Flipper derivitives and Murali

If you're looking for my Legspin Blogs....
http://spinbowling-wrongun.blogspot.com/
http://spinbowling-legbreak.blogspot.com/
http://spinbowling-flipper.blogspot.com/

I've been posting elsewhere trying to get to grips with what it is that Murali does when he bowls and some of the responses have been a bit lame and laced with undertones of xenophobia. But a new bloke today in his first ever post gave an explanation that was pretty neat and put me straight with regards the Murali bowling action. But the reason I was asking about it and making loads of claims about what it might and might not be was just to get to the bottom of it and understand it more.

If you look at this clip http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WxvYcRwyl9w you can see what happens and yeah they were right it's not a wrong un and I was completely wrong. If you watch this the main difference is the fact that his wrist rotates clockwise in order that the ball comes out of his up-turned hand. Whereas the wrong un you turn your hand anti-clockwise to get the ball to come out of the back of the hand.

Having sat watching the video clip, I then had doubts as to whether I'd ever tried Murali's off-break style so at 11 oclock at night I went outside and tried it and yeah this is something I tried back in the early spring over on the artificial wicket at Gloucester Park with some success.

But here comes the really interesting bit - no-one anywhere goes on to explain what he does to get the ball to spin like a Leg break, all they say is that the delivery looks the same but the ball goes the other way. So this is where I've been looking at the potential of using the flipper action in conjunction with balls that come out of the up-turned hand. One being my ball 'The Gipper' which is the wrist rotating anti-clockwise a la the wrong un and then clicking it out of the fingers which can produce massive leg spin.

Since I started to look at what it is that Murali does and the fact that a bloke in the offspin thread on Bigcricket.com - 'Mr Offspin' http://www.bigcricket.com/forum/t60610-2/#post284633 said that my Gipper sounded like Murali's Doosra I've been looking closer at the potential of the Flipper.....

If you can do the flipper action and spin the ball with your fingers by clicking them (See the Warne and Jenner videos on youtube) try this.........

Hold a ball in you hand flipper style with your palm facing the ceiling. Flick it flipper style and just let it drop to the floor. The ball rotates spinning clockwise as it drops to the floor and then spins away to the right.

Now do this; Do exactly the same thing but instead of just letting the ball drop to the ground just gently flick you hand forward from the wrist. To my mind the ball spins in exactly the same way and comes out of the hand spinning clockwise - but then observe what happens when it hits the ground this time. All my experiments show that it then spins away towards the left like a leg break.

The spin seems to be the same but this is obviously impossible and I had to look at it again more closely and what it comes down to is the very exact timing of when you click the fingers. If you click the fingers when the wrist is still in the cocked position Leg Spin is put on the ball, but if the click happens as the hand is unfurled and in a almost straightened position off-spin is put on the ball.

Neither actions are easy and my initial experiments seem to show loads of promise, but the thing is I'm an old bloke and I'm probably limited in my physical ability to do these things to some useful point and I haven't got time on my side to develop these weird varitations. But I think the most interesting thing is the Flipper. To me it seems that in the same way that Peter Philpott (The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling) writes about going round the clock with wrist spin you can do virtually the same thing with the Flipper giving you a whole load of new variations?

One last observation - the clip shows the off-spinner and there's nothing going on with the fingers. What I want to see is a slow motion clip from the same angle for the Doosra.