Gipper news

This was posted elsewhere on a cricket forum - so kind of reads odd....

Yeah I'm kind of doing okay, one minute I think I've cracked the leg break and the next minute it's not happening. A week ago mucking about on tarmac throwing a hockey ball back and forth to my mate I was getting it turn massively and every single time with fairly good accuracy with the line and length. The next day in a cricket match - couldn't do it!This week same thing - just couldn't do it - just goes straight. But going backwards as Peter Philpott recommends - I can turn the hockey balls on tarmac and over short distances get a cricket ball to turn massively. It's just that when I move up to the 22 yards, the effort that I have to put into getting the ball up the end somehow dilutes the spin. I suppose what I need to do is gradually creep up the wicket in length during practice and be patient?All the other variations are going nicely and I've been playing around tonight with this variation I call the "Gipper" see the images here - http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com/2008/04/rain.htmlThe images are the view that the batsman sees so when you bowl it you do so with a weirdly twisted arm and wrist. But tonight it was coming along nicely - I'm managing to get a good length with it and fairly good accuracy. It's a weird ball and sometimes it spins away to off massively and other times it seems to really bounce. But I can't pinpoint what I'm actually doing in order to be consistent. Towards the end of the practice I was getting the speed up but it still remains a mystery as to what I have to do or exaggerate in the delivery in order to get it to spin like it does sometimes. When I first started bowling it - it use spin away to off at a ridiculous angle. But that seems to have reduced at the expense of speed and accuracy. But it still looks like a useful ball and I reckon I'm not too far away from trying it in a match.

This practice was over at FTF (Five Tree Field) I went over there to see if there was any evidence of the Gloucester Park crew having used the field this summer and there was any at all. But the grass has been cut and was nice and short - I'm tempted to keep it that way now? The ground is quite flat over there as well and the ground quite hard so there was quite a bit of bounce. Tomorrow morning I may go over there and have a couple of hours and work on my leg break and the gipper. If I don't go there I might go over Great Berry instead?