Swinging both ways

[Richard]

Being as I am currently in the middle of attempting to learn to bowl inswingers with a comparable action to my standard outswinger, I'm only too well-versed in this. It's incredibly difficult.

[vic_orthdox]

Blokes best versed in it tend to be front on bowlers, because from there it tends to be just a change of wrist position if you are a pure chest-on bowler. Where as side on bowlers often need more than just a change of wrist position to get themselves into a position to bowl an inswinger.

[Manee]

Originally Posted by Richard

Being as I am currently in the middle of attempting to learn to bowl inswingers with a comparable action to my standard outswinger, I'm only too well-versed in this. It's incredibly difficult.

Are you sure you would need to concentrate on not changing your action? I doubt many club batsmen will know that a change of action will mean the ball will swing the other way - or at least not in the split second between the action and delivery.

[Lambu]

Praveen Kumar should be right up there with the best swing bowlers going around.

[oitoitoi]

Problem is once it stops swinging he's got nothing.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Manee

Are you sure you would need to concentrate on not changing your action? I doubt many club batsmen will know that a change of action will mean the ball will swing the other way - or at least not in the split second between the action and delivery.

I can't even bowl an inswinger very well currently; I'm going to worry about getting it working properly first and bowling it with a samey action second.

[G.I.Joe]

I can't believe no one's made an obvious bisexual themed joke yet.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by vic_orthdox

Blokes best versed in it tend to be front on bowlers, because from there it tends to be just a change of wrist position if you are a pure chest-on bowler. Where as side on bowlers often need more than just a change of wrist position to get themselves into a position to bowl an inswinger.

Yeah - and I'm a flat-out side-on bowler (as anyone who's seen the pics of my bowling-action knows). I also bowl with a lowish arm, which combined with my natural wrist position puts the seam into absolutely the perfect release for the outswinger. I only took the slightest notice of this for the first time a year ago. Until then I'd just bowled outswing because that was what happened when I released the ball. I knew I was doing it and I knew it was a good thing to do, but I'd never thought about why I did it.

I have trained on raising my arm and can now bowl outswing and a very, very vague inswinger with the higher arm. The high-arm outswinger is nowhere near so effective as the low-arm outswinger though. And this illustrates the difficulties associated with both-ways swing.

[SJS]

Its not easy to swing both ways consistently. The actions are so different that even the few players who have managed to master it for some time have mostly found the stress on the muscles a bit too much. So mostly bowlers have swung one way and the movement in the other direction has been mostly off the seam. These bowlers lasted much longer without damaging their shoulders. Statham is a prime example as is Shackleton I think.

Many bowlers have actually even lost their original swing when they have tried to master the other since the different action made them lose something of their original action. Swing bowlers are very sensitive to action changes and there are many examples of players suddenly losing their ability to swing. Mostly it is because of subtle changes in action which they (nor their coaches) are at times able to exactly pin point.

Most really successful top class bowlers, who managed to swing the other (second) direction, did it a bit later in their careers after having become complete bowlers and matured in their basic swing. Even then many of them used the second swing very rarely due to the effect on the muscles.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by G.I.Joe

I can't believe no one's made an obvious bisexual themed joke yet.

They've probably made it too many times in the 1,535 previous threads and realise how samey it'll be if they make it for the umpteenth time.

TBH.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by SJS

Many bowlers have actually even lost their original swing when they have tried to master the other since the different action made them lose something of their original action. Swing bowlers are very sensitive to action changes and there are many examples of players suddenly losing their ability to swing.

Yup, that's the biggest danger associated with trying to learn to swing it the other way having already mastered in\outswinger. I was extremely wary of it. In the end I decided it was a risk worth taking - I'm a nothing-much bowler as things stand but I could be a semi-decent one if I could get it to go both ways.

I absolutely love bowling outswing though and hope it's "natural" enough that if I ever do lose it I'll be able to rediscover it.

[bagapath]

imran was a predominantly inswinging bowler and so was allan donald. kapil and botham more reliant on outswingers. i would say mcgrath was a seam and cut pacer. shaun pollock would swing the ball more than him but even he relied a lot on seam and cut.

wasim akram was a master of swing bowling either way. and so was malcolm marshall. richard hadlee was a terrific swing bowler too. both his indippers and outswingers were unplayable. but, like lillee, his chief weapon was the leg cutter that would clip the top of off stump. i will go with these three as the best swing bowlers in the last 25 years.

[Richard]

Conventionally, Allan Donald was perfectly capable of taking it both ways. He could only reverse-swing the ball in, and I do agree with bagapath that the inswinger was his more common delivery even with new-ball. But I've seen him knock-over countless batsmen with the outswinger.

He shows what Jack was talking about earlier well - his action was the perfect middle-ground between side-on and front-on. So thus he could take the ball both ways at will while rarely being telegraphed.

And even if he couldn't even the very best batsmen were always going to struggle to pick-up any change of action in that whirl of arms and that 95mph that gave you so few split-seconds to react.

BTW bagapath, are you calling Lillee a swing-bowler? That's interesting, as I've done such a thing in the past, and been told he wasn't really.

[BoyBrumby]

Originally Posted by G.I.Joe

I can't believe no one's made an obvious bisexual themed joke yet.

First post in the thread:

Originally Posted by zaremba

No, I'm not talking about Mrs Hadlee

[bagapath]

Originally Posted by Richard

BTW bagapath, are you calling Lillee a swing-bowler? That's interesting, as I've done such a thing in the past, and been told he wasn't really.

no i am not calling him a swing bowler, just stating that he was a master of the leg cutter. he taught that to imran who passed it on to marshall. hadlee's mastery of the leg cutter came from the same school too. i was calling akram, marshall and hadlee as the best swing bowlers i have seen.