The Tiger that Bowled like a Mouse and The Mouse that Kicked like a Mule.
.......The general consensus is that Bill O’Reilly bowled quickish leg breaks, googlies (bosies) and top spinners.
In fact he himself describes his bowling as ‘medium slow’. He bowled from a thirteen pace run-up and the above photograph shows that he had a very long delivery stride suggesting that he came in more quickly than many spinners who use a short delivery stride*to help*them get height and a pivot over the front leg. In his time, O’Reilly, opened the bowling for the Australians in a number of innings.......
It is also a consensus that O’Reilly did not turn the ball a great deal. It seems to Third Man that from the photographs of the grip yesterday
he produced his revolutions by flicking the ring finger upwards with the palm facing the batsman for the leg-break. He thus may have sacrificed the extra revolutions imparted by a flick of the wrist.
With this method, turning the hand with palm to midwicket produces the top-spinner and moving the hand slightly further round with the palm facing back to mid-on for the right hander produces the googly.
The unorthodox grip might also have produced less obvious changes in orientation to effect the three deliveries described above. The difference between leg break, top spin and googly could have been minimum, helping with disguise but reducing turn. In fact the energy of the rotations would have brought the ball down and forwards in a preponderance of topspin.
The direction of the seam for the leg break would have been just off-straight (say towards first slip rather than gully) and just finely to leg rather than to backward shot leg for the googly. This topspin would have produced a relatively high degree of ‘dip’ thanks to the Magnus Effect and therefore would have produced a relatively high bounce or ‘kick’ as described by Hammond and others.
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