Nets last night with Grays and Chadwell. A lot more people than last week, but the hall has the capacity for 5 nets and tonight they had three in use one with the bowling machine in use. The Wizard was there tonight bowling some pretty good Leg Breaks in between some wayward one, but his good ones were exceptionally good and man does he get the ball to turn and it's at a relatively high speed. Unfortunately one of the things I fail to do when watching other people is look for and take notice of whether they have other attributes to their bowling dip and deviation off the line of flight (I can't remember the term for that) being the things I should be looking at. Although I did notice that similarly to Wayne his faster balls like mine are flatter. I didn't really stick to my game plan and was throwing a variety of stuff primarily as I was bowling at different people that I was trying to get out. The stuff I was bowling was generally fairly good if not a bit slow which is a frequent criticism of my bowling. I don't think the slowness is that much of an issue because of the comparison with the little kids in our team and how frequent they take wickets. If anything the secret seems to simply not bowl at the same speed all the time and mix up the speeds, but an ability to bowl faster when desired is obviously an asset and it might be one that I am developing with my so called Leg Break.
Leg Break; Again I tried it out at a low level - not using it all the time, but when I did it was surprisingly accurate but has another characteristic that I and the bats noted and that is that it dips but then bounces up exceptionally well. (Noted by Simon and Neil (MPA) last week). The same thing happened this week, there was a new bloke who had a very good eye for the ball and was attacking all the spin bowlers with a good deal of success, but I think I undone him a couple of times with this ball and it's a good ball to use as a surprise ball and it's generally faster. On the odd ocassion this ball was coming good and spinning away to the slips, but to be honest I was looking at it from the perspective of attaining the bounce and was just pleased that this aspect alone was causing problems. I think if I was to concentrate more I could also get the deviation off the line as well, so perhaps I'll do that next week?
The Gipper; More success with this as well. This ball is lofty and slow kind of like the deliveries that the little boys that bowl leg spin at our club get and I've seen them bowl with devastating affect! This draws the bat down the wicket and then allows you to put a faster one in there a few balls later. If they come so far down the wicket and miss cos they've not come far enough it usually has enough spin on the ball to get past them and the wicket keeper should be taking the bails off. I had the video camera with me tonight and shot 8GB of footage and I'm still in the process of editing it all, but I've got at least 2 deliveries of the Gipper on file, so I'll be uploading that to youtube in the next 48 hours or so. Type in someblokecalleddave in youtube and you'll see my bowling vid clips.
The Wrong One: Used this a few times after observing Wayne Simmons's amazing off-spinners - man does he get it to turn! Fast and vicious, but you kind of see that the bats know what he does and they quickly adapt to it. Having seen him do a few of those I tried a few and probably most of them came out crap, so I don't know if that's an indication of the fact that my muscle reflex memory is at last fading and I'm beginning to be more in tune with bowling other variations? Despite the majority of the wrong uns being rubbish one or two in amongst the leg spinning variations (Flipper, Gipper and Leg Break) seemed to cause problems.
The Flipper: My flipper is coming along nicely, it turns well when lofted up and skids in low with it. Currently I'm using it more or less as my stock ball because of the accuracy I get with it and the way I can vary the pace.
One of the other areas I've identified as being an issue is the rotation of the body through the delivery stride as the leg comes round and over. I'd already noted in the David Freedman/Beau Casson clip (wattacoach website) on youtube that they look a this as an issue and then noticed in my youtube clips - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE40FZnfIHI that my rotation is far in excess of 180 degrees. But the Coach we have at nets who I've now found out is Terry Hills (Matts Dad) also pointed it out tonight. He noticed because as I come into the crease at a slight angle and then rotate and affectively over-shoot the 180 degrees. The actual intention on my part is that - yeah I do come in at an angle in order that the delivery is then straight down the wicket at the stumps, but I concede that instead of my rotating foot then landing in line with the stumps I come round further (too far) and end up pointing to slips. Terry advocates I come much wider and don't even bother attempt to bowl down the middle. I'm not so sure whether that's something I want to do as all the coaching I've seen on-line indicates a straight down the middle as close into the stumps as possible approach? But - yeah I'm with him on the over-rotation crticism and it's something I'm happy to work on.
The other thing I noticed is that it looks as though I seem to have slowed down through the delivery and that's something I want to work on as well. The videos are good for this as it's comparable evidence. There is so much still to learn with this game - oh so much! Terry was talking about the Batsmen and capitalising on their weaknesses. I didn't quite catch what he was saying but he was saying when a batsman displays a reluctance to play certain strokes/shots you then as a the bowler should bowl to his weakness. Which I suppose is really obvious but it requires that when you're out there along with everything else that's going through your head including the fact that the last ball was hit for 6 and you'd just bowled 2 wides before that, it's going to take some feat of concentration to also think about these other more subtle tactics. Maybe that's where a captain or the wicket keeper my be useful to draw your attention to such weaknesses?
So all in all not such a successful bowling session in that I didn't get the ball to go past the bats so much as last week - as a bloke on a cricket forum has just said....
"Its annoying re the six hit heros in the nets as they never play that way in a match and then wonder why they cant play spin"!
Most of the blokes in our net seemed to intent on bashing the ball for six and I'm not so sure they'd play the same in a match situation?
One last thing, if you're skint like me or hate Murdoch and his politics and you want to watch the cricket try this... ooxtv.com it's a bit ropey but it works fairly well.
Good on Ravi Bopara for being sold on the IPL for 300,000 quid. Probably means cricket UK will get screwed over in the longer term, but I can't deny the bloke the chance to earn that kind of money so quickly.
No comments:
Post a Comment