Lovely day here in the UK, we're just a few days short of November when you'd expect to see frost, even snow some years and generally miserable cold and wet rainy weather, but as it's an El Nino year, so everything is a little weird. It's usually the case that summer lingers as it has today and then suddenly around about November 5th it changes dramatically and the wind shifts from the south to the East and we get unusually good snow.
A couple of days ago both son Joe and Ben joined me over at the home of cricket - Mopsies Park and we had a bat and a bowl, but it was a little damp. So I kept an eye on the weather looking for a better day and that was today. 27th Oct and we had bright sunshine, southerly winds and temperature of about 20 degrees centigrade... Warm!
Today it was Joe and I and we both had a bit of a bat and a bowl. Joe didn't bowl that well as he'd hurt his leading arm shoulder today. But I'd gone with the intention of looking at and trying a few things out. So, let's do this using the Gibbs Reflective Practice Model...
What happened?
We went over to Mopsies Park and used the all weather wicket and had a bowl. I was looking to see how accurate I could bowl, if I could increase my speed a bit and look at getting up on the toes and bring the leg through. I bowled in excess of 250 balls over a 2 hour stint.
Feelings?
Physically - knackered now 6 hours later and was beginning to feel a bit knackered towards the last 50 balls. But, that aside there were some promising things to make note of and consider going forwards. There were some periods where the bowling was going a little haywire, I did at one point bowl 5 balls one after another wide down the legside. But I was able to get things back on track and soon after was bowling decently with a lot of the ball drifting as far as I could make out which is pretty unheard of for me!
Evaluation.
(Good and Bad). I've come away with a range of feelings about how this went and since last night when I originally started this post I've looked at the video footage. Yesterday when I videoed my bowling and batting I had two cameras when bowling - one shooting the batsman's perspective which is something I often do and the other shooting from the side at the bowlers end. It's this perspective that is more interesting and looking at it I can gain a few positives and some negatives...
Good first; overall I'm quite pleased with the development and the basic idea of acquiring a consistent and repeatable action. This I think I've improved massively and looking at the footage each delivery looks pretty much identical. I'd been working on the gather aspect and this too has massively improved along with the leading arm. Bad stuff; It just looks slow and lacking in dynamism and looking at the way my 'landing foot' lands it looks as though it's not square enough to the wicket and I'm therefore not getting my body set-up enough to get side on and therefore the hip rotation is weak.
Anlaysis (Everything relates to bowling right arm wrist spin).
This potentially opens up a new avenue of thought on my bowling action, but at the same time I'm running out of time because the UK winter is all but days away and the chances of their being warm dry weather in the next couple of days is diminishing. Looking at the video here, which is the side on shot with all the revealing information...
The Gather; This was an issue some months ago and sometimes in the confusion of worrying about the run-up and what I was going to do at the crease, I'd find that my arms were flailing around all over the place. This was one of the first aspects of the new run-up that I looked at and in my research I found some basic advice that said to get the leading arm (Left arm) hand up around you right ear at the start of the gather and make sure that you're looking over the outside of the left arm down the wicket at the batsman or whatever it is you choose to look at at this stage of the bowling action.
I'm happy with this and as far as I'm aware this now happens naturally and I don't have to worry about it at all and it sets me up to then reach out long and strong with the leading arm.
Leading Arm: If I was to be super critical I might say that because I've formed a fist in the leading arm component of the action, it might not be as dynamic as an open hand really stretching out and reaching? I'm too worried about that, but it might be something that I look at later on, but for the moment I'm not that bothered by the fist.
The Bound: The bound looks fine and does seem to be one aspect of the action that does look pretty dynamic. If you look around at some of the international spinners some of them have fairly weak looking bounds, some looking like shuffles. It may be the case though that my bound needs to be tweaked slightly in order that I get set up to land more side on?
Landing out of the bound (getting side on).You can see here below as the foot lands it's not exactly at 90 degrees to the wicket and I feel that this doesn't set me up fully to get 100% side-on, which I'm sure is pretty important if you're looking to put loads of action on the ball at release.
Terry Jenner - big stride..
All of the Delivery strides shown here are far longer than mine, which gives me food for thought, but then they're far younger than me and their speed approaching the crease and dynamism through the crease is that much better than mine quite obviously. But is it something I need to consider and explore? Part of me believes so, but it's something I may look into and consider trying and experimenting with.
Rotation: I was unsure of the rotation aspect of my bowling and looking at the video footage from the batsman's end it appeared that I was very front on, but looking at the side-on video, I can see that there's aspects of the rotation that are coming together okay. As identified, my foot out of the bound lands slightly skewed and not exactly at 90 degrees to the wicket.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT1HhHntF2o - Shane Warne at the end of his career in the IPL, his rotation is very evident and in some cases he over-rotates to some extent. Terry Jenner in this video here...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7YC7SF71Q demonstrates a good 180 degree rotation. Both of the rotations seem to be a product of getting right up onto the toes of the braced pivot leg and the leading arm coming down strong. Jenner in his video talks about rotating 180 degrees so that your shoulder ends up pointing down towards the batsman.
Watching the IPL footage I noted with interest how short Warne's follow through is in a lot of instances, but at the same time how smooth. Another thing in the IPL footage is the position of his landing foot out of the bound, it's not always at 90 degrees.
Look at this video here which is very new of Warne bowling - watch the rotation of his hips as he bowls to Michael Clarke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=805j4dAPKUQ I also like the way he bustles in during his run-up something I don't seem to be able to do.
Leg action through the crease
This one is a tricky one with loads of different examples to look at that confuse you and contradict each other. Looking around the internet for examples one thing you shouldn't do is refer to finger spinners as this aspect of their bowling is a desired attribute for them. But for wrist-spinners despite the fact that you'll no doubt be able to find examples of it including Warne there is a definite sense within the Wrist Spinning community that what I'm about to discuss and advocate is the correct way.
First Warne and the incorrect way. Not for him obviously as it worked quite well, but for the rest of us this aspect of his bowling is something I'm increasingly being told not to do. Look at Funkster192's sequence here. At the bottom right-hand corner you'll see that at the end of his action his right leg swings out and round and you'll see many images of him doing this in stills images and video images. But this is not the best way to do it and it increases inaccuracy in your bowling.
But here below is Stuart MacGill who in so many ways was a better bowler than Warne and one aspect that is increasingly recognised as being better is his bowling action as a template to emulate. You'll easily see that MacGills leg doesn't swing out like Warne's - instead it pushes through. Watch the video...
Follow through
Again in this session my follow-through was weak and this is something I need to look at and I suspect it's that overall lack of energy running and the lack of 'Explosive energy' through the crease.
Conclusion
So out of this one of the things that I thought may be worth looking at and exploring is the length of the run-up in order to get more speed and vigour into the whole bowling action. At the start of the season in 2014 I did really well with my bowling and that was partly down to the input of a bloke called Mike Blerkom who kept wicket for us for a few games. Normally he'd play in the 2nd XI rather than the 4th. But he made some useful observations about my bowling and one of them was around the issue of an erratic run-up. At the time I was caught between the notion of (a). A short step in like Terry Jenner, which was slow but produced more spin. Or (b). A much longer run-up - but a perception on my part that the ball spun less and if I got it wrong I'd go for runs and getting it wrong was likely to be more frequent, or (c). A compromise between the 2. Mike said - 'Use the faster run-in' and I did and it worked really well for a number of matches till I damaged my Achilles tendon.
So, today having seen this and realising that it kind of looks like the option (c) a compromise between the two methods, I'm now thinking how difficult would it be to add another 2 steps on to the run-up and look to get more dynamism and speed?
But - is it the case because of my age I'm never going to be able to produce the kind of explosive energy speed a younger bloke would be able to produce?
Action Plan
Upload the video's and see if there's any advice on Bigcricket. Then in the meantime while I'm waiting for feedback I'll explore the idea of working with a slightly longer run-up.
I'll also look at trying to extend the delivery stride and video that.
Finally just look at getting the leg through straight at the batsman and not cocked in the 'Dirty Dog' method.
