Chinaman

[Rik]

If he's good enough at Chinaman then I think he should stick at it, I try Chinaman, SLA and medium pace but I stick to SLA most of the time as if I try to bowl a different style I loose my length and line. I know Miller and other bowlers have made bowling several styles popular but its best to stick to one style and get good at it, a good example is Symonds as his Medium pace can be effective sometimes but when he bowls both his Medium pace and Offspin in a match only one of them seems to get the wickets.

 

[chris.hinton]

Left-arm Leg spinner have to work TWICE as hard as other Spinners

That was the word of Terry Jenner

 

[Rik]

I find it quite wierd that most off-spinners have different actions to their left handed equivalents, Im a Lefty and find it really hard to bowl anything other than straight with no drift, I land on my right leg so I dunno if that makes me bowl wierdly but I find it hard to turn the ball as I hardly ever get any grip on the ball and I seem to have lost the ability to flight it. Lefties and Offies...just different I guess.

Ooooh there goes my Half Century!

[Edited on 4/10/2002 by Rik]

 

[Kimbo]

Until there is a classy effective example of a off-spin/leg-spin bowler I won'tt look into it. I really can't see the point.
If you spend your time working on two different styles of bowling then theoretically you will end up half as good as you could have been at both. Spinners need to be very practiced to be effective.

 

[full_length]

Everyone's waiting for that example. That's why it's so hard to see any.

That stuff about being half as good if you work on two things simply sounds good as a thing to tell kids at school, but amounts to nothing. A bowler could be attacking, and a big turner of a ball bowling legspin, and bowl offbreaks when his role is to tie up an end. I can think of any number of such possibilities. However, we dont see any out there because of entrenched attitudes, basically starting out from the first coaching experience where the coach asks a youngster what he wants to do- bat or bowl, and then whether he's a spinner or paceman, leggie or offie, and then train him on one thing. It will work for the majority of people but you'll lose the rare guy who can actually do two things. Sure the coach has to be carefull about this and use judgement, but they should always give talent a chance.

About doing two things, how come allrounders survive? How about a player like Gary Sobers? It's more about breaking out of a cast than some obscure theory. Every player needs to 'be practiced'.

BTW, will the point that a person cannot do two things become wrong if you suddenly have a player on the international arena who can do what Sachin does consistently? If that's the case, then there's no logic behind arguement.


Rik, of all the different things Sachin can do with the ball, medium pace is what he least often does. I really don't think you've had a chance to see him bowl too much! I've seen matches in which he's turned the ball as much as Warne and been more effective. Because of his idea that he should stay on as a batsman who can bowl he's never going to be consistent. But he's not just another part timer. I've seen enough of him to be convinced that he's one of the biggest turners of the ball around, both ways, can bowl a very good googly, and is a good attacking spinner.

 

[Kimbo]

errrrrrrr.... i dunno eh. I guess i am just a bit sceptical.
To me, spinning is a special talent, a gift. So to find people that are gifted in turning the ball both ways would be rare. And thats what it takes at the top level, a gifted spinner of the ball. So if I saw a kid who was gifted in turning the ball both ways then sure I would encourage them to bowl both. But they really would have to be gifted in both.

 

[full_length]

That's the problem the guys with 'different' styles have to be twice as good as the 'normal' player to be held in the same regard. . Similarly, an attacking batsman is always under scrutiny because 'his technique is not good' never mind the fact that the other defensive batsman is not doing much more than scoring a classy average of 30. I digress...

Coming back to the original point, I was wondering in particular why the leggies currently on tour don't try to innovate and bowl the offspin- even in one of those games where they are trying everything but bowling the wicketkeeper..

Surely the experienced leggies are the guys who can try it out. It's not a call that they all do it- just that it's very strange that nobody ever tries to. You hear about this mystery ball and others that never happened, but not about spinners who are even considering doing this.

 

[royGilchrist]

The problem is that if a leg spnner tries to bowl off spin, the action will be so easily recognizable, that the batsman will be able to read it easily and that will be beating the purpose.

 

[full_length]

There we are , the same old reading comprehension problem

Whoever said anything about fooling the batsman that the offbreak was really a legbreak?

 

[royGilchrist]

Either the leggie is as good as proper off break bowlers so that even if his offbreak action is read by the batsman its still effective, but I will highly doubt that warne for example can bowl offspin as well as harbhajhan or murli. So its really no point for Warne bowling mediocre offbreaks (poor line, length, flight, and turn) when the batsman knows he is bowling an offbreak. It can only be effective if Warne (or any leggie) could throw in a surprise off break (even if not perfectly bowled) in the midlde of his usual stuff normal stuff.

 

[Kimbo]

I'm sorry full_length. I don't see bowling off spin as the responsibility of the leggie. If offspin is needed then for godsake let an offie bowl. Most teams have one.
I am a leggie, I am useless at offspin. I wouldn't dream of bowling it. Especially since legspin is generally harder to play.

 

[Rik]

No I haven't seen Sachin bowl a lot but every time I've seen him bowl against England he has bowled Medium Pace except when he bowled Ramprakash last winter with a Googly which turned about a millimeter.

 

[Rik]

I slip in a few straight balls as well as my topspinner when Im bowling its just I have never found an action where I get any spin as I rarely get any grip on the ball. I can't bowl Chinaman properly as I'm just too erratic and rarely turn it either. Its a good idea to teach the youngster to bowl several styles and let the guy then choose what he bowls but then if your like me, you've only been coached once and had to work most of it out yourself! A bit suprising Im good at batting then, but I suppose the lack of coaching has done wonders for my fielding as your never taught to dive and flick the ball back before it crosses the rope! Your taught to run along and pick it up :P

 

[full_length]

Yeah Sachin bowls medium pace whenever he bowls in England. His seamers are more effective there than anywhere else.

 

[full_length]

Originally posted by Sunil Havascar
I'm sorry full_length. I don't see bowling off spin as the responsibility of the leggie. If offspin is needed then for godsake let an offie bowl. Most teams have one.
I am a leggie, I am useless at offspin. I wouldn't dream of bowling it. Especially since legspin is generally harder to play.

I'm not claiming that *every* leggie can bowl offbreaks. I am just saying that it's very strange that nobody does it. One reason for that is perhaps that I used to do it. I never played cricket very seriously or practiced for long hours. So sometimes I'd have trouble landing my legbreaks in the pitch, bowling several wides! But it was not very difficult to do once I compromised on the technique. I bowled offbreaks with an incutter action, and legbreaks and googly normally. This worked because though the batsmen knew me very well, and could read that I'm bowling leggies/googly or offies, they still had trouble whenever I bowled a controlled over or two.

Anyhow, I can understand that this wont be as easy in the international level because: people are worried about their spots, and they're not ambitious enough because of years of indoctrination as to what's 'normal'.

 

[royGilchrist]

Sachin when bowling spin can spin it a long way, his line and length might not be impeccable simply because he is not a regular bowler who practices for hours, but he can spin the ball a lot more than Kumble atleast.

 

[Rik]

Well they took one wicket in all cricket for India...I would have preferred seeing his Offspin or Legspin, Vaughn even managed to get a few wickets bowling in the rough and since Harbajan never seemed to hit the rough it would have been interisting to see what he could have done!

 

[Kimbo]

OK full length I see where you are coming from, kyou bowled this way yourself. Well, I can see how it could be effective at club level... 3rd/4th grades maybe

 

[Top_Cat]

Sachin is HARDLY a quality spinner as he wouldn't get into Test side on the basis of it alone. So to say that somehow because he bowls it sometimes and picks up the occasional wicket or bag that he's 'successful' at bowling both types of spin is giving him far too much credit as a bowler.

The reasons that you never see people who can do both at a high level have a little to do with stuffy conventions but are mainly to do with what Sunil said; there are subtleties in both off and leg-spinning which have little to do with what direction or how much you spin the ball and they take years to master. Sure someone might bamboozle lower-grade batsmen with being able to do both but once they get higher, it gets a little tougher and variation has to be put on hold a little in deference to consistency. It's consistency more than variation which gets goo batsmen out. You can bowl a few unplayable fizzing leg-breaks and beat a good batsman but if the next ball is a long-hop because you had to drastically change your action to bowl the perfect off-break, BOOM! there goes any pressure you might have built up.

With only a few rare examples, I've never seen someone who can do both and beat very good batsmen. By trying to be both, you may end up being a 'good' bowler in both types of spin but may never be an 'exceptional' bowler in either. Trying to be good at everything means you'll generally not be 'great' at anything.

Believe me, if I were an international captain and was told that I could have someone who bowled off and leg-spinning at Test standard, I'd have him in the team straight away but I've never seen someone physically able to do both and do them well.

 

[royGilchrist]

Yeah, thats true, for a spinner consistency has to be of the utmost importance, long hops generally release all the pressure. Saching like I said before an spoin the ball a long way but the reason he doesnt bowl regularly in international matches is becasue he just doens thave the line and length consistency that is vital for a spinner to succeede. You can bowl a ball which spins prodigously but if its short the batsman would just hit it for four easily.

Chandrasekhar I think used to be not that consistent (relative to a test bowler's dtadard) but bowled enoguh unplayable deliveries to have been considered one of the best spinners ever.

U guys seem to have played enough high level cricket to be able to answer this question, if there was a contest of who can bowl the fastest delivery just standing (without any run up) who will win the fast bowlers or the spinners. A friend of mine (who is Wasim Akram's brother in law) told me that once they were playing casual cricket with Wasim with e tennis ball, and he owled while standing, and it went extremely fast. So tese guys were quite impressed, but Wasim told them that its not fast enough compared to what Qadir and Mushtaq can bowl. I guess Afridi will now be the fastes now, bowling without a runup