Gutted, woke up and it didn't look too promising grey and windy and the pavements were damp from overnight rain. As the morning went on it went downhill, the sky looking more and more as though at any point it would rain. I checked the BBC weather and the prediction for 12.00hrs was that we'd have clear blue skies. At 11.00 it started to rain and it continued to do so. I went into town at 12.00 with Ben and Joe and while I was there received a text from Matt and confirmed the match was off, but then 5 minutes later as I left the shop I was confronted with sunshine and bright blue skies and then behind the shop the grey skies and rain that we'd just been subjected too. I rang Matt and said that here we had blue skies and sunshine now and he said that the team were coming dwon from Cambridgeshire and that they'd called at 11.00 and said they weren't chancing it.
On the way back to the house from the shops I called by The Rec noticing as we were driving along the pavement was quickly drying up. The Rec was empty, the chains round the pitch had been taken down in anticipation of a match but there wasn't a soul there so I wasn't going to get a match there either.
After lunch I went over the Rec with Joe and Ben and threw some balls but soon realised that I have done something to one of the muscles under my forearm. I think this is the result of trying to bowl the Top-Spinning Flipper which requires you to turn your hand 180 degrees so that the bowling action looks like a Karate chop and at the point of release you click the ball towards your face with the Flipper action so that it comes out of the hand with Top-Spin but your forward motion and your arm coming over propel the ball forwards. This is an incredibly difficult ball to bowl and one that Clarrie Grimmett worked on for 12 years trying to perfect.
Terry Jenner said today in an email to my mate Macca .....
I recieved a reply from Terry Jenner and this is what he said
"Dear Macca, I can only say that trying to use the flicking of the fingers whilst delivering the ball overarm seems to lend itself to either side spin release which creates a googly or a backspin release which produces the flipper. Clarrie was a genius but it would have been almost impossible to flick the fingers and create overspin, the way I understand the release of the cricket ball.I often told the kids a Grimmett story re the "flicker" and the "flipper"During the story I would show the flicking finger googly and the flicking finger flipper " severe backspin"I could only demo the googly over a short pitch and had to bowl with a very low arm. Over 22 yards I was hopeless with both.Sorry that is the best i can offer. Regards Terry Jenner.
Which kind of goes some way to explain how difficult. Surprisingly Jenner he admits that he's not particularly good with bowling the Flipper too. I spent about 10 minutes trying to bowl this ball over about 18 yards and was able to produce the top spin and the off-break effect, but as I was bowling it could feel the stress it was putting my arm under and stopped after the ten minutes realising it would take a lot more work getting the line and length right. It now seems I'm suffering. But I would also say in the last week or so I've made major advances with my leg break. Not only have I been able to bowl the ball with increasing accuracy using the big flick with the leg break but I've also seen the potential of the cocked wrist to unfurled hand approach. It seems that this technique uses a slow flick in the unfurling of the cocked wrist and sets the ball spinning correctly with the seam at right angles to the direction of flight quite nicely. Using this technique today I was able to bowl surprisingly good leg breaks with very little effort.
So impressed was I that I took 4 balls over to the wickets at the Rec which for me are notoriously difficult to get the ball to spin on and bowled 4 nice leg breaks! Now whether the wetness assists that or not I don't know, but there is deinitely something in this technique. But with this change of technique and the big flick technique I'm obviously using different muscles so the pain that I'm sufferimg could be due to this as much as the Top-Spinning Flipper. It ended up that the pain was bad enough to stop me from bowling and I now intend to give my arm a rest for a few days.
Other things I'm working on are my rotation
Looking at video footage I shot today this is the positioning of my feet as I go through the rotation as I bowl. B is the foot on which I pivot through the rotation. A starts at this point and comes out and around B and ends up at C. Terry our coach in the nets was saying that I rotate too far round and that the foot position at C shouldn't cross the line (Arrow) and should be pointing down towards the stumps. One of the blokes on the Forums at Big Cricket was saying that this is not the case. I've created this graphic so that he can have a look and comment on my roation/pivot as well.
He suggested to look at footage of Warne bowling but the camera always zooms in at the point that Warne Bowls and you can't see where his foot ends up. But looking at this clip of Beau Casson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaXEw9-XjP4&feature=PlayList&p=2D22DA156267110F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=8 you'll see that his rotation is more or less 180 degrees which is the issue that Terry had with my rotation as I was going further than that e.g across the line.
On the way back to the house from the shops I called by The Rec noticing as we were driving along the pavement was quickly drying up. The Rec was empty, the chains round the pitch had been taken down in anticipation of a match but there wasn't a soul there so I wasn't going to get a match there either.
After lunch I went over the Rec with Joe and Ben and threw some balls but soon realised that I have done something to one of the muscles under my forearm. I think this is the result of trying to bowl the Top-Spinning Flipper which requires you to turn your hand 180 degrees so that the bowling action looks like a Karate chop and at the point of release you click the ball towards your face with the Flipper action so that it comes out of the hand with Top-Spin but your forward motion and your arm coming over propel the ball forwards. This is an incredibly difficult ball to bowl and one that Clarrie Grimmett worked on for 12 years trying to perfect.
Terry Jenner said today in an email to my mate Macca .....
I recieved a reply from Terry Jenner and this is what he said
"Dear Macca, I can only say that trying to use the flicking of the fingers whilst delivering the ball overarm seems to lend itself to either side spin release which creates a googly or a backspin release which produces the flipper. Clarrie was a genius but it would have been almost impossible to flick the fingers and create overspin, the way I understand the release of the cricket ball.I often told the kids a Grimmett story re the "flicker" and the "flipper"During the story I would show the flicking finger googly and the flicking finger flipper " severe backspin"I could only demo the googly over a short pitch and had to bowl with a very low arm. Over 22 yards I was hopeless with both.Sorry that is the best i can offer. Regards Terry Jenner.
Which kind of goes some way to explain how difficult. Surprisingly Jenner he admits that he's not particularly good with bowling the Flipper too. I spent about 10 minutes trying to bowl this ball over about 18 yards and was able to produce the top spin and the off-break effect, but as I was bowling it could feel the stress it was putting my arm under and stopped after the ten minutes realising it would take a lot more work getting the line and length right. It now seems I'm suffering. But I would also say in the last week or so I've made major advances with my leg break. Not only have I been able to bowl the ball with increasing accuracy using the big flick with the leg break but I've also seen the potential of the cocked wrist to unfurled hand approach. It seems that this technique uses a slow flick in the unfurling of the cocked wrist and sets the ball spinning correctly with the seam at right angles to the direction of flight quite nicely. Using this technique today I was able to bowl surprisingly good leg breaks with very little effort.
So impressed was I that I took 4 balls over to the wickets at the Rec which for me are notoriously difficult to get the ball to spin on and bowled 4 nice leg breaks! Now whether the wetness assists that or not I don't know, but there is deinitely something in this technique. But with this change of technique and the big flick technique I'm obviously using different muscles so the pain that I'm sufferimg could be due to this as much as the Top-Spinning Flipper. It ended up that the pain was bad enough to stop me from bowling and I now intend to give my arm a rest for a few days.
Other things I'm working on are my rotation
Looking at video footage I shot today this is the positioning of my feet as I go through the rotation as I bowl. B is the foot on which I pivot through the rotation. A starts at this point and comes out and around B and ends up at C. Terry our coach in the nets was saying that I rotate too far round and that the foot position at C shouldn't cross the line (Arrow) and should be pointing down towards the stumps. One of the blokes on the Forums at Big Cricket was saying that this is not the case. I've created this graphic so that he can have a look and comment on my roation/pivot as well.
He suggested to look at footage of Warne bowling but the camera always zooms in at the point that Warne Bowls and you can't see where his foot ends up. But looking at this clip of Beau Casson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaXEw9-XjP4&feature=PlayList&p=2D22DA156267110F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=8 you'll see that his rotation is more or less 180 degrees which is the issue that Terry had with my rotation as I was going further than that e.g across the line.
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