Day 3 with no bowling (Well a little bit).

The arm felt better today, so this evening bowled a few flippers and flicked a few Leg Breaks and the arms holding out. I'm still going to take it easy tomorrow and maybe on Sunday evening bowl a few easy ones and see how it goes. I've now got to look into exercises to try and ensure that I don't get a re-occurance of the same injury. Hopefully as I bowl more of these Big Flick Leg Breaks the muscles with just get stronger over the weeks and months?

I've been reading Peter Philpotts book 'A Spinners Yarn' and just read the chapter The Spinner Web which talks about the neccesity of wrist spinners to have a back-spinnng ball. The reason given is that in Australia the wickets are generally so hard that Top Spinners or Leg Breaks and Wrong Uns with Top-Spin are pretty much redundant because of the bounce that comes off the wickets negating any possibility of getting an LBW call accepted. Interestingly he talks about the 'Slider' without crediting it with the name he refers to it as the Back-Spinner. He credits Clarrie Grimmett with inventing the Flipper but says that the Flipper because of it's technique is primarily an Off-spinners flick.

Around the same time several Wrist Spinners in Australia were bowling their own versions of a back-spinner Cecil Pepper, Reg Pearce and later Russell McCool but all of them kept it a closely guarded secret. Eventually it seems the conventional back-spinner was the delivery that most relied upon Philpott writes -

• It is not difficult to understand the mechanics of this delivery, but initially, it can be very difficult to achieve. Let me explain.

He goes on to explain how to bowl the back-spinner using his around the loop theory of using the twist of wrist in gradual increments. One of the interesting points he makes is how little the wrist needs to be turned in order to attain a different style of delivery. He talks about the Big Leg break as the ball that is flicked from the hand in order that the ball is released spinning at right angles to the direction of travel.....

• Now think! If we continue the adjustment of the wrist just a degree or two further, continuing to spin with the same leg break action, the ball has some back-spin amidst the side spin. This creates the Leg Spinners dream ball. For it achieves the back-spin effect whilst still using the same orthodox leg-spin action, and does so while spinning a degree or so from the action which creates the widest spinning leg break of all. I think it's fantastic.

So Philpott alludes to the fact that the ball only has to spin slightly backwards here in order to start taking on the characteristics of a back-spinner, yet looks like the Biggun.

Philpott goes on to talk about Benauds Flipper and back-spinner claiming that Benuads orthodox back-spinner was far superior to his Flipper.....

• And only introduced his Flipper late in his career. In my opinion, he never bowled or controlled the Flipper as well as his back-spinner.

Which kind of suggests that the Slider is an easier ball to bowl than the Flipper? The chapter concludes with Philpott again reiterating that to be a good wrist spinner you must have a back-spinning delivery either the Slider or the Flipper.