Giles or Tufnell, who do you think was a better slow left arm spin bowler?

[Hanuma]

as a bowler...tuffnell.

pick giles instead because he is superior in other departments by a country mile.

tuffers could turn the ball a lot more though...hence the 2 tenfors.

 

[Swervy]

Tufnell was a bigger spinner of the ball?
I can only assume you've never watched Giles bowl on a turning pitch, because Giles can spin it as much as the human fingers allow anyone to.
It's NOT POSSIBLE to spin it more than Giles.
The only thing about Tufnell is that most of his match-winning performances were more spectacular than Giles', so he's remembered better.
But Giles has played an equal hand, and both of them were equally rubbish on non-turning pitches.
Thing is, of course, Tufnell's dubious lifestyle led him to waste helpful conditions in a way Giles has extremely rarely done.
When England needed him, Tufnell was not always there - and for me that offsets the fact that Tufnell's improbable turnarounds were more spectacular than Giles'.

what a load of ****...Tuffers really tweaked the ball out of his fingers, Giles is more of a roll the ball out of the finger (well relative to Tuffers..although compared to someone like Emburey Giles does rip it)...go watch some tape of Tuffers and watch the hand, there is some rip in there

 

[Richard]

For some extremely odd reason the thread won't let me post the text I am attempting to post here.

 

[Swervy]

I have, but for some reason the thread won't let me post here.

hoorah for Artificial Intelligence then

 

[Richard]

Artificial stupidity more like.

 

[Richard]

Of course it is. Saqlain and Harhajan, for example, are both significantly bigger turners of the ball than Giles, on whatever wicket you like. Tim May was a bigger turner of the ball than Giles. Plenty of fingerspinners are.

Honestly I think you need to go and watch someone other than Giles or Vettori bowl fingerspin on non-turning wickets, because your ideas about it are just deluded.

I've watched several hundred fingerspinners bowl, and I've undertaken experiments to see how much revolution various bowlers put on the ball.
Maybe to the unwary Saqlain and Harbhajan look like they're spinning it more than Giles, but actually, they're not. And, not surprisingly, neither can turn it on unresponsive pitches, and neither are especially good on unresponsive pitches. Their speciality comes in their ability to bowl the other one.

 

[Richard]

As for Vettori... check again if you think he's not a very big spinner of the ball.
As for Tim May - I've never once seen him bowl but I fail to see that he can do what no-one else can.

(HAHA - got round it!)

 

[C_C]

It's NOT POSSIBLE to spin it more than Giles

Both Saqlain and Harbhajan are finger spinners and turn it more than Giles.
If you get a chance, watch Lance Gibbs and Prasanna bowl....IMO, those two probably spun it the most and most of the time they had bleeding fingers from it.

neither can turn it on unresponsive pitches, and neither are especially good on unresponsive pitches.

And Giles is ?????

Giles has been spinning it a lot for the past 2 seasons or so...when i saw him in India, he was hardly spinning the ball much.
And i would be intersted to know what kind of experiments you undertook to conclude that Giles is the biggest ripper for a finger spinner.
As per 'humanely possible' part, it is utter tripe.
How much you spin from finger spin is dependent on(assuming you are giving it 100%) how long your fingers are ( larger contact surface = more force transfer), how fast you can torque your wrist and how strong your wrist is....that is ofcourse, assuming good seam position which Giles recently learned and which every spinner worth his salt has.

Btw, Harbhajan and Saqlain may put less revs but spin it more than Giles.....since amount of deviation the ball will undergo is also dependent on seam positioning...something those two do a whole lot better than Giles.

 

[Swervy]

Both Saqlain and Harbhajan are finger spinners and turn it more than Giles.
If you get a chance, watch Lance Gibbs and Prasanna bowl....IMO, those two probably spun it the most and most of the time they had bleeding fingers from it.



And Giles is ?????

Giles has been spinning it a lot for the past 2 seasons or so...when i saw him in India, he was hardly spinning the ball much.
And i would be intersted to know what kind of experiments you undertook to conclude that Giles is the biggest ripper for a finger spinner.
As per 'humanely possible' part, it is utter tripe.
How much you spin from finger spin is dependent on(assuming you are giving it 100%) how long your fingers are ( larger contact surface = more force transfer), how fast you can torque your wrist and how strong your wrist is....that is ofcourse, assuming good seam position which Giles recently learned and which every spinner worth his salt has.

Btw, Harbhajan and Saqlain may put less revs but spin it more than Giles.....since amount of deviation the ball will undergo is also dependent on seam positioning...something those two do a whole lot better than Giles.

dont go there CC....

Richard thinks he can actually count the number of times a ball spins in flight and can come up with an accurate measure of revs per second etc, which Richard beleives is the only way to know how much a player spins it.

We all spent weeks trying to explain to him that the errors on making such counts just of his TV would be so huge that it would render the data completely useless.

 

[Swervy]

Btw, Harbhajan and Saqlain may put less revs but spin it more than Giles.....since amount of deviation the ball will undergo is also dependent on seam positioning...something those two do a whole lot better than Giles.

oops didnt see this bit..that is exactly what I was going to say (re: the seam position etc)

 

[Richard]

Both Saqlain and Harbhajan are finger spinners and turn it more than Giles.
If you get a chance, watch Lance Gibbs and Prasanna bowl....IMO, those two probably spun it the most and most of the time they had bleeding fingers from it.

Watched both (Prasanna obviously had unique advantages).
Gibbs had an utterly average record from 1968 onwards.
I suggest you take some film of Pakistan 2000\01 and Ahmedabad 2001\02 and see that Giles turned it every bit as much as Saqlain and Harbhajan.

And Giles is ?????

Err, no, no-one is.

Giles has been spinning it a lot for the past 2 seasons or so...when i saw him in India, he was hardly spinning the ball much.
And i would be intersted to know what kind of experiments you undertook to conclude that Giles is the biggest ripper for a finger spinner.

May have been before your time that I mentioned it - measure the amount of revolution using TV pictures.

As per 'humanely possible' part, it is utter tripe.
How much you spin from finger spin is dependent on(assuming you are giving it 100%) how long your fingers are ( larger contact surface = more force transfer), how fast you can torque your wrist and how strong your wrist is....that is ofcourse, assuming good seam position which Giles recently learned and which every spinner worth his salt has.

One thing - wrists don't come into it for fingerspin.
And how much difference is there in an average human hand? Not much, certainly not enough to enable some bowlers to revolve the ball much more than others.

Btw, Harbhajan and Saqlain may put less revs but spin it more than Giles.....since amount of deviation the ball will undergo is also dependent on seam positioning...something those two do a whole lot better than Giles.

Really? Giles' seam-position is absolutely fine, it makes maximum use of the revolution, and as a result he can turn it miles on a turning pitch.

 

[Richard]

Richard thinks he can actually count the number of times a ball spins in flight and can come up with an accurate measure of revs per second etc, which Richard beleives is the only way to know how much a player spins it.

Short of hiring the players to bowl at exactly the same time on the same pitch it is the only way, and I challenge you to find a better one.

 

[marc71178]

I've watched several hundred fingerspinners bowl, and I've undertaken experiments to see how much revolution various bowlers put on the ball.

Watching video recordings on a TV screen is not an experiment with any scientific validity.

 

[marc71178]

Short of hiring the players to bowl at exactly the same time on the same pitch it is the only way, and I challenge you to find a better one.

It is a meaningless test, and I challenge you to convince anyone otherwise.

 

[C_C]

Watched both (Prasanna obviously had unique advantages).Gibbs had an utterly average record from 1968 onwards.

Errr. Who is discussing record here ? We are discussing amount of spin imparted to the ball. If record is discussed, Giles doesnt enter the picture when Harbhajan/Saqlain/Prasanna/Gibbs are discussed.

May have been before your time that I mentioned it - measure the amount of revolution using TV pictures.

And what did you do with the TV pictures ? did you just look at the screen and see which one 'looked like spinning it more' or did you feed the tape to a computer through digital converter, opened a program like photoshop or paint shop pro and did a frame by frame analysis ?
If you did the former, it is utterly bogus and without any credibility.
If you did the latter, then it has some credibility - some, because the camera doesnt always follow the delivery all the way from point of release to point of stroke ( if you want to measure both the revs and how much the ball spins)- particularly not in Gibbs/Prasanna era. Actually, even with frame-by-frame analysis, you still wouldnt be able to determine the revs on a ball, since its too fast to be captured in a frame by frame basis ( ie, 1 rev per frame). You would need to use sophisticated programs for that, where you would interface a counter program to photoshop(or paintshop pro), put a marker on the ball and give a revs count. Either that or you use sophisticated telemetry in the nets.
Simply watching the screen is utterly bogus as the human eye is not competent enough to differentiate between 50 revs/sec or 55.

Really? Giles' seam-position is absolutely fine, it makes maximum use of the revolution, and as a result he can turn it miles on a turning pitch.

Gibbs has a rather ordinary seam position.It is okay but it isnt impeccable like Saqlain in his heydeys or Harbhajan on song.

One thing - wrists don't come into it for fingerspin.
And how much difference is there in an average human hand? Not much, certainly not enough to enable some bowlers to revolve the ball much more than others.

wrist does come into fingerspin. Albeit, not as much. Wrist strength is a critical component because when you are flexing your fingers, you are flexing the muscles and on your forearm, which is conveyed through the wrist. And how much difference is there in an average human hand ? Not much. But we arnt talking average here. There is a significant difference in hand size between big dudes and small dudes. Gibbs, who is easily over 6 feet has significantly larger hands than Prasanna, who is under 5 feet 6 inches. There is a concrete handprint of Shaquille O'Neil in Lougheed Mall, Vancouver and my entire hand ( i am 5 feet 7 btw) fits within the palm of Shaq- my palm to tip of my middle finger doesnt even touch the base of Shaq's middle finger.

 

[marc71178]

Interestingly, talking about English spinners, did anyone see the interview with Harbhajan in WCM?

When asked about good English spinners he'd seen, he replied something along the lines of "apart from Giles, I've only so far seen one at Warwickshire"

That one is Alex Loudon, who isn't what I'd call a specialist spinner.

Methinks the cupboard is even barer than we initially thought!

 

[Craig]

Either that he has a very high standard in raising the bar in what you call a specialist spinner.

 

[marc71178]

That still wouldn't include Loudon!

 

[Run like Inzy]

Between Giles and Tufnell i would go for Tufnell because he bowled more postively and got wickets more regularly. But why can't England produce a quality spinner??? I don't get it. There have been so many spinners in couaty criacket from overseas. Saqlain, Warne, Mushtaq Ahmed, Harbhajan, Kaneria, Kumble etc. How come the english spinners haven't learnt a thing from these world class spinners. It isn't like these spinners haven't taken wickets either. Mushtaq got 100+ as did Kumble a few seasons back ( i think). Saqlain took wickets as Harbhajan is doing now for Surrey and Kaneria has been a big asset for Essex, so when are the English world class spinners gonna come?

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

I've watched several hundred fingerspinners bowl, and I've undertaken experiments to see how much revolution various bowlers put on the ball.
Maybe to the unwary Saqlain and Harbhajan look like they're spinning it more than Giles, but actually, they're not. And, not surprisingly, neither can turn it on unresponsive pitches, and neither are especially good on unresponsive pitches. Their speciality comes in their ability to bowl the other one.

That's the point though, both (particularly Saqlain) can turn it on unresponsive pitches, and do. They don't turn it as much as Warne or Macgill might on a pitch which isn't helping of course, but they turn it a hell of a lot more than Giles, who barely deviates it at all when the pitch isn't helping him, and enough to beat the bat and not much more on a turning wicket, while Harbhajan can turn it a foot or more when the wicket is helping him, as much as any spinner you're likely to see. That doesn't necessarily make Giles a poor bowler, although it does make him quite unthreatening on a pitch which isn't helping him, because the distance you turn it isn't everything just like the amount you swing it or how fast you bowl it or anything else isn't the only thing that should be taken into account. To suggest though that Giles turns it "as much as humanly possible" is just ridiciulous. For reasons of just physical capacity, there will be a huge amount of variation in how much one bowler turns it compared to another. As has been pointed out, the number of revs isn't everything regarding turn, and even if it was Giles doesn't put as many revs "as humanly possible" on the ball, because there's no limit on that any more than Warne or Macgill puts as many revs as humanly possible on the ball via their wrists. I mean, which Giles ball are you talking about anyway, given that every one of his deliveries would have a different number of revs on it depending on how it came out?