Spinning the Ball

Spinning the Ball

With the weather being so abysmal not only rainy but horrible and cold generally when it's not raining, I've not been getting out and about. That coupled with Joe needing attention and lots going on at work at this time of year - courses finishing, A-Level exams and assessing all over the place, there's been very little in the way of opportunities to get outside and throw the ball around. So instead I've been flicking the all and looking at the positions of the wrist and how it effects the spin. I've even been outside spinning the ball up against a wall and watching how the spin effects the movement back off the wall. One of the blokes on the forum I comment on - Macca always recommends this as a way of checking what you're doing and he says of this as a tool "The wall never lies". My wall isn't much cop, I'd like it to be bigger, but it'll have to do and it has worked because bit by bit over the weeks the work I've been putting in flicking the ball from hand to hand and up against the wall seems to be paying off...

Most of my recent practices have gone reasonably well with nothing much to report on that is negative off the back of the sessions, yeah the sessions have hiccups during them, but increasingly I've got the tools to quickly address these and I get my bowling back on track. But, to say that I've got good control over the subtleties of the Leg Break would be a massive over-statement. I can vary to some extent whether I bowl the 45 degree Leg Break or a small leg break with lots of Top-Spin, but it's a fluke if I get the ball coming out at 90 degrees and I certainly couldn't guarantee that I'd be able to do it 2 or 3 times in an over without messing up some other aspect of the bowling action.

But over the last couple of days working with the ball up against a wall, messing around with my grip and wrist presentation I've been able to get to a point where I can produce the ball spinning at 90 degrees. Not only that - but with what looks like more spin than I would normally get. I've tried to today over 22 yards using Hockey Balls and that went really well, so things are looking good. The only issue was that I felt really un-fit as since Joe has had his accident and the rain came, I've done very little in the way of exercise and bowling, so I'm going to have to work on that pretty intensively.

The other thing I've re-visted off the back of reading some of Brian Wilkins book "The Art of Bowling" is the Flipper. There's a very good section in this book on the Flipper and it's origins and it discusses the Variations as described by Grimmett in his 1930's book 'Getting Wickets', I've not read it fully but he discusses the variations and their potential by the looks of it, but somewhat disappointingly he does concede that he didn't dedicate a great deal of time trying them out (Unlike me) and if you're looking for some practical guidance on the Flippers you could look at my Youtube Channel via this video here where I explain my take on some of the obscure variations. Whilst I'm not going to re-open the chest of Flipper Variations I have been looking at the conventional Back-Spinner and I reckon there's a chance that if nailed properly and floated in amongst a series of Over-Spun Leg Breaks the back-spinner which stalls massively could have the lesser batsman playing at fresh air? So I may work with this over the summer if it ever stops raining!

Joke

Not working on building sites and the likes I never hear Jokes anymore offenisve or otherwise, but I saw this posted on Facebook yesterday by 'Pinno the Spinno' and it made me chuckle.

A bloke on a tractor has just driven past shouting "The end of the world is nigh!!" I think it was Farmer Geddon.

Joe's progress

Another good visit to the clinic to get Joe's wounds dressed and assessed.This visit was timed better and as a result we were in and out like a flash. The trick seems to be that you get in there a bit later to miss all the old people who don't have anything better to do than get up at the crack of dawn and form a queue outside the clinic from first light. This is a phenomenon I first noted in Plymouth when I was at Art College. Our house when we was at Art College was almost five miles away from the City centre, so in order to get there for nine we used to have to get on a bus reasonably early with all our gear - bags, cameras, portfolios and all sorts, sometime really weighed down and quite often with a hang over. But the whole process was made ridiculously unbearable by the fact that for some unfathomable reason loads of old people who weren't at college or in employment still seemed to not get the idea of being retired and having a lay-in. So at 07.30 in the morning come rain or shine, sleet or snow, instead of being tucked up snug in bed where we wanted to be, they'd all make their way down the steep cobbled streets of Keyham

Keyham Plymouth.

risking life and limb in the ice and frots to clog up the buses to the brim before we had a chance to get on. Being polite we'd give them our seats and stand there on the bus for over an hour as it swayed and swerved its way into the city centre covered in bags and folders like bleeding donkeys. We never ever got a seat, the bus was always full of all these old people, but where the hell were they going at 7.30 in the morning in the freezing cold? Why couldn't they have waited till after the rush hour - we could have sat down then and saved hundreds of pounds on physio later in life caused by twisted spines where we were forced to stand with all that kit over our shoulders!

So, anyway, having remembered those experiences we tried going in a little later today and it worked, there was one last old bloke in front of us and we were in and out in hardly anytime at all.

Prior to going Joe had also been showing off - showing that he was able to make a few steps with no assistance. He made four steps which is a good start. I think it's probably hard physically to do that, but more of an issue is the confidence and the concern that in doing so is he damaging the join in the bone if it is starting to fuse together at this stage?

One outcome that I've been peased to see is that one of Michelle's friends Lynn bought Joe an Airfix kit (Hurricane WWII) and Joe made that with his Grandad and has now gone on build a Junkers Ju88. This is the kind of stuff I used to do when I was a kid - good wholesome Old Skool stuff!

Even Ben's been inspired and has got his Butt off the settee and away from the poxy XBOX and discovered that keeping it real is fun and interesting and offers a challenge!

Joe during his very short wait today in the clinic and yet another pair of tracksuit bottoms bite the dust.

Joe behind the screen not wanting to look at his leg. Again this was a very low level pain event with Joe recording a pain level of less than 1 out of 10. The nurse was talking about the scabs again today saying that it's quite important that the scabbing is best not allowed to form otherwise this would lead to a situation where there would be an indent in the leg. So when the dressings come off, she pulls away as much of the scab that is beginning to form as she can. As you can imagine this is quite a sore sensation for Joe and yet he only gives it 0.5 out of 10, suggesting that the recent pain was quite bad!

Later in the day Michelle took Joe out for a push in the wheelcahir and some fresh air as we had some respite from the rain during the day. In fact it was warm and sunny - very different from the previous 2 days.

A week of rain

Still the rain continues, all the matches that were arrange at our club have been understandably called off. The paddock is a swamp which isn't good, there's an area on the paddocks wicket that is around half way but erring towards the batsmans end that gets water-logged in the winter. This spell of rain has been like winter rain and so that section is very swampy and will take a fair bit of dry weather to suffer kids playing football on it. I just know that as soon as the weather cheers up a bit the kids will be in there playing football and the wicket will get wrecked in that zone.

Other than that the rain will be good for the grass seed and I suspect that'll come through some time towards the end of next week. Additionally I should be hearing from the council Monday as to whether the money was allocated to fix the fencing around the paddock.

Over the weekend it has almost rained non-stop, not heavy rain particulalrly, just persistent and continual with very little in the way of breaks. As a result our ground 'Mopsies Park' is in a right sorry looking state. As far as I know the drainage at Mopsies isn't known for it efficiency and this is going to take some time to drain away. There's certainly not going to be any training on Tuesday night especially as after a little respite tomorrow, the rain is scheduled to be heavy again on Tuesday. This is pretty unusual by all accounts and I'm under the impression that the ground doesn't normally get this bad in the winter! The images by the way are by Neil Williams and not mine. Nice shots Neil!

#7 Leg Break Joe's progress

Another visit to the clinic Friday afternoon which again fitted in well with my work schedule and meant that I didn't miss out on any teaching and in fact I did a bit of cover teaching for someone else before coming home. Again the same procedure, remove the cover and remove the old dressings. Normally this has been pretty traumatic, but with the prospect of it getting less painful each time, this time it was a lot less painful with no wailing or tears. You can see from the pictures below that the wounds are looking better than last Friday

There's no news on the bones and how they're fixing and we wont have any info on that till Friday 11th May. The image above shows the two areas where there are open wounds still and the stuff on and in the wounds is the seaweed based 'Stuffing' that they use to absorb all of the fluids from the wounds. The nurse was saying that the wounds are best not scabbing up and kept in a state of being moist, which I suppose if you think about it makes sense as that means the fluids are alive and active whereas a scab seems like the latter stages of the repair process?

So this is the two open wounds as they are at the moment and you can see in comparison with last Fridays images that both wounds are healing gradually. The wound to the right (upper) you can see has started to scab up and the nurse removed the scabbing which came out easily with little discomfort along with the seaweed/wooly stuff.

This is 'The Hole' and you can see despite the fact that it looks pretty gruesome it is filling in if you compare it with the shot from the previous set of images. To be honest from the laymans point of view the yellowy orange around the wound looks dodgy, but the nurse would have said something about it if it had been of any concern.

For the next two weeks it's the same format as this week - visits to the clinic to have the dressings removed and replaced and the progress monitored... Monday and Wednesday mornings and Friday afternoon. We've had Joe's school ring on Friday and Michelle has enquired about whether there is any chance that he could go into school if only for a few hours each day. The school is going to get back to us on Monday with an answer, so fingers crossed there may be something they can do for Joe.

 

Check out my other blog here - this is all about Leg-spin bowling and nothing else. Double click on the image below.

 

Drift Legspin bowling

Drift - Wrist Spin Bowling; The Leg Break


So, after many months of coming back to this and asking questions of people and looking at the research involved I've come to a conclusion.


There are several on-line academic articles on the subject, but because they are academic articles they usually require higher levels of maths and physics knowledge in order access the information and then turn it into something that the layman can get to grips with. Of these articles one of the most respected and often cited is the one produced by Vaughan Roberts which you'll find here if you can make sense of it and present it in practical terms e.g. slant the ball so, angle the seam towards y, bowl into the wind, bowl around 45mph and get it a massive rip and then say why, without having to resort to using Reynolds numbers and the likes please do so and get back to me on www.bigcricket.com!


For the moment, although I'll still look around for the answers and explanations presented in a way that I can comprehend I've given up on this task and here's why. It does seem when you look around that there are articles on the dynamics of spinning balls, but for the most part the research is looking at footballs, golf balls, baseballs and cricket balls - but only in relation to 'Swing' and seam bowling and 'Dip' in relation to Spin bowling. Drift it seems is so complex that there is a limited amount of info and as with the Vaughan Roberts article this is complex and inaccessible.

There are a number of phenomena described in Physics that work on the ball whilst it's in flight and these can be tested using air flow and smoke in wind tunnels and water flow and dyes in tanks. These explain and demonstrate visually the effects of the spinning ball in simple terms and are readily understood when explaining dip with Top Spin and the way the ball travels further without dipping early with Back-Spinners like the Vertical seamed Flipper and the Orthodox Back-Spinner as described by Peter Philpott in his book 'The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling'. Furthermore these theories which are described as being The Magnus Effect can be turned on their side and demonstrate 'Swerve' creating a spinning effect which looks like Drift at first look, but is (According to Vaughn Roberts) totally different to Drift. 'Swerve' is demonstrated exceptionally clearly in this video here in a series of experiments conducted by  professor Rod Cross at Sydney Uni. Unfortunately for us as Wrist Spinners Rod Cross's background is in Baseball, so his key area of interest is in this sport and as a result he doesn't seem to be aware of Warnes Ball of the century and drift. I'm trying to get in touch with him, to try and get him to do a Youtube explanation, because I reckon if he was to do so, he may be able to produce the kind of explanation we could all access and comprehend?

The nail in the coffin though came about when totally frustrated with getting no-where I returned to Bob Woolmers Art and Science of Cricket which is a massive tome of a book published in 2008. I re-read the sections on the aero-dynamics of cricket balls and again struggled to understand the descriptions. Again, I'm not sure whether it's just me or not, but the graphics they use I find very difficult to visualise in practical terms, which is a common source of frustration and confusion when trying to understand what is being proposed in many of the explanations. This very point is raised by a fellow blogger and forum commentator 'Pencil Cricket' who himself with some educational background in physics has had a stab himself at offering an explanation here. Pencil cricket too has raised issues around Woolmers explanations both graphically and within the written content, pointing out that whilst Woolmer was an excellent coach he was never a physicist or a Wrist Spinner and looking through his bibliography and credits at the back of the book Vaughan Roberts isn't recorded as a source. But in conclusion at the end of both the 'Swing' and the 'Drift' Sections, Woolmer writes...

In the end, the mystery remains (Swing)

in the final analysis, all these theories and hypotheses are exactly that: to our knowledge, no-one has yet shown conclusively (using a swinging delivery produced by a swing bowler in a real match) that these factors discussed above provide exclusive explanations for why the ball does or doesn't swing. The explanations given here are based on solid principles in physics, but because it is not yet possible to measure all these variables on a swinging delivery out of doors, the real contribution to the generation of swing of each of the listed theoretical factors remains largely unproven.

The Magnus Effect and the ball of the century

What happened from an aero-dynamic point of view? Generally, a ball moving away from us in a horizontal plane, and spinning left to right (Anti-clockwise) moves to the left (Equivalent to the off-side in cricket) and not to the right side (Leg Side). This can be seen when a right-sided kicker in football takes a penalty and strikes theball on its rights side. The ball always curves to the left. But in this case, Shane Warne spin the ball from right to left - yet it deviated to the right (Leg Side). Had it deviated to the left (As expected), Gatting would have been in line to play an appropriate shot.
       In order for the delivery to drift towards leg, the wake of the ball must have been disturbed upwards towards the off-side. How this happens is not yet well described in the scientific literature. Thus, some speculation is warranted.

Bob Woolmer, Bob Woolmer's Art and Science of Cricket, 2008, New Holland Publishers, London

I think one of the things that works against us is that, as a breed within the game Wrist Spinners are rare. So it follows that perhaps it'll take a Wrist Spinner in the future to study Physics to PHD level to conduct the research? The chances of that happening do seem to be on par with finding a colony of Dodo's alive and thriving on Canvey Island! Spin bowling having nearly died in the 1970's & 80's has re-emerged primarily because of Warne and is making a good comeback especially in the T/20 arena. So maybe it will happen, or maybe one of the organisations looking to develop spin will finance such research - hopefully over-seen by someone who actually bowls it and produces drift readily.

In the short term I'll continue to post links to sites that look at the physics involved or illustrate the effects of spin in bowling.

http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/11156/1/paper_2.pdf
http://nsezeruzol.etu.edu.tr/publications/AIAA04-2228.pdf
http://people.stfx.ca/smackenz/Courses/DirectedStudy/Volleyball%20Project/Choppin%202010%20Generating%20football%20Cd%20profiles%20without%20a%20wind%20tunnel.pdf
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/BGH/reynolds.html
http://iweb.tms.org/ED/01-5085-185.pdf

Maybe I'll engage with discussions on empirical observations, Woolmer in his analysis of Warnes BoC proposes that the ball was spin at almost 90 degrees to the direction of flight and that the axis of the spin was either tilted upwards or downwards which if was the case, kind of ties in with some of the data I found on the effects of laminar flow, but still goes nowhere near explaining drifts direction being opposite to the spin direction.

If you're looking for instructions as to how to get more drift, the guidance does seem to be fairly vague. Spin it hard is the main advice and that comes from all of the protaganists. A lot of people say that the seam alignment should be at 90 degrees, but some people including me and Woolmer reckon this works against getting drift. The seam slightly off-set from 90 degrees would help to facilitate some of the physics - laminar flow. The axis shouldn't be horizontal to the flight path either and should be experimented with angled upwards or downwards slightly - again this crops up in the analysis of Warnes Ball of the centrury in Woolmers book. Increadibly there's no readily available footage of anyone bowling employing drift using High Definition - high speed cameras so that any of this can be substantiated.

This is a stub which is part of a bigger/earleir (out of date) piece on drift - see here http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/leg-spin-bowling-drift.html

Check out my other blog here - this is all about Leg-spin bowling and nothing else. Double click on the image below.

 

#7 Joes Leg Break progress

Another visit to the clinic to get Joes wounds cleaned up and dressed. Again pretty much the same story e.g. evidence that the wounds are healing slowly. The big gaping hole looks to be the one that is healing best, but really I need to take a picture of it to compare with the shot taken last Friday. The exit wound looked different today, there's a messay area which would, if left to the air, scab over and form a big deep scab. The process of re-dressing the wound means that they cover it with the special cotton wool/seaweed stuff, which then absorbs the blood tissue, but this then has to be removed and as they do so it pulls away any of the scabbing as such. So of the two wounds the 'Better looking' of the two looked as though it was worse this time, but that may only be due to the fact that it's very clean and you can see the extent of the damage to the skin? Re-assuringly though, the nurse said that it's going okay and there wasn't any evidence of any sceptic or poisoning issues.

On the pain front, Joe was in the usual amount of pain, maybe slightly more, but it's relatively short lived, only for the duration as they removed the old dressings. Overall in himself he's good, he gets fed up not doing anything and not being able to get around, but more and more he feels better and yesterday he was asking if he could put some weight on his bad leg and I've had to say no. Additionally he moves around now with far more confidence and the panic attacks have gone as far as I can tell. Speaking to a bloke at work he was saying that we should make him aware that the damaged leg is going to lose all it's muscle and bulk and will be skinny and weak once out of the cast. He said that no-one had mentioned this when he was younger and that when the cast came off he was a bit traumatised at the way his leg looked making him feel like he wouldn't ever return to fitness. I also asked another bloke at work who rides motorbikes and has as usual had an array of accidents breaking bones all over his body and he was saying that he too had previously broken the bones in the same part of the body as well as both ankles and this had never affected his ability to play sports and his breaks were done in his 20's and 30's. So, that was re-assuring. I showed him the blog and the pic's and again he said 'He's young - everything is on his side for a good and full recovery', but one of the things that will help him is by keeping positive, that'll aid his return to full fitness.

Had a bowl this evening...

Today should have been the first outside practice for Ben and Joe this evening at the clubs ground. Obviously Joe wouldn't be going, but I was really looking forward to going with Ben, but then this morning just after a bit of a down-pour Michelle sent me an email saying that she'd heard that the club was notifying everyone that due to the water-logged outfield at Mopsies park training was off. Gutted.

So instead after dinner or tea as I call it we went over the Rec with 'Harry Bat' and had a bit of a knock about with the readers windballs and it went quite well. Bowled with my faster approach to the wicket and just bowled naturally only really looking to do a few things (1) Land with the my foot sideways out of the bound (2) Get up on the toes in the pivot and (3) Bring the arm through past the hips in the follow through and it all worked really well with accurate bowling for the most part with loads of turn off the surface with the spin.

Rain rain and more rain

As expected lots of rain today and predicted to carry on through the rest of the week. I was looking forward to taking Ben to his U13's training session tomorrow evening, but that seems highly unlikely as the weather is so bad and the ground is bound to be water-logged in a best case scenario. More likely is that it'll be raining - which then means any pre-season friendlies and inter-club games will be un-likely to happen.

The upside of the rain is that the paddock will get a good drenching and the seed will get a good start.

#6 Joes Leg Break - progress

Today was one of the scheduled visits to the local clinic to have the wounds dressed. It looks like there's to be a regular pattern to the visits now and they tie into my work pattern fairly neatly and only cause a little disruption, whereas Michelle has had to stay at home to look after Joe and it's completely screwed up her work pattern and she's now getting stressed out about the money situation.

But, the visit today was a good one - the gaping great wound where the leg split open http://www.mpafirsteleven.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/joes-progress-5-pictures.html looked a lot better than when we last saw it and it was photographed on Friday. The consultant said that he expected that it would start to in-fill itself over the coming weeks and that is what looks to be happening and as far as I was concerned the wound looked to be progressing well and not looking as deep and open as it did last Friday. The wounds where the Tibia came through the skin at the shin are looking very clean and healthy and look to be healing fast. The process of cleaning was far less traumatic with far less wailing and screaming, in fact there was hardly any wailing this time and more griting his teeth and moaning about it. Much of it though is psychological - he's expecting it to be excrutiatingly painful and reacts to just being touched, but then settles down a bit as they get under-way and start cleaning it.

We're getting the hang of getting him in and out of the car, but with this massive cast it still is a two person job and it looks as though this process needing both of us will have to continue for the coming two weeks. Next visit is Wednesday, I'll update again then.