Leg spin bowling

[RippingLegbreak]

Hi im new to the forum and i am a 15 year old leg spinner, i have played cricket for a year and i have been bowling leg spin for 4-5 months, i am quite short in stature and im a bowler who flights the ball at a slow pace inviting the batsmen to drive or flick the ball of his pad, I have mastered my leg break and here in scotland there arent alot coaches can do to coach leg spin can someone help me develop some variations i have checked some sites and watched some videos but none help me as my topspinner still spins like a leg break with extra bounce. I am becoming more and more predictible as batsmen are happily backing away and freeing their arms to smash me to the offside so any advice on devoloping a top spinner will be helpful or any other straighter delivery which can help me surpise batsmen.

[Jakester1288]

Leg spin is a hard art to master. I have bowled a bit of leg spin in the past but I am a fast bowler.

You need to develop your stock delivery. The leg break, when bowled properly, can be a very good wicket taking delivery.

There are many good sites and magizines that will tell you a lot about bowling and batting. I recommend buying Cricket Skills and Secrets, it has a fair bit of valuable information for leg spinners. Terry Jenner wrote a little article of tips that helps, and the magizine contains how to bowl most deliveries.

These sites can help with your leg spin bowling:

Harrowdrive provides the reader with simple articles on how do do everything much like the BBC. You can subscribe to email's from the owner, David Hinchecliff, which I find very informative and good to read.

The BBC Sport Academy takes you through a few steps to mastering everything from Batting to Bowling, spinning and fielding.

Live India - Fairly simple site, with some good tips.

Youtube - has tons of videos on everything. Study the best players actions and try to incorperate it into your won game.

Good luck,

Jake.

[Son Of Coco]

Hi mate,

Yeah, I think legspin is the hardest discipline to master in cricket. I'm a seam bowler and as a result am of no help to you whatsoever! Maybe try to find some help from one of the foreign players that comes to Edinburgh, Glasgow, or wherever it is you're based. Can you approach one of the top clubs like The Grange? Either that or find out who is rated as a legspin coach and get in touch with them. Have you tried getting in touch with clubs further south to see if they have any suggestions? Maybe if you find someone who coaches that isn't too far away you could have a session every so often and then go away and work on it for a bit before going back.

I'm not sure whether any of these are viable suggestions. I know there are usually a few foreign players in Edinburgh, and a number are from the subcontinent. I ran into a couple of guys playing in the meadows as we were heading out one night and had an impromptu run around.

Good luck with it anyway, I hope you find someone who can help you out.

[Pup Clarke]

Originally Posted by RippingLegbreak

Hi im new to the forum and i am a 15 year old leg spinner, i have played cricket for a year and i have been bowling leg spin for 4-5 months, i am quite short in stature and im a bowler who flights the ball at a slow pace inviting the batsmen to drive or flick the ball of his pad, I have mastered my leg break and here in scotland there arent alot coaches can do to coach leg spin can someone help me develop some variations i have checked some sites and watched some videos but none help me as my topspinner still spins like a leg break with extra bounce. I am becoming more and more predictible as batsmen are happily backing away and freeing their arms to smash me to the offside so any advice on devoloping a top spinner will be helpful or any other straighter delivery which can help me surpise batsmen.

Do you play for a club in Glasgow?

[Goughy]

Originally Posted by RippingLegbreak

Hi im new to the forum and i am a 15 year old leg spinner, i have played cricket for a year and i have been bowling leg spin for 4-5 months, i am quite short in stature and im a bowler who flights the ball at a slow pace inviting the batsmen to drive or flick the ball of his pad, I have mastered my leg break and here in scotland there arent alot coaches can do to coach leg spin can someone help me develop some variations i have checked some sites and watched some videos but none help me as my topspinner still spins like a leg break with extra bounce. I am becoming more and more predictible as batsmen are happily backing away and freeing their arms to smash me to the offside so any advice on devoloping a top spinner will be helpful or any other straighter delivery which can help me surpise batsmen.

Leg spin bowling isnt easy. Dont be put off that it can take a long time to get good at, let alone master.

Anyway, from what you describe, I wouldnt worry about variation. You are still very new to the discipline and are still learning.

You need to work on the heavily spun leg break. Dont worry about the other balls just yet until you are very confident in your stock ball (which you will not be after 4-5 months unless you are leg spin freak ).

Your problem isnt lack of variation but lack of pace. Batsmen can back away as the ball can be easily watched from the pitch due to he lack of pace.

Rather than variation, Id get you to work on pace. More spin and more pace. I dont mean fast but so it is bowled with real purpose rather than like a hand grenade.

[Son Of Coco]

Originally Posted by Goughy

Leg spin bowling isnt easy. Dont be put off that it can take a long time to get good at, let alone master.

Anyway, from what you describe, I wouldnt worry about variation. You are still very new to the discipline and are still learning.

You need to work on the heavily spun leg break. Dont worry about the other balls just yet until you are very confident in your stock ball (which you will not be after 4-5 months unless you are leg spin freak ).

Your problem isnt lack of variation but lack of pace. Batsmen can back away as the ball can be easily watched from the pitch due to he lack of pace.

Rather than variation, I get you to work on pace. More spin and more pace. I dont mean fast but so it is bowled with real purpose rather than like a hand grenade.

Yeah, I meant to make this point about pace too. A lot of younger spinners are slow through the air and that's why they get belted.
Make sure you have a supportive captain too if you can, a lot of young guys in this area get turned off leg spin (in particular) because their captains as they come up through the grades have no idea how to use them - throwing them the ball when there're not many runs left to play with and expecting miracles, and then not bowling them again if they go for a couple of boundaries in their first 2 overs. A young guy that played seconds here went poorly in that grade because his teammates were ****wits and his captain was poor using him, but actually bowled better in first grade because we all encouraged him during his spell and he wasn't taken off after 2 overs of nervous stuff.

[Migara]

I was very unorthadox with my variations. Only orthadox deliveries were leg break and the top spinner.

Topspinner is bowled similar to a leg break, but the wrist turns less, and it faces your ear when the ball is release.

I had a variation of the leg break. Without using the wrist, I just spun the ball with the fingers. As a result it came in front of the hand. It spun very little and it was the pitch middle hit middle ball for me.

My slider was just a leggie that I bowled without putting any spin. Wrist was at the same position as for the toppie, but I just let it off the had without any spin. With high arm action I had, ball was always drifting in, and this ball continued to go with the arm, or in simple terms, without spinning crashed in to the stumps.

Next variation was the flipper, but very dfferent to orthadox flipper. It was bowled with the back of the hand, but without spinning, The extra acceleration of the arm just at releae made sure it was faster and flatter than the slider.

Next one was the genuine seamer. I rotated the hand to face the batsman and just accelerated the arm. When bowled seam up, this will swing in to the right hander and crash in to pads of the batsmen.

[Nnanden]

Deadset reckon people get too carried away with their variations. Barely even tried one before I had my leggie extremely consistent and now I've added a toppie, an inconsistent arm ball and a dreadful wrong'un. Practicing your stock leg break should be your main concern for mine.

[PhoenixFire]

AWTA, the man speaks sense.

[open365]

Originally Posted by RippingLegbreak

Hi im new to the forum and i am a 15 year old leg spinner, i have played cricket for a year and i have been bowling leg spin for 4-5 months, i am quite short in stature and im a bowler who flights the ball at a slow pace inviting the batsmen to drive or flick the ball of his pad, I have mastered my leg break and here in scotland there arent alot coaches can do to coach leg spin can someone help me develop some variations i have checked some sites and watched some videos but none help me as my topspinner still spins like a leg break with extra bounce. I am becoming more and more predictible as batsmen are happily backing away and freeing their arms to smash me to the offside so any advice on devoloping a top spinner will be helpful or any other straighter delivery which can help me surpise batsmen.

That's not a half bad result when you're trying to bowl a top spinner really.

Like others have said, just focus on bowling your leg break better, I can assure you that you have not 'mastered' the leg break, it almost definitely has a hell of a lot of room for improvement.

Don't do anything drastic to change the way you bowl in search of better variations, Leg spin is such a triky art that even slight technical deviations can through your entire action off an leave you wondering wtf happened. It's not uncommon for leg spinners to just completely lose it overnight, so I'd recomend practising and bowling as much as you can without worrying too much about how good your flipper is.

[Migara]

Originally Posted by open365

It's not uncommon for leg spinners to just completely lose it overnight,

Once happened to me. It was not spinning how hard I was tring. When I tried harder came as top spin or googlies (which I cannot bowl under normal circumsances).

But, two days later, I was spinnig the ball from 6" out side leg to miss the off by 6" on the same turf! Very much a true thing that can happen.

When the second time around it happened to me, it was worse, and I could not land it on a length. At last decided to bowl off break in that innigs!

[andmark]

I've bowled Leg Spin since two years ago, and I've found that the major part actually is trying to do the wrist action in god knows how quick.
Once you have that part you need to get more pace, and controll where you pitch the ball.

[Kweek]

you can have the best wrist work as a legspinner, in my experiance the action is the most important and hardest to master

[Migara]

Originally Posted by Kweek

you can have the best wrist work as a legspinner, in my experiance the action is the most important and hardest to master

But, spinners can do it with a less perfect action than pacemen. If you have long strong fingers and strong wrists, you can generate lot of spin, but to get the pace, action is important.

[c_atkinson123]

Keep going with the topspinner the way you were, keep practising and it'll come eventually.

Everyone is right though, concentrate on your stock delivery. It sounds as though you are bowling too short as batsmen are waiting and hitting you away on the off side. Get it really full, better giving the batsmen drives than allowing them to cut and pull you.

Although I know how you feel, variations are fun so keep working on them! No point playing if it stops being fun!