Friday

At last the weekend! I can't wait till tomorrow - I think Ben's looking forward to it and Joe's not said anything negative so it sounds like he'll come along to the Colts session tomorrow as well. Let's hope they do well and learn some stuff. Last week I got to bowl at the kids and took a wicket and once I'd come away from the session I realised I could have used the opportunity to try the Gipper out. So I may have a go with it tomorrow? With that in mind and my Hockey Balls having been delivered today I thought I'd go over the basket ball court and throw some balls. I've shot some pictures of the court that I use looking from the end I bowl from - you can see the stumps and the other shot is looking from the same end - but from the other corner and I've taken the stumps away as it's the end of the session. It's ideas because I can put the stumps on the yellow line and bowl along the line and this enables me to see how much I can get the ball to deviate. The other thing is that the surface is perfectly flat so any deviation that does occur is due to the spin not the surface of the pitch as such.

When I get it right on the odd occasion the ball ends up spinning away and hits the post to the left of the stumps. That's the kind of spin I want to achieve time and time again when I choose to do so. The session tonight was very promising with the first 20 minutes or so bowling proper Leg Breaks. Occasionally I'd drag one down but initially it was spot on with regards where I want to be with my progress. Again I'm of the impression that it is all about that ring finger on your right hand. For me it's that - that is producing the spin and as I've said here, when it comes right the amount of spin I get is enough to keep me very happy. If I can get to April being able to bowl like this consistently on a good line and length I'd be more than happy!

I bowled some Flippers and they were looking good. I was reading a couple of days ago about Flippers and that one of the ways they can be bowled is if used as one of your variations amongst balls like Top-spinners or Leg Breaks which have a relatively high bounce profile. You can bowl the Flipper in amongst these as a shorter ball and the bat might then be expecting the ball to jump up at him but being a flipper it'll skid in low and may catch him off guard?

The later half of the session I started to modify my grip - loosen it up and try and flick more and none of this worked in any maningful way and it then kind of upset my Leg Break a bit and it took a lot of focus to get the Leg Break going again. So next time I will just stick to bowling the Leg Break and just aim to get consistency with it.

If I get to bowl tomorrow I may try these new leg Breaks and see how they go?