20th November

I've done 3 lates this week (15 hour days) so I haven't been able to get out and practice. But the up side of that is my arm/shoulder is able to recover. I've also been slack with the exercise and fitness too. But it does look as though this Saturday I'll probably book one of the badminton courts for an hour and do an hour of batting up against a wall and see how that goes as a drill?

Some more good news for next week when Alex, Simon and me get together at the same venue for some net practice - it looks like Badger might be up for it as well, so the seeds of a revival and a match against Boffa and his crew might be on the cards as a monthly event in the summer? The only thing is I'd need to book Welstead Gardens now or in the next couple of weeks to have any chance of having that as a venue?

I can't get the other 8-10 blokes to commit themselves to playing so I'm kind of stuck.

Other than I was looking around the http://www.bigcricket.com/ website and came across a thread that was covering the subject of Offspin and I was drawn to a comment by a bloke who said that what he'd just read was the most comprehensive description of a Doosra, so I went back to it and had a read and it was very interesting in what it alluded to. Reading the description of what this bloke claims Murali does I thought that sounds very interesting and is worth a look at? So a few seconds later in the Kitchen at 11.30 at night with sponge balls and then tennis balls I had a look at what was suggested. My own variation of the Doosra is a ball that is flicked from out of the back of the hand from a cocked wrist as indicated in Fig 1. For some reason this tends to be a much faster and flatter delivery with a big flick and when it goes right it deviates off the seam in the same way as the Googlie does. But instead of the Thumb curled and pressed against the seam as in Fig 1. The thumb is straight and along the seam.

Now, reading this blog I had the idea of bending the thumb and having it pressed against the seam as in fig 1 and 2 ready to flick the ball on release and impart spin on it as it does. Kind of like a Mendis Carrum ball approach but using the more powerful thumb.











As the ball is released in the same way as your thumb is used in the Flipper you flick the ball. It may be advantageous if you bowl the Flipper as this'll mean you've got a strong and flexible thumb, short of that you'll have to get flicking! Once the flick has happened the thumb should end up in the position as in Fig 3. As yet this has only been trialled in my kitchen tonight, but rest assured I'll be giving it a go as soon as I can get out there. I'm not overly confident that it'll work that well as the level of rotation the thumb imparts isn't that fantastic - but then who knows? All the evidence that I've seen so far is also interesting in that instead of this ball being an Off-spinning ball it's another Leg Spinning ball. Watch this space.