I've always been wrist-spinner and one that bowls relatively slow. In recent years because of the situation at our club we've had to play in games a level above our abilities and we've had 3 years of primarily being beaten. Last year, because this was getting to the point where people didn't want to play anymore we changed leagues and with the change came a new format... 40 overs rather than timed cricket.
This new format brings its own dynamics, the main one is that batsmen go harder at the ball and play with a lot more positivity. This, should in itself present more opportunities as a wrist-spinner, but I didn't find that down to the fact that I play in a 4th XI team with a bunch of old blokes with knackered knees. My bowling was fine for much of the time, with the dip and turn, blokes going hard at the ball were hitting the ball straight up into the air for potential catches. But because all my team are old blokes, they're just not agile enough to get to the ball and take the catches. So I ended up looking ineffective and expensive and I ended up being left out of the bowling attack. I can't bat, so I was paying and playing for 6-7 hours just so that I could face a handful of balls and then march back to the pavilion. Something had to change.
At the very start of that season I played in a 3rd XI game and took a couple of wickets and bowled really well with my stock leg-break. Another spinner who bowls finger spin took 5 wickets in the same game primarily by mixing arm balls with his off-break and someone commented that I could have taken more wickets with a straight ball. This got me thinking...Should I have a look at getting one of my neglected Flipper going again - would that at least allow me to bowl and not go for runs?
So a month or so into the season I started to practice, initially combining the leg-breaks with the Flippers and over a few sessions realising that in order to nail the Flippers I was going to have to put in the hard yards with the Flippers in isolation. Early in that process I played in a game with no confidence in my bowling if I was going to bowl my leg-breaks and so committed to trying the Flippers even though the development of them was in the early stages. It went well see here (Double click the image below).
The conclusion seemed to be (1) Bowl exclusively Flippers and (2) Scrap the Leg-breaks.
Pretty much from this game on, I bowled 95% Flippers and the pattern continued as seen in the game above. I bowled well when using the Flippers and was hit for 4's when bowling the leg-breaks. It pretty much took the rest of the games in the season to conclude in the end, as far as I'm concerned I may as well just bowl Flippers.
Practice - Practice and more practice
I'm lucky as just across the road from where I live there's an area where I can practice and able to cut a wicket (It's something I've done for my two cricket playing sons for years). It's not much cop for batting on, but for practicing line, length, action and variations as a bowler it's perfect. Being as obsessive as I am it allows me to do things like this below...
There was another massive change in my bowling with the focus on the Flipper. My Leg-Breaks were bowled off of a walk-in off of 3 steps and despite my efforts to extend the run-up I found I couldn't spin it as hard coming off of a run-up. As soon as I started to bowl the Flipper more regularly I found that it was pretty useless bowled off the 3 step walk in and so I explored extending the run-in and soon found that a 9 step run-in worked well.
June 2019
I then had a stupid accident indoors and jarred my knee. I bowled in a few more games before stopping because of the knee bowling primarily Flippers, but was still hanging on the idea that my Leg-Break could be a variation. The case was the Flippers were effective, the Leg Breaks went the distance. During July and much of August I didn't play and I hardly practiced hoping for my knee to recover. At the very end of August the season at my own club had finished and I played a Sunday Friendly game for Orsett cc and bowled exceptionally well. I took two wickets and was on track to go for about 2 an over. Finishing one of the 10 overs I bowled, I bowled one Leg-Break and it turned and the batsman looked up in surprise. It was like the serpent showing Eve the apple. I thought - whoa, I should throw a few of those in as that almost caught the bloke out and the bowled two crap balls that went for 4's and ruined what was going to be really good figures.
In the previous games through May and June I'd also suffered from establishing a smooth run-up, my 9 step run-up used in practice didn't seem to work once the Adrenalin was running and I found myself constantly stuttering as I set off, sometimes so badly that I'd have to abort the run-in. In this Orsett game I was coming in off of a much longer run-up -14 + steps and it worked perfectly. But, I found that as soon as the game was finished, my knee seized up and by the time I got home 35 mins or so later I was crippled. I'm hoping that, as the game was played on a surface that was like concrete, that was a contributory factor? Over the winter I've been doing physio and over Sept I had the knee X-rayed and looked at by Doctors, I'm still waiting for the MRI scan. I'm hoping that with the physio and a slow build up to May, I might be good to go.
2022 July
So I'm still bowling Flippers. I get moved around different squads, so some weeks I play in the 3rd XI other weeks the 5th and one week we even managed to get a 6th squad out that I captained. The current league (40 Over games) we play in, there is a maximum 8 over rule and generally I get to bowl 8 overs and this year I've probably taken 2 wickets a game on average and my average is way below the figures I used to get when bowling leg-breaks. So I'm quite happy to be bowling Flippers and they're serving me well. Generally I get the wickets LBW, or bowled. The bowled wickets are from batters who generally look to take me out of the attack by going at me really aggressively. I think they see from the boundary that I bowl slow, so they assume I'm either bowling Leggies or finger spin. They cross the out-going batsman and ask 'What's this bloke bowling'? and I can only assume they say 'Looks like a leggie - but he's not turning it much'. *Note; I bowl these flippers with the seam scrambled, cross - seamed or out of the front of the hand attempting to produce the off-spinning version. As a result the ball does things off the surface... In my last game (Saturday just gone) one turned like a Leg-Break with the batter leaving the ball and the ball hitting the leg-stump. So, these blokes come out with pre-conceived ideas and plans and one of the more common dismissals is one where they see the ball coming (slowly) step back to clear their front leg ready to hit me into the next county only for the ball to skid through low and hit the stumps- kind of like Warnes Flipper to Alex Stewart in 1994.
The last two seasons my biggest issue has been my run-up and I've not been able to nail it with stuttering being the main issue. So far this season I've just come off of 2 steps and it's worked okay. In the nets and on my practice area "The Paddock" across the road from my house I've been working on a run up of 4 or 5 steps and that looks promising and I may give that a go in the next game I play... 23rd July 2022 in the 5th XI.
I've been looking at bringing back the leg break to add to the Flippers and tonight I practiced mixing both of them and it worked out okay. In the nets at the club the leggies work well too, but on wickets I generally get them wrong first ball up and that then knocks my confidence and I revert back to the safety of the Flippers. Again if the practicing goes well this week I may try and mix it up a bit and see how it works.
In my next instalment I'll write about variations.
No comments:
Post a Comment