No match

No match to report this weekend as I was away with my younger son on "Beaver" Camp - (Cubs but not so hardcore). But I am happy to report that whilst on site there was evidence of cricket being played by scouts and cubs. They probably had to fill in a 28 page H&S report and ask the district commissioner if their game proposal was within the guidelines etc. My God the world has gone H&S mental and it is to the detriment of rounded human beings.

Last night I was mucking about with a ball outside bowling flippers and the derivative “Gipper” and I realized something really obvious. The gipper is just your bog standard flipper but with the hand rotated and twisted loads so that when click the ball out of your hand instead of the ball coming out with backspin you’re giving it loads of side spin. I then realized if you then twist your wrist a different way you’ll be bowling the ball and spinning it so that spins from off to leg? The potential seems enormous if you can click the ball in all sorts of directions and still get it up the wicket on a decent length and line.

So I had a go at the Gippers last night and as previously reported did okay. This morning I went over to the Rec and had an hour or so there practicing derivatives of the flipper – the one that spins from leg to off “The Gipper” and now this new one that does the opposite maybe the “Offer” or perhaps the “Floffer”? It works but like the Gipper it’s going to need practice. I also noticed that because I am twisting my hand, wrist and arm in really peculiar ways – probably 180 degree opposite to the bog standard Flipper instead of under-spin its producing top spin and it kind of bounces up quickly and higher that expected.

All of these derivatives of the flipper seem at the moment to be pretty inconsistent as to whether they turn or not but fairly accurate but again working against them is the fact that they’re slow. What is going to happen is that the batsmen are going to then go for hitting fours and I’ve got to learn where I should be trying to place the ball in order to force errors and secure a catch when this starts to happen . I kind of got the sense that I was beginning to get this sorted at the last match where I was putting the ball down the off side trying to produce wrong uns, but they were too slow and the batsman was just stepping back and hitting the ball off the back foot almost every time to Super Dave. Perhaps if Super Dave didn’t mind losing his teeth he might have been brought in closer to try and take the ball at 130mph while it was still in the air because in his position at cover it was dropping short of where he was fielding but always ending up in that area?

In amongst the Gippers and the Floffers I was trying normal Leg Breaks and they were working some of the time. But I’m not going to get my hopes up yet about whether I can bowl them well because when I transfer to a cricket pitch I can’t do them. In the meantime I’ll just keep on spinning and flicking apples, oranges, tennis balls, golf balls etc as much as I can so that the reflex eventually becomes almost instinctive and natural so that when I do bowl it – it works!