Spin bowling delievery types

[Isura]

What are all the delivery types that international level spin bowlers use? What variations in line and length?

Off-spinners:
- off-spinner
- armball
- doosra
- others?

Leg-spinner:
- leg-spinner
- top-spinner
- googly
- flipper
- ?

[Goughy]

Changes of pace and flight are important to both.

For leg-spinner you may or may not add (at your digression) the possibly mythical zooter.

[Migara]

Wrist spin grip can be varied. Usual is the four finger grip where 4th finger puts the major amount of spin. But you can bowl wrist spin with three finger grip as well, where middle finger puts spin. The latter method produces less spin, but top spinner and googly are very easy to bowl. Infact i use both grips.

[Son Of Coco]

You've forgotten 'the hand-grenade'. Usually popular with club spinners and how dangerous it is has a distinct correlation with how high a batsman's excitement levels go when they see it and, co-incidentally, how hard he then tried to hit it. The higher the excitement level and the harder he tries to hit it the more chance of it producing a wicket.

[Manee]

Originally Posted by Son Of Coco

You've forgotten 'the hand-grenade'. Usually popular with club spinners and how dangerous it is has a distinct correlation with how high a batsman's excitement levels go when they see it and, co-incidentally, how hard he then tried to hit it. The higher the excitement level and the harder he tries to hit it the more chance of it producing a wicket.

All about the length too - the highish full toss one is a classic to have hit to the infield but the one on a fullish length which is just beyond the front foot but a bit too full to be charging at can cause problems too with the batsman often trying some sort of stretching sweep variation.

[someblokedave]

With regards Wrist Spinners there's a whole bunch of variations based on the Flipper. You should read Clarrie Grimmetts book 'Taking wickets' it details them all, as far as Grimmett was concerned the Flipper was a Top-Spinner that Bradman referred to as Grimmetts mystery ball. Grimmett rejected the back-spinning version as used by the likes of Benaud (Who tried to claim it as his invention) and Warne as being ineffective and preferred the Slider.

In addition to the Flipper variants there's sub-variants of the Leg break - it all depends on how seriously you take your art and how much research you do into the history of Wrist Spin. To be honest so few people look beyond the basic deliveries, if you were to ask many of the great Wrist Spinners about 'The Top-Spinning Flipper' many of them wouldn't know what you were talking about, people such as Terry Jenner and Ashley Mallett even refute it's existence on the basis that they don't believe it's physically possible to bowl it, but rest assured it exists.

Interestingly in Bob Woolmers book 'Art and Science of Cricket' Woolmer himself makes some of these points about the genius of Clarrie Grimmett and mentions the fact that Grimmetts 2 greatest books are lost treasures of the Art of Wrist Spin and Woolmer includes tracts of the books because he realises how important they are to cricket and certainly anyone who is genuinely interested in Wrist Spin. Another book that any wrist spinner worth his salt should have is Peter Philpotts 'The Art of Wrist Spin'.

So to the variations.........

The Leg Break
The Big Leg Break
The Wrong Un
The Big Wrong Un

* Plus sub variants of the above.

The Slider -using the 'Philpott-esque' round the loop 'Big Flick'.
The Slider a la' Warne

The Top-Spinner
The Top-Spinning Flipper
The Back-spinning Flipper
The Back-Spinning Flipper a la' Clarrie Grimmett
The Off-spinning Flipper
The Leg-Spinning Flipper 'The wrong - wrong un'.

You can chuck in the Knuckle ball as well and there's probably shed loads more. Wrist Spinning is by far the most interesting and devastating bowling technique around, but at the same time it's obviously the most difficult too. If you're going to do it you have to practice, practice, practice and more practice. But the rewards are phenomenal and you'll end up doing it all your life if your good at it and needless to say be the most productive wicket taker in your team. You're a batsman's nightmare.

"No ball bowled is as difficult as one which leaves the bat and goes towards the slips. The really good leg-break beats them all.” - Sir Donald Bradman