Wrist Spin Grips

As predicted it's been raining a lot in the last 24 hours so I've returned to the idea that maybe I should focus on keeping fit and do some exercises as I've noticed that my shoulder has been suffering slightly after the recent bowling sessions. But they have been long sessions so it is to be expected I suppose, but I do feel that maybe I should do some more exercises and I'm going to draw up a schedule and time how long it takes because it's the time that it takes to do this stuff that annoys me mostly and the fact that I don't set up a series of exercises that I then stick to.

Here's some old stuff and the schdule I was trying to stick to and some stuff done today...

Exercise Log

5th October

Across the back of the head pulls with medium band - 20
Upward forearm with Long Band - 10
The plank - 30
The plank left leg raised – 0 o f 15
The plank right leg raised – 0 of 15
Pull ups – 1 of 3
Bar – front - 10
Bar – sideways left - 10
Bar – sideways right - 10
Bar above head - 10
Shoulder raises with Long Band - 6
Rotational Press ups - 10

Notes – With the little exercise that I've been doing a lot of this came quite hard. Pull ups for instance – one felt like enough! I've also been suffering from forearm pains in my inner arm where there's loads of veins – it feels as though I may have overdone the No.2 exercises

26th of October

This was okay for a few days and then I stopped I was too knackered after coming in from work late. I may try again as I've been suffering from a sore shoulder because of the bowling.
I've just done the above and it's taken 4 and half minutes and I'm puffing and panting a bit. It'll be interesting to see how I feel tomorrow. I'm slightly wary of my right arm forearm and that seems to have been pulled recently and I don't want to damage it if it's half way to fixing itself, so I only did one pull up, although I did 3 this morning before I went swimming. On the swimming front I've got to say I was quite impressed with the fact that I swam 4 lengths under water (Seperately) over the hour and half that we were there.

Once back from swimming and aware that football had been played this morning on the Valence Way wicket I went and had a look at the state that it was in as it was obviously going to be in a bit of a mess what with the ground being softened up by all the recent rain. It wasn't that bad - probably due to the fact that it is boys playing on it rather than men? I repaired what i could where there was damage on the wicket area and checked to see if the markers were still in place and they still are. If the weather is slightly better tomorrow I may top dress it again in the sections that still need to be done.

No bowling today but some really interesting comments on the blog from Edward in Malta (See below), but here's some of the comments he's made (Blue Text) The spinning finger should be the ring finger. I usually used to use the middle finger to spin, and this would be great to bowl a topspinner, a very small leg break with mainly topspin on it(the seam would point fractionally away from off stump), or a very small googly again with mainly topspin(seam pointing fractionally away from leg stump)I also use thumb as i feel it helps control more, and also because i have relatively small hands.


Yep - it's the ring finger and little finger that I'm finding is crucial, which I've knowm all the time and seems obvious, but the thing I'm doing now is that when I put the ball in my hand I'm paying close attention as to where the fingers all go. I think up till now I've always gripped the ball as in Diagram 1.


And as you can probably see the contact with the ball in the bottom shot where my hand is twisted means that there's not a great deal of emphasis with regards how much finger is on the ball. No doubt different sized hands has some bearing on the mechanics of all this and I've probably got medium to possibly small hands as I'm only 5'9". If you look at the Mark Nicholas/Shane Warne video on youtube you'll see that the ball in Warnes hand look relatively small, so it appears he's shortish bloke with big hands.





Now look at diagram 2. Since working through this as an idea I'm now beginning to think that the contact bewteen fingers and ball is essential (Where I'm concerned) and I now go through a completely different procedure when placing the ball in the hand. With diagram 1 the ball just goes in there easy and it's pretty much the orthodox method that everyone describes when setting you on your way as a Leg Spinner. But at the minute it strikes me that I'm going to get much better results with the leg break if I carefully attend to the 2 fingers down aspect first. I now place the 2 fingers down onto the ball first making sure that they are both very much on the seam and that they're going to both work to impart the spin as that drag across the ball on release. The 2 fingers up which was always the aspect I was worried about more now seem fairly redundant in my mind other than to guide the ball in the correct general direction? As you can see bewteen diagram 1 and diagram to the grips are very different. With ring finger and the little finger most definitely in contact with the seam whereas in diagram 1 the little finger is more or less redundant as it's resting on the ring finger.



Whether this will change my bowling fundamentally I'm not sure at this stage as it's not been tested other than yesterday as one of the last thoughts of the day, but the few balls that I did throw doing this felt like they were different and did appear to spin towards slips far more affectively.




Something else I try to bowl the big leg break by spinning with my middle finger and THROWING rather than bowling it trying to keep the seam pointing to point area. Try it underarm first to uderstand the throwing like action. Hadn't there been the forward action needed to propel the ball forward it would be a square turner.



Edward - this sounds like advice straight out of Peter Philpotts book. The idea that you throw the ball with it spinning in the direction of Point is something that he gets round to and in earlier entries and on the simply cricket discussions we've all gone in to. Some people agree and some people just haven't got it - but in essence it means that when you're bowling - the wrist and spin action is almost an inward flick which if you do it standing still spins the ball back towards yourself. With a run up and the over-arm action it produces a massively sideways but erring towards back-spin delivery that means once it hits the deck it spins massively towards slips. I managed this for an afternoon using a Hockey ball on tarmac, but I've not been able to re-produce it again, but on simply cricket the blokes that did try it came back with reports saying they'd sussed it and got a lot more turn towards slips in other words a big leg break.



The above action over arm looks very different from the normal delivery but when bowled well and pitching on leg stump and outside it would miss another set of stumps with turn. Worth experimenting with.As you say you have to concentrate right through in the run up, delivery, swivel and follow through, so may things can go wrong.



And again another bloke who agrees that the attention and focus that you have to put into getting this right is enormous as advocated by Peter Philpott. One of the things that Ed alludes to is the potential of anyone out there that bowls the leg break with effortless ease, how would they get on with all this if they really went to town and spent hours and hours trying to perfect the variations?