Backyard Bowling

[shanehodson]

After reading up on cricket online and buying a bat, I introduced cricket to my friends. I don't know anyone else locally here in the USA who plays cricket, so we just learned the rules as we went along. After playing twice I realized we were bowling incorrectly, throwing the ball baseball style, and I tried to get my friends to bowl correctly. Of course they are being stubborn and refusing to change. When you guys play cricket, just informally in the backyard or park, do you enforce correct batting? I, for one, want to learn to bowl correctly and don't see any reason not to. Also, what are the reasons for bowling correctly? Injury, how the ball bounces....

 

[silentstriker]

You can probably find a club nearby if you live near a major city. When I play cricket in the park with a tennis ball, we usually have normal bowling.

As for your second question, I don't quite understand what you mean. You bowl without bending your elbow because you are required to as per the rules. If you mean proper technique, as in run up, action, wrist/arm positions, etc then the purpose is to have a motion that can be replicated every time, does not place undue stress on the body, and helps you extract maximum accuracy and pace from the ball (assuming fast bowling).

 

[DCC_legend]

Apparently Overarm Bowling was introduced by women as they couldn't bowl underarm due to their dresses being too big to allow said action.

 

[deeps]

Chucking/throwing, when we play in the backyard/park, is usually allowed on the proviso that the person bowling
a) Does not know how to bowl properly in the first place, and
b) Does not throw it as hard as they can.

The main reason, IMHO, is that it's a lot harder to judge the bounce, and more importantly where it's going to bounce, when the ball is chucked. I haven't worked out why, but when a bowler is throwing (not just a little kink), my footwork is late, I play my shots a bit later and it's just overall late. I'm not sure if it's just me.

It takes a while to be able to bowl, if you have never bowled before, and it definately feels un-natural to begin with.

 

[shanehodson]

It does feel unnatural at first, but it annoys me that my friends won't give correct bowling a serious try. You have people throwing it side arm so it practically rolls into the wickets. But I guess its better just to let them do it how they want instead of driving them away from the sport. I should stop complaining.

 

[DCC_legend]

Try getting them to watch a few cricket videos so they can see how it's done.