wristspinbowling.blogspot.co.uk I've been working on the Leg-Break page, have a look - double click on the image below...

Comments with regards to content are encouraged - leave your comments below...

Cycling cardio - went out on the bike again today and timed it more accurately. Yesterday I did it in about 13-15 minutes. Today with 13 minutes in mind as a target I went a minute better got it down to 12 mins, so I'm quite happy with that.

Yesterday I read an article on-line about Statins which I've been advised to take because of my high blood pressure. The interesting thing I picked up from this is the blokes reduction in eating bread and sugar. The sugar thing I'm already doing and to some extent the bread as well, but I'm going to make more of a concerted effort to reduce both bread and sugar over the coming months. I'm also going to try and eat more Garlic and Ginger which are good as well.

Working on our practice wicket in the Paddock

This morning I heard the familiar sound of the council mowing the grass verges and potentially the paddock. So after breakfast I wandered across the road to check to see if they'd cut the grass on our wicket. I've been holding back on seeding it because I guessed that they'd churn up all the grass.  Sure enough what with the wet and cold start to Spring this year and the use of a dirty great sit-on tractor mower like this here...

The paddock got pretty churned up including the bit I worked on a couple of weeks ago. So this morning it looked like this...

This shot here would be the view from the batsman.

This view here is almost side on - we bat at the end here on the extreme right of this image.

Looking at it more closely, it was obvious that the damage wasn't that severe and that with a little rolling it was going to easily rectified. 

The soil is very wet and the temp today was 13 centigrade, so idea for sowing the seeds. I've bought 2 types, one for under the trees in the shady area and a general hard-wearing grass for the bit that has the sun on it all day. So I've mixed them together, with more of the shady version under the trees.

 Here's all my gear ready to go.

 This is with the seed put down prior to a proper roll, you can see on one side where I've started.

 Here I've covered the seed with fine grade dressing made up of general compost and clay.

 Then before rolling I've covered the cut strip/wicket area with scaffold netting, so that the clay doesn't stick to the roller lifting all of the seeds.

This is it once it was rolled and some additional loose top-dressing in areas that needed to be filled because of shallow dents. You can see in the distance the roller at the bowlers end as some work was done in the bowlers foot-marks. Usually we only cut the batting end, but looking at it today I might cut a full 22 yards this summer as it look pretty flat.

Hopefully, no-one will vandalise it and the grass will establish quickly. Rains expected in the next 24 hours mixed with sunshine in between (April showers). The latter part of the week it's going to get warmer and the following week traditional April showers so wet and warm. The prospect therefore looks good. As the grass establishes, I'll get some grass food of some sort to help it flourish and hopefully we'll get some good use out of it through the summer. 

Pre-season

Our pre-season nets has been announced at last, disappointing though as there's only going to be four sessions, but it is at a venue that is 20 or so miles away, so I expect that take up of the opportunity will be relatively low - hence only 4 sessions have been booked. Not sure how many people will turn up though as we're having a bit of weather at the moment...

This is the paddock where me and Joe practice in the summer.

The snow's about 4" deep (10cm) and the country seems to have ground to a halt which is mental. I've not been to work now for 2 days and was sent home at midday on the first day of the snow. Makes you wonder what would happen if we had a repeat of the kind weather we saw back in 1987. It snowed off and on over two weeks, there was one day or night where it snowed seriously for a prolonged period and it ended up about a foot or so deep, the most snow I've ever seen. The snow then stayed because the temperature was held pretty low at sub-zero temperatures during the day and at night it was frequently -10 to -18 degrees. See here You'll have seen that 1963 was pretty cold as well, that year it snowed on Christmas Eve and snow then laid on the ground till march with the average temp over that period being 0.5 centigrade. So what all the fuss at the moment is about I don't know? I'm guessing it's the fear of being sued if someone falls over? 

Needless to say Joe and I will make a big effort to get there as it's £5.00 for a couple of hours. I can't wait having been cooped up indoors for the best part of 4 months now. 

I need to go with a bit of a plan though. Batting - I'm going to try and be a little more positive with the batting - look to score runs more rather than defend all the time.

Bowling... I'm looking to develop a couple of straight balls having watched a fair bit of Adil Rashid and seen how successful he is with them...

I like the fact that Sky have called these deliveries "Straight balls" and none of those daft names given to these ambiguous deliveries that many Wrist-Spinners bowl. I'll be working with a top-spinner and another which is more like a poorly executed off-break delivery and because this it what it basically is, it has a tendency to either (a) not spin at all and just go on straight - quite a bit faster than my leg-breaks. Or (b) I get something on it and it comes in a little to the RH batsman - again still slightly faster and flatter than my leg-breaks.

The other thing I want to work on is getting my arm lower for the leg-breaks as that helps with dip and drift. 

If we get there I might post something up after Sunday.

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Another blog! Yep, another one, the other recent one (see it here ) is fine for some things but other things e.g. daily waffle, rants and similar stuff I felt it wasn't working. In a way a website would be much better, but as I don't sell anything I can't justify the cost of running a website.

So from now on the day to day stuff will be here and the static pages with the wrist-spin content will be accessible via the link above or the one in the side-bar on the right here. So who am I again? Some bloke who bowls wrist-spin at 4th XI club level here in England. Why am I all over the internet? Only because I write a lot about it and have opinions and views that I'm willing to share - none of it supported by qualifications or professional practice, so make sure you take notice of the caveat at the end here.

Dave Thompson - the author 2017

 



All the ideas, views and opinions on here have nothing to do with the club I play for and are subject to change, as I'm learning all the time despite the fact that an old bloke!

Please note The owner of the blog is in no way responsible for you getting carted around the park for 4's and sixes. Seek professional guidance if in doubt.