Wrist Spin Bowling

Paddock Pre-Season

2012-01-22T19:59:00.003Z

It's been very dry and mild this winter and as a result we're expecting a drought this summer unless of course we have an odd summer and it rains all the time. But, recent summers have been pretty good with lots of sunshine and fine weather, so there's no real reason for that to change. As a result the Paddock isn't swampy as it was last year and its lush and green (Where there is grass) because nature thinks its spring - 11 degrees today! So yesterday I went over and had a look to see how it was recovering with no seeding done last Autumn.

As you can see, the crease area at the batting end is slowly recovering, but it's not going to be ready for April/May. I'm going to have to get some seed down as early as possible. The bowling end isn't so much of a problem as we've got some very heavy duty rubber matting and that's going to be at the bowling end where it normally gets worn. We'll just bring that backwards and forwards I reckon. We'll have to see.

Sidearm Pro + Readers Windball

2012-01-22T19:37:00.004Z

Another pre-season knock-about and a try out with a range of different balls with the Sidearm. We've been mixing balls up when we've given it a go and one of the balls that seemed to be more difficult to use was the Readers Windballs, which, if you could use them would be ideal, rubber and hard wearing and relatively weighty. So today over at out usual venue (The Tennis courts at the Rec) I gave the Readers Windball a go to see if it would work.

For some reason and I suppose it's the weight and the size, it requires a slightly different approach, but within about 7 balls I was getting sussed and from then on the accuracy was spot on and the Readers wind ball is another contender for use with kids or training without having to get all padded up. It does seem that with a bit of work most of the balls you would use in cricket be it training balls or cricket balls, you can with a little bit of work get the hang of all of them. So the need to buy the other variations of the Sidearm does seem suspect. If you buy the most expensive one - the Pro version it does seems as though it is potentially very versatile and usable with a whole range of balls.

Stuart Macgill & Bradd Hogg

2012-01-20T23:19:00.001Z

Down Under it seems like Old Boys Stuart Macgill & Brad Hogg have made a pretty big impression on Australias Big Bash T20 comp and are so full of themselves for having shown the young - uns how it's done they're following Shane Warnes example and have put themselves up for auction in the IPL and are valued at around $100, 000

http://www.bigcricket.com/community/threads/stuart-macgill.64052/

I for one have got my fingers crossed that both of them will get picked and we'll see some quality Wrist Spin in the IPL.

Pre Season Paddock

2012-01-18T22:10:00.001Z

I had a quick look at the Paddock last weekend and it's looking okay, nowhere enough grass at the batting end, but the rest of it looks reasonable. With the incredibly dry winter, it's not become a swamp this winter which is good and all I need to do now is get my timing right with regards to seeding it this spring. I'm thinking get the seed down at the end of Feb and keep my fingers crossed that it takes and that we don't get a very cold March and the grass gets established? I'll have to do some research and see if that's the right approach.

The fence which was mysteriously ripped down over August Bank Holiday hasn't been replaced and that's potentially an issue as any cover drives or balls through the offside are going to end up denting the cars that the commuters from Billericay all park just adjacent to the Paddock. I'll have to look out for some more scaffolding netting and perhaps get that up when we have knock about in there, the downside of that being its more aggro putting it all up and getting it put away again.

Follower No.13 signed up this week. Welcome mate hope you check out the blog everynow and then and get something from it.

2012-01-15T22:50:00.000Z

Another cold but sunny day today and while the kids were out on their scooters I went over the Rec to have a bit of a bowl and a practice with the Sidearm again. They were over near the Rec and once I turned up they spotted me and came over and one thing led to another and without much prompting they were getting involved. Initially Joe came over and had a go with the Sidearm with me batting. He had a little success with it, but generally they were pretty wayward. There's a tendency to try and increase the speed once you've got a couple on target and this is what Joe was doing. Joe had a go facing it with the Red Slazenger Balls and did okay, but the star of the last couple of days including today was Ozan, the kid that doesn't do sport. Ozan, no matter where the ball went - leg-side or off-side, he got some bat on it. Leg-side or on his legs especially, he was pretty adept flicking the ball down to fine leg or whacking it and losing one ball over the top of square leg for 4! So he looks promising for the summer for our knockabouts, we just need to instill some confidence and get him to buy some box pants and a box. You never know - by the end of the summer he might be batting for Billericay School and calling himself a cricket player, that would be a right result!

We all finished up having a bowl and bat batting in pairs looking to practice good communication and running singles, Joe did well in that he stayed in for the longest and he made a couple of runs here and there.

Sidearm Pro cricket

2012-01-14T18:02:00.004Z

Nets is in a couple of weekends, so we got out to the Rec Tennis courts for a bit of a knockabout today as it was sunny. We took the Sidearm Pro and gave that a run out in amongst our own bowling using the Slazenger Red Balls.

Previous testing with the red Slazenger Balls which are tennis ball size and covered in fur like a tennis ball but far heavier with nowhere near the same bounce, had worked out okay. During the initial test last week it looked promising in that I could get the ball on or around the off stump relatively easy.

So today with Joe, Ben, Kieran and Ozan we gave the combination another go and it worked out well. Within a few goes I was able to get very good accuracy. Joe, Ben, Kieran and Ozan all had a go with the Sidearm with differing degrees of success and enthusiasm against me, but overall from my point of view it was pretty disappointing. But for them with me being able to use the Sidearm with good accuracy it looks like a very promising tool. So much so that after the session I went over to Sports Direct and bought another 10 of the Red Slazenger Balls.

Spin Bowling Video Links

2012-01-13T22:30:00.003Z

Sidearm Pro Update

2012-01-08T23:46:00.002Z

If you've seen the posts and the comments over at bigcricket I've made over the last few weeks, you'll have seen that I was concerned slighty over the issue of using the Sidearm in conjunction with training with kids. The Sidearm Pro works really well with balls around standard cricket ball size including Hockey balls which I've been using on tarmac in order to get used to the device. Outside the house mucking around and trying it out with different balls we soon found that we could also use the Sidearm with Readers windballs accurately with only a slight modification in the slinging action. This lead me to visualising a practice scenario in the Paddock and I soon realised this would be enhanced if we had a lot of windballs so we could sling a load before we collected them up, but then that would mean buying £36 worth of windballs. The obvious solution would have been to use tennis balls, but we'd tested those and they're unusable with the Sidearm Pro.

The next solution I came up with was to maybe look at buying a Dog Throwing version which I know can chuck tennis balls and could be used with Slazenger Red Ball which have far less bounce and a lot more weight than a regular tennis ball. But this afternoon when I went over the Rec tennis courts for a bowl I took three of the Slazenger Red Balls and gave them a go and lo and behold they work and at £1.00 a go I reckon I can stretch to 12 of those for practice with Ben and Joe this spring. This also means that the Slidearm Pro despite being designed for full size balls seemingly is probably going to be okay with the youth size cricket balls as well.

The 2012 season starts here.

2012-01-08T23:42:00.004Z

Here in the UK we're in the depths of winter, it's nowhere near as cold as it was last year and todays been relatively mild at 11 degrees. With winter nets approaching at the end of this month I've been out and had a bit of a bowl, probably did the equivalent of about 10 - 12 overs. It went okay considering how unfit I've got in the last 6-8 weeks. Having said that, all my niggles seem to have repaired themselves, the knee feels pretty good - no soreness from that, my plantar fasciitis is pretty much under control and non existent, so as long as I get a good warm up regime in place I'm looking forward to a better year this year, as the last two, what with the root and branch changes to my bowling action along with the recovery from the Googly syndrome, meant that I've had a bad couple of years.

At the moment my focus is going to be on what's happening bodily, out of the bound I'm looking to get nicely side on, looking over the leading arm shoulder. I'm going to try and extend the length of my stride a little into the pivot and there I'll be looking to get nice and tall and up on to the ball of the foot, the final bit will be the arm speed factor. I bumped into my protoge Frank Farrington today with his Dad as I was finishing up and he grabbed a ball saying that it was the first time he'd thrown a ball since late Oct and the thing I noticed straight away was his fast arm speed, he really whips his arms over and I reckon this has a lot to do with his success as a wrist spinner. So this is another key area I'll be looking at. The objective between now an April when the season starts will be to tie all these things together and get the action through the crease nice and smooth and consistent. Some upper body fitness work is going to be required as that seems to be the weak point tied in with some core strength work. So it'll planks and rotational press ups for me and as from tomorrow I'll be attending Yoga classes as well.

Oh yeah yesterdays post re Frank on Google - i had a look tonight and he was in the 3rd place slot!

Frank Farrington English Wrist Spinner

2012-01-07T23:49:00.004Z

I've just been posting over on the spin pages on Big Cricket and a new bloke on there who has a Youtube channel is looking for obscure Spin Bowlers. So, helping him out, I thought I'd compile a list of Aussie Wrist Spinners and then English Wrist Spinners using Google searches. When I got to the Google search I typed in List of English Wrist Spinners and guess what came up as the fifth most common result............

http://www.google.co.uk/#pq=list+of+australian+wrist+spinners&hl=en&cp=16&gs_id=19&xhr=t&q=list+of+english++wrist+spinners&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&rlz=1R2GGIE_enGB454&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=list+of+english++wrist+spinners&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=f74db0825e4a2c00&biw=1920&bih=965

Which has Frank Farringtons bowling vid on my youtube channel 7th in the world! Classic. Frank - if you're reading this ..... No Pressure mate!

Sidearm - Cricket

2011-12-29T14:28:00.005Z

Gutted, somehow I've lost my adverts, so I'm not getting paid for my blogging at the minute and I've just realised that I can increase my income through blogging my writing entries like this one - ah well never mind, I'll have to try and figure out how to reinstate my ads.

So, on our joint Christmas present list was the 'Sidearm Pro'..

Which as you can see is like one of those things you see people chucking balls around for dogs. But these things which retail for around £30 here in the UK are longer and more rigid in the arm than your cheap dog jobs and enable old gits and spin bowlers to get their own back when using against seam bowlers (My Older son Ben). If you've seen people on fields with the Dog versions of these you wouldn't immediately see that they'd have any real application in cricket, but if you check this link here you'll see that they have very useful applications in cricket training, primarily bowling, but if you look at the other side arm links on Youtube you'll see that its usable in fielding and wicket keeping too. http://www.youtube.com/watchv=FXrpbpXuZ7w&feature=related

We've only had it a few days and I've been practicing with it for probably an hour now just using a single ball and I'm able to get the ball within inches of the off-stump fairly regularly. Ben my older son has also got the hang of it quickly and its going to be a boon to him as neither my younger son Joe or I can bowl any where near quick and as a result Bens batting skills are limited. Hopefully, if both Joe and I get the hang of using the side-arm our batting is going to improve?

One of things that seems to be implied with the Sidearms is that the pro version is only usable with cricket balls but we've been using it perfectly well with windballs and hockey balls and I'd say that if you were going to get one go for the pro version which seems to give you more options.

You can get them from here

This afternoon I had a go on my own with a bucket of 12 hockey balls and that went really well. With a little more practice I'm going to be pretty adept at using this Side Arm, I just need to get Ben and Joe using it as well so that I can face some fast stuff! It'll be interesting to see if these turn up at the club as they seem to be pretty useful bits of kit. The only thing is, they negate the need for a bowler, so if one of these was being used in a net, it would deny bowlers the opportunity to have a bowl. They're really batting training specific, so in the context of a club situation they would possibly deny bowlers the chance to have a bowl?

Welcome aboard G-Man!

2011-12-28T23:21:00.004Z

I've been away over Christmas, so haven't had the chance to Blog and have just logged on for the first time in a week or so and noted I have another follower who I believe could be G-Man from Basildon & Pitsea Cricket Club! Cheers for your endorsement Graham, hope you have a look in every now and find something useful or entertaining!

Leg Spin Bowling - Drift

2011-11-28T21:23:00.020Z

Drift - Leg Spin Bowling (Work in Progress)

Update 9/12/11 - That's not bad this comes up 7th in the Google search for Spin Bowling Drift

One of the points of confusion when describing aspects of spin bowling is the direction that the ball seam is pointed in and the method by which we can visualise this aspect. In order to simplify this on the forum I write and comment on I've suggested recently that we talk about the direction in terms of minutes on a clock. This relates to looking down on to the pitch from above. The pitch therefore would run from 0' to 30' Top to bottom.

This is the phenomenon best exemplified here with the famous ‘Ball of the Century’ bowled by Shane Warne. As Warne bowls the ball its initial trajectory sees the ball head off towards Gatting on a conventional straight line, but then towards the end of its flight it veers (Drifts) towards the Leg-side to then ‘Break’ back on to the stumps. It’s this late veering towards the right as the bowler sees it that is Drift. The batsman on the other hand sees the ball veer off to his left as it dips prior to bouncing.

The more you watch videos and read about spin bowling the more frequently you’ll hear about drift and the sense you’ll get from commentators and protagonists’ is that it’s an attribute that you should have as a part of your bowling. But, there’s a universal problem, all of these people mention it and comment on it, but no-one really seems to pin it down, no-one really says - 'this is what you do in order to make the ball drift' apart from the basic 'Spin it hard'. If you start looking a little deeper and changing your search criteria you get the other side of the coin and that's the Heavy on the Physics approach. Dig a little deeper still, and you then end up with Baseball. The reason for this seems to be that they (The Yanks) seem to take far more interest in the technicalities of their sports, maybe its that whole 'Jocks v Geeks' thing that we seem to get fed as a generalisation about the USA? It could be that, if you're not that clever academically you then seek a route through education studying sports science and playing sport at college? As a consequence, it seems as though there's a lot more information over there on the subject of spinning sphere's - specifically baseballs. But what they seem to do slightly better than us is find a middle ground between the 'Spin it hard' explanations and the 'Magnus effect/Physics' explanations. So hopefully I'm going to be able to come up with a good explanation.

The reason I'm trying to get this across in a different manner is in part due to the fact that I'm whats called a Kinaesthetic Learner and understanding complex stuff like this requires a connection with the actual practice, I can't just read it and fully comprehend it and the process has to include tactile experiences. In addition I find my level of comprehension to be enhanced by connecting the reading with the physical and then explaining it in my terms and this is what this blog entry is - a part of the process of comprehending.

To those of us with an enquiring mind including me, this vagueness "Spin it Hard" isn’t good enough, I want to know how and why, what, when and who? How do you make the ball drift and can I ‘turn the drift on’ and can I ‘turn the drift off again’ at will? Surely, if you can have that degree of control you’re moving towards becoming a master of your craft?

So, with these unanswered questions and the whole vagueness issue, I set about looking at what is out there by way of explanation and trying make sense of it and ascertain if it is possible or even desirable to produce drift on demand and what is it you need to do to produce it.

The 'Spin it Hard' section.

Here's a few starting with Terry Jenner - http://terryjenner.blogspot.com/2009/01/drift.html the interesting details in this account are the fact that he focuses primarily on aspects associated with body actions and position - shoulder rotation and side on alignment. He mentions that Top-Spin wont produce drift, as that creates dip and he says that seam alignment needs to be side ways. In this video here (Cloverdale series) he simplifies it, stripping it down to 'If you spin the ball hard it can drift in to the RH batsmans leg stump and spin away sharply towards leg stump'. (1:44 seconds into the vid).

This site here compiled by Julian Fountain is another useful one. It's interesting in that at the start of this website he too questions the lack of understanding associated with Drift and the Magnus Affect, which is the scientific explanation. I find his simple scientific explanation still difficult to grasp in relation to drift. I can see how it works with Top-Spin with the seam aligned between 30 and 60 minutes, but once I try and get my head around the seam aligned at somewhere between 45' and 55' I can comprehend this would still produce the dip that we need, but why it veers off course away towards the Leg-side (drift) I'm still unclear and his explanation doesn't clarify it for me. There's a video on the site here, but I've got to say I think this is too much, yeah maybe the students that compiled the video can make some sense of it and explain it, but to the layman all that maths is way over the heads of most people and serves no useful purpose to the majority of us. One of the more interesting aspects of the video is the sequence at 2:35 where the kid kicks the ball and it's shown in slow motion. There's virtually no spin on the ball at all and yet the ball appears to initially veer slightly to our left as we view it and then finally very late in its flight sharply to its right! I'll return to this point a little later. But for me that's a very basic contradiction "Spin the ball hard and it'll drift". Er, this ball barely spins and yet it drifts at the end of its flight?

This video looks at Warnes ability to spin the ball and to get it to drift http://www.bigcricket.com/community/threads/drift.62786/ it doesn't get that technical, but there's some good footage of his release in slow motion and Jenner talks about his drift in rudimentary terms.

Going back to the application of basic spin e.g. Top Spin or Back - Spin this science video has an excellent demo on the affects of back-spin and the magnus affect and how it makes the spinning object stay in the air, but still for me has no bearing on diagonal spin and how this makes an object move laterally through the air. *Edit - I've just sussed a visual explanation that satifies me and could be up-loaded as a very basic video explanation!

The saving grace is that at the end he reverts back to the standard advice -

Spin bowlers use the magnus effect, perhaps sometimes unknowingly, to create drift & turn. They do it by imparting revolutions onto the ball; the more revolutions the bowler can make the ball do in flight, will directly affect how much drift (and consequently turn once the revolving ball hits the pitch) is achieved. So it basically boils down to making the ball rotate in the air. The more efficiently the ball rotates, the better. Also, the ball will behave differently depending how the seam is presented; i.e. if the ball is spun across seam, as opposed to down seam, it will cause a difference in the air pressure waves.

http://www.catcheswinmatches.com/coaching/spin/

I've also written this which will need to be incorporated and edited , but in the short term might be worth a look at. http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com/2010/03/clarrie-grimmett-on-drift-getting.html

To put it simply as Menno Gazendum says "The technical term for this is called the “Magnus Effect” but all you need to know is that the harder you spin the ball and the more flight you give the ball the more it will drift".

Bibliography/Links

http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~cross/cricket.html
http://www.coachesinfo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=280:introduction&catid=84:cricket-bowling&Itemid=159
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/258645.html
http://www.caiciss.co.uk/ball_sports.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siis85mMomw 3:18' The Knuckle Ball (Baseball)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICty6LAi7Jw&feature=related slow mo footage of Knuckle ball (Wakefield).
http://www.collegehillgames.com/what_is.htm - Blitzball (reduced drag caused by textured surface a la' Golf Balls.
http://www.collegehillgames.com/pitches/curve.htm - Curve Ball using Blitzball instructions using Top-Spin
http://witchesofagnesi.blogspot.com/2008/10/aerodynamics-of-baseball-in-flight.html - this is interesting in that there's an explanation as to how to increase 'Drift' in a curve ball through the alignment of the seams on a baseball. The ball can be pitched with a 4 seam alignment or a 2 seam alignment, the 4 seam alignment then starts to take on the attributes of a golf ball or a blitz ball in that it has a rougher surface presented to the air causing reduced drag.
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~cross/ This is the bloke at The University of Sydney.

This here is one of the seminal pieces on the subject and is definitely worth a look - http://vaughan.roberts.name/sites/default/files/Physics%20of%20bowling%20cricket%20balls%20-%20Part5.pdf

This is another good article written by my on-line mate 'Pencil Cricket' who has studied Physics - http://pencilcricket.blogspot.com/p/magnus-effect-in-leg-spin-bowling.html this is more accessibe to the Layman than most.

Note to self - Illustrate the Magnus effect turned on its side like the Benuad Flipper with the ball spinning forwards with Top-Spin, video from above and rotate the ball from the Benaud Flipper through to the 52' angled Leg Break. Note observations regarding the RPM of Baseballs in comparison to cricket balls spinning.

To be continued..............

Lignum Vitae heavy bails

2011-11-26T22:52:00.002Z

Checking through my kit at the end of the season, I noticed that my set of heavy bails which are made of a wood called Lignum Vitae had a bail missing. Having not found the bail, I decided that I'd get another set and my initial search wasn't successful. I had another look tonight and eventually found that Readers were one of the companies that sold them and after some searching I found an obscure umpires website where they still seem to have a few in stock, so I've placed an order for another set. But, during my search I discovered that the Lignum Vitae which is found in the regions around the Carribean is an endangered and protected tree and is being phased out as an option for cricket bails. There's a new option available for heavy bails, but what it is made of I don't know.

Amol Rajan - The Twirlymen - Flippers

2011-11-21T21:22:00.004Z

I've had Rajan's book The Twirlymen quite some time now and only read a little of it, but I've currently got a bit of time on my hands and I've been reading it and gradually getting through it. The book has got some really good stuff on The Flipper and its history which is all new to me, and makes complete sense, but the stuff where he explains what a Flipper is and how different people bowl the flipper and who bowled what variations when - hmmm I'm not so sure. I'm making notes on the bits that I think he's got wrong and I'll be cross referencing with Grimmetts info and stuff that Grimmett has discusssed with Ashley Mallett. One bit I had to smile at was his claim that the Off-Spinning Flipper had never been realised even by Grimmett. On page 185 he makes the point that Grimmett didn't invent the Flipper and that a number of other commentators falsely have accredited the delivery to Grimmett. He goes on to make a very reasonable point that the Flipper precedes Grimmet by many decades, but seemingly misses the point or at least fails to emphasise what it is that Grimmett did for the Flipper. The Flipper was introduced to Grimmett by Geroge Simpson Hayward, who I may have said previously elsewhere played for Essex, but I think the story is that Grimmett met him Essex, although I'm not 100% sure about that either. But GSH was one of the last under-arm bowlers and in 'Lob Bowling' spin had been imparted on the ball using the now familiar Flipper Click for decades. Through the discussion with GSH Grimmett saw that there was potential to take the Under-arm Flipper - over arm. Grimmett was an exponent of practicing all of the conventional wrist spin variations under-arm in order to explore the nuances of wrist position and its affect on the ball (Philpotts round the loop). So, seeing the George Simpson Hayward Flipper being bowled in different wrist positions to produce leg, off, stop and back-spin he saw that there was resonance with the conventional wrist spin variations and how they are produced with differing wrist angles.

So, yes Rajan is correct in that Grimmett never invented the click motion with the fingers, but Grimmett was the bloke that took it over-arm and turned it into the variations we see today. What is interesting in Rajans account on page 185 is the tract of text where he seems to be quoting Grimmett. In the text Grimmett seems to be explaining that he never unleashed any of his Flippers until he had them fully under -control and that the one that he went with, was the Off-Spinning Flipper, primarily it seems in order to negate having to bowl The Wrong Un, which according to Rajan Grimmett felt was physically demanding and likely to cause injury. Additionally Grimmett preferred this Flipper because it came out of the front of the hand like the Leg Break and reduced the potential for the Googly Syndrome.

My understanding from reading 'Getting Wickets' 1930 was that Grimmetts preferred option was in fact the Top-Spinning variation which was noted by Bradman later, but in 1930 at the time of publication all of the Flippers with the exception of the Flying Saucer variation (Benaud) were in development still and it would be a long time before Grimmett used one in first class cricket.

So the question for me is three-fold.........

1. Was the Off-spinning Flipper Grimmetts preferred variation?
2. Was The Top-Spinning variation ever used and is this the one that Bradman recognised and commented on as his Mystery Ball?
3. Who first described the Flying Saucer Flipper?

Note to self - Read Grimmetts 'Tricking the Batsman'.

Hashim Amla

2011-11-13T23:31:00.002Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/08/englandvsouthafrica2008.sportinterviews

I need a pic of Hashim Amla its origins are as above.

Rhythm + Batting

2011-11-13T21:55:00.003Z

Again another lovely warm and sunny day! 16 Degrees today, sunshine and blue skies and as Joe was off on a birthday do with one of his mates Ben and I went over the Rec and had a knock about.

Instead of using the deserted courts side to side which limits your run (Bens especially) we set up the stumps along the length so that Ben could run in and bowl and it went okay. I reckon my batting may have slightly improved over the last 12 months against faster bowlers and this maybe down to batting against Ben as his bowling as he gets older gets faster. I don't thiink I'll be any better against Offies, but saying that, the last game I had I managed to survive against an Offie, albeit only 4 or 5 balls.

Against faster bowlers I'm only looking to block them when the ball is on the stumps, but if the ball doesn't look threatening I can't seem to capitalise on it because my timing is very poor, how that comes together in the longer term I don't know, but I keep trying with Ben but as yet I have no solutions for getting the ball away for runs.

Bowling

As well as bowling at Ben in the earlier part of the day I went back later and had a bowl on my own because my run in has changed and I seemed to have lost my rythmn a little. Someone noted on Youtube that my run in had lost its dynamic bound and they were right because the bound was a little heavy and it kind of changed over the summer to become a little more balletic and springy. So I had a look at that this afternoon, looking at whether I could change between the light springy approach and a faster more dynamic apporoach and in the end it kind of proved to be a bit inconclusive as to which was better or worse still which felt better. So that may prove to be a hinderence in the nets in January?

When I turned up at the nets there was a bloke there with his son stumps and everything and he was keeping to him and it turned out that this bloke was a Chinaman bowler. I had a chat with them and it turns out that the Dad was originally from Sri-Lanka and that he has connections with the coaches of the national team and the lad who was 14 but about 5'11" had been practicing with the under 19 national squad. They were also members of Horndon on the Hill CC which is just down the road. I told them about our set up in the tennis courts and suggested they come down for a knock about next Saturday or Sunday, so perhaps we'll have a couple of extra players next week if the weather holds out.

The Paddock

2011-11-12T22:21:00.005Z

The mild weather continues with it being between 14 and 16 degrees today and over-night it's only going to dip to 10 degress meaning that the grass is still growing in the paddock. The good news is that we've had some rain in the last few weeks ending the very long run of dry weather and the process of re-growth is beginning to happen of its own accord. Because of the potential Gyspy invation post Dale Farm I didn't do any pre-winter remedial work in the paddock at all other than rake some dirt back into the area where the batsmen stand, which I did mid October when it was still really dry. Since then I've not been over there and the only people you see in there are the fair weather footballers.......The ones that can't be bothered to run about on a field because it means being fit and leaving their phones more than a metre away from where they are. Or the people that let their Staffordshire Bull Terriers in their so that they can shit everywhere and our kids get it all over their clothes. But, today I went over and had a quick look and was quite surprised at how well it was recovering without any intervention. I'll have to keep and eye on it and see how it goes and maybe in the spring get some seed down early?

The other idea I've been toying with and it's one that I'm surprised that B&PCC don't adopt for their nets where the bowlers create a big hole when pivotting, is this Heavy Duty Playground matting. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6-x-Rubber-Grassmats-Playground-Safety-Mat-Flooring-Set-/150461579063?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2308357f37

It comes in 1.5 x 1 metre sections and as you can see you can seed it and the grass grows up through it and eventually a thin layer of earth covers it meaning that the root system for the grass stays intact in amongst and under the mat, so pivoting on the mat only damages the very tips of the grass that are growing through. For the paddock it would be ideal as it would be flush with the surface and allow a good surface to bowl on that wouldn't wear away. I reckon I could get away with getting it fitted over the winter and just simply cover it with earth as it bedded in. I'm just not sure whether once I got the seed I'd need to expose the mat in order for the seed to germinate and grow through the holes, I think at that point the footballers or the dog owners might spot it and have it away despite how many fixings I put in it to secure it. Something I'll have to think about I reckon.

Side Arm

The other interesting thing that I've seen recently was this here, a bloke on big cricket asked how you might be able to make your own bowling machine and one of the coaches on-line suggested this.......

It's a 'Side Arm' and allows with a little bit of practice for the user to bowl the ball with a lot of accuracy and massively enhanced speed. It also enables the thrower to bowl balls that 'Swing' and spin - Leg Breaks and Off-Breaks, so it would be exceptionally useful for me and the kids next season in the paddock. Something we'll look into as a Christmas present I reckon.

The Drift project

2011-11-08T21:33:00.004Z

The drift project has begun! I was looking to start writing up a definitive guide to drift, but with the little research that I'd done so far it became apparent that it wasn't going to be that easy as explaining it requires a degree of understanding of Physics well beyond my very rudimentary knowledge. So I've requested the help of my knowledgable friends on www.bigcricket.com I've instigated a thread where over the next few months or so we're going to try and put together some answers regarding what drift is and how we get it and improve it in our bowling. The forum and discussion is here http://www.bigcricket.com/community/threads/drift.62786/#post-415401
and as the info is collated I'll try and form it into a blog. If you know about drift and can add to the discussion - sign up to big cricket and get involved.

Some conclusion have been drawn on this subject and you'll find the results here - http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com/2011/11/leg-spin-bowling-drift.html

Clock face with minutes for explaining Drift and Spin

2011-11-07T23:51:00.002Z

This is to be used in conjunction with illustrating descriptions of seam presentation when explaining Spin Bowling. The assumption/premise is that the pitch runs top to bottom so the ball is bowled from the 30' minute end up to the 60' end. The clockface and the inclusion and use of the minutes enables discussion whereby we explain that the seam and direction of the spinning ball is angled towards 52' as in the case of a 'Classic' Leg Break delivery.

Weather still holding out

2011-11-06T15:02:00.003Z

The weather is still holding out, the last week has seen the temperature drop and a fair bit of rain, but today and yesterday we managed to get a couple of hours in over at the Rec. The temp on both day was around about 14 degrees, so not exactly cold yet. The result of all this practice is that I've got loads of video footage that I would normally edit and put together as videos showing some of the good bowling and bad batting, but what with having a new computer with windows 7 on it, the new version of Windows Movie maker is about as good as a one legged man in a bum kicking competition, so i'm just accumulating footage.

The overall impact of the practices using the cones as fielders is that the batting does seem to have become a lot more patient and considered. So that's good and it also means we're getting out there and not being lethargic and picking up baisc skills and the boys are seeing the importance of some of the basics - where to put fielders, the affects of bowling leg-side when you've got an off-side set field, the importance of backing up. So it's all good fun.

Drift

Back in August I started to write a piece of Spin, Dip and Drift and it was okay, but never got finished. Despite that, the article has been used in conjunction with Guardian Newspapers 'Spin' section in their sports pages and they provoded a link in one of the writers articles where they needed to elaborate on the Drift aspect of bowling. So that was encoraging. Off the back of that I've been researching further and at the moment I'm trying to put together what I'm hoping to be the most comprehensive article on Drift on the internet! I'm currently working on the illustrations, normally I'd do them using photography and Adobe Photoshop, but again because of the new computer I haven't got Photoshop yet.

New Format for Cricket

2011-10-31T23:02:00.003Z

Have a look at this - http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/highfives-all-round-for-new-oneday-game-20111018-1lyte.html and read the article. This came up a couple of days ago in www.bigcricket.com and I went into one of my usual rants about it, taking the opportunity to make a point about the state of society like old blokes like me tend to do - you know the score.....

"Bloody mobile phones, bloody XBOX, Bloody SKY TV- blah blah blah" usual stuff I come out with and will be proven right in time when our sendentry lives start to catch up with us (You rather) and completely bog down the economy with illnesses and ........... Whoa! Here I go again!!!

Anyway, I did slag the idea off, but conceded that there was an inevitability about it and no matter how big or noisy the 'Old guard' are, the chances are this will have to happen because of the 'I want it and want it now' generation will demand a faster variation of the game in order that they come and watch. But having read the root article (Above) it sounds as though it's on its way, this is going to happen............

Landmark post - No.1000! Review of the year

2011-10-31T20:21:00.004Z

Tomorrow's the first day of November and last night the clocks adjusted for British winter time, so at some point pretty soon weve got to be plunged into the depths of winter surely? October has been pretty amazing in that there's been virtually no rain and it's been warm. Today it's been about 16 degrees and Sunday it was 19.5 degrees! But surely the cricket will have to stop at some point because of the cold?

This time last year I decided to work on my run up and action through the crease as I'd had a pretty poor year, aided by the fact that I was smacked out of the park at the start of the season for almost 11 an over by some first team bloke that went on to do the same almost with the other spinner Wayne (8.5 an over for him). The bloke went on to score in excess of 200, but psychologically I was damaged and that damage was then further exacerbated by the fact that I was seemingly dropped from the Sunday team at Grays despite the fact that I was one of the earliest payers of yearly subs and always paid my match fees! Over the following year I think I got 4 games. Around August when people start to wear a bit I got a couple of games, but by then I'd been getting a game about once a fortnight at my sons club B&PCC and they were suggesting I joined them the next season, so that's what I did.

Through October 2010 I worked with the run up, trying to get rid of the 'Tich Freeman skip' eventually through work with the Standstart drill I got it so that I was walking in kind of like Terry Jenner in his BBC videos, but there was still no dynamic aspect to it and I was still concerned that I'd be easy to play and there were still loads of issues. Winter came early last year - early December saw heavy snow and the winter turned out to be one of the worst on record with a long period through Dec/Jan? where there was snow on the ground for extended periods.

Over the winter indoors, my younger son Joe taught me how to bowl with the bound and as soon as the weather broke despite a fairly poorly knee (Twisted ligaments back in May 2010 playing cricket) I began to work with the bound, with pretty good results straight away within half an hour of trialling it for the first time over in the old tennis courts at The Rec Langdon Hills. I couldn't convert it that well to bowling in the nets for some reason, primarily with the slippery floor in the sports hall where we trained, so pre-season nets didn't really help out that much at all.

The knee injury for some reason flared up a bit and put paid to the bound for a while at the start of the season and scuppered my plans to bowl with the bound. I had a couple of matches where I was bowling with complete indecision as to whether I'd bowl with the bound or not and I seemed to have a dip in general core fitness which seems to be a re-occuring theme tied in with the bad weather that puts paid to practicing through Dec, Jan and Feb, so this year I'm making a mental note about core fitness training along with shoulders. The season has started off with a couple of matches for B&PCC where I didn't make that much of an impression and each week looking at the selections I was usually the 15th to 20th man, so never got a look in. I wasn't that bothered though as I was enjoying watching Ben and Joe playing in thier matches and having a knock about in the Paddock where gradually my fitness returned and my knee got better.

Having kind of reached match fitness again by August which seems to coincide with most peoples 'Burnt out' phase in their season and many of the players are away on holiday I assume I got a couple of matches. The bound still wasn't quite there and feeling the pressure of playing in League cricket which was new to me I reverted to the safer option of bowling off of a Terry Jenner walk-in. At the same time Liz Ward
on http://www.bigcricket.com/ who is a bio-mechanist and physio introduced me to http://www.siliconcoach.com/ where I was able to upload my videos of my bowling and have them analysed by several qualified coaches giving me hints and suggestions as to what to tweek to get my bowling action improved. Again this kind of forced improvements over September once all the games had finished, so I'm probably bowling fairly well here and now in November!!!

Through September and early October the Liz Ward tweeks, which on the surface seem like only small things associated with parts of your body that you wouldn't readily expect to have a massive impact on your bowling, came together. That combined with some discussions on www.bigcricket.com on 'Arm Speed' saw a dramatic change in the way the ball was released from my fingers in an organic development, rather than a forced and logic based development through the application of theory. Suddenly I was bowling with a lot more speed and spin and noticed that I was getting dip and drift and weirdly far better accuracy. With these developments the Tich Freeman Skip was consigned to the bin forever more.

So that's kind of it. Match -wise it was pretty indifferent, I took a few wickets, a couple of which were round the back of the legs coming over the wicket which were quite satisfying as this is something I've never done before and this is before the massive changes that have occured over Sept and October. It may be that I'm deluded and once in the nets in January I'll get a reality check and have to reflect on what might be going wrong, but sitting here on October 31st in pretty good post summer condition things look promising for next season.

Possibly the last session in the Tennis courts

2011-10-30T20:57:00.003Z

The ridiculously warm and mild weather continues with it reaching 19.5 centigrade today. It wasn't sunny it was muggy and damp, but warm still as the wind is coming in across the channel and central Europe mixed in with damp westerly Atlantic wind.

Anyway, still looking for ways to make Joe, Ben and Kieran think about their cricket rather than just whacking the ball, we've modified the game further still and made it more like real cricket in that if you're out you are out. I think normally this wouldn't have worked, but I seem to have instilled the idea over the week or so that an innings can be crafted slowly with better shot selection, with an eye on the need to keep your wicket. So, it was good to see an improved approach to the way they batted and run between the stumps. We also video'd it so that once home I could calculate their stats in this format and see if there's any glaring problems or issues. Plus if the weather continues to be mild track their progress and see if there is any improvement.

Drift - A laymans explanation

2011-10-29T21:23:00.003Z

Each of us has a different way of learning and these are known in Pedagogy as learning styles. My own preference is called Kinaesthetic and works best when I actually try things out and do them - usually again and again and it works best if it's something I have to do all the time. Whereas some people can simply read stuff and make sense of it, that's something I'm not so good at 'Abstract Conceptualisation'. So in the past when I've been reading up on Drift trying to get my head round it and making sense of it in practical terms, I've generally been linked to articles and videos on and about the Magnus effect. Despite reading and watching all these, the penny has never quite dropped, I've never quite got all the explanations and illustrations. But today I've come across an article and an explanation that made it as clear as daylight in a couple of short paragraphs and all because of one really simple explanation that I was able to relate to and understand and it was a written piece. So, here it is in my own words and later the link to the website that finally calrified what Drift is caused by and why............

If you're spin bowler, you'll understand the basic principles simply by empirical observation of your own bowling and probably from tennis and table tennis. Top Spin causes the ball to dip. The usual analogy is that a tennis player slices the ball with the racket across the top of the ball imparting top spin and the ball dips violently over the net. Same with your Top-Spinner in cricket you impart over-spin (Top-Spin) and the ball falls short of the batsman despite being bowled at a speed that would normally mean the ball would end up at his feet or around about his knees. Back Spin on the other hand does the opposite, the ball floats through the air maintaining a relatively straight trajectory - not dipping anywhere as expected. Footballers apparently do this particularly well slicing the ball under-neath so that it stays straight through the air - even rising in some instances till it reaches a point where its speed means it eventually starts to dip.

So....How do they do that? The explanation goes like this. A spinning ball as it spins creates a layer of air immediately around it that spins in the same direction that the ball is spinning. If the ball is also moving forwards e.g. with Top-Spin, the direction of the spinning ball will mean that its layer of air will be moving around the ball with the same direction, so at the top of the ball, the spinning air will be colliding with the air that its moving through, whereas the spinning air at the bottom of the ball will be helped along with air that it's meeting as they're moving in the same direction thus making the ball dip. The backspinning ball does the opposite, the air at the bottom of the ball is rotating against the air its meeting and so lifts the ball and prevents it from dipping.

For me that was it, that explanation worded slightly different here http://www.catcheswinmatches.com/coaching/spin/ suddenly made me realise what was going on and now I know how and what I need to do to get the ball to drift!