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Boult and Southee - lack of swing

cnerd123

cnerd123

likes this
Bowling is such a difficult thing to coach because everyone's action is different. There are so many moving parts, so many little things that all add up into building rhythm. As an outside party, you need to completely understand someone elses action before you can begin to comment on what is going wrong. And that's hard, because you don't have the muscle memory in you. You aren't the one running in to bowl. You can't feel the rhythm or lack thereof. You can only watch from the outside and attempt to understand and internalize it. And even then you're probably going to miss some things.

Bowlers themselves are best positioned to understand their own actions, and are the best person to diagnose it and make the necessary tweaks. All a coach can do is just facilitate it - filming them in the nets, compiling past footage and comparing it, offering advice, suggesting ways to go about understanding whats wrong, and being there with them in the nets as they bowl and attempt to resolve the mistakes.

I'd be a lot more concerned about a coach who attempts to 'fix' a bowler after only a couple of months around the team. Its hard enough to understand one bowlers' mechanics, let alone an entire squads. And unless they really, truly understand the action, they're probably going to do more harm than good by attempting to tweak it.
 
vic_orthdox

vic_orthdox

Global Moderator
I haven't watched much of the recent series, but did note that Boult didn't really seem to get the seam position right in the OD series. Was still taking wickets but not getting that same bend that he did in the WC.
 
wellAlbidarned

wellAlbidarned

International Coach
***** said:
Bowling is such a difficult thing to coach because everyone's action is different. There are so many moving parts, so many little things that all add up into building rhythm. As an outside party, you need to completely understand someone elses action before you can begin to comment on what is going wrong. And that's hard, because you don't have the muscle memory in you. You aren't the one running in to bowl. You can't feel the rhythm or lack thereof. You can only watch from the outside and attempt to understand and internalize it. And even then you're probably going to miss some things.

Bowlers themselves are best positioned to understand their own actions, and are the best person to diagnose it and make the necessary tweaks. All a coach can do is just facilitate it - filming them in the nets, compiling past footage and comparing it, offering advice, suggesting ways to go about understanding whats wrong, and being there with them in the nets as they bowl and attempt to resolve the mistakes.

I'd be a lot more concerned about a coach who attempts to 'fix' a bowler after only a couple of months around the team. Its hard enough to understand one bowlers' mechanics, let alone an entire squads. And unless they really, truly understand the action, they're probably going to do more harm than good by attempting to tweak it.
Click to expand...
well with boult and southee their actions are both biomechanically pretty poor - both bowl around their front leg and have weak chest drive. Need some ian pont imo
 
Jord

Jord

U19 Vice-Captain
Swing isn't a science so it's hard to say but I'm guessing combination of three factors; both coming back from injury, bad batch of balls that don't seem to be swinging for anyone and hotter than usual weather conditions with less overcast/muggy mornings.
 
cnerd123

cnerd123

likes this
wellAlbidarned said:
well with boult and southee their actions are both biomechanically pretty poor - both bowl around their front leg and have weak chest drive. Need some ian pont imo
Click to expand...
'Bio-mechanically poor' is a bit of a misnomer. You probably mean that in terms of injury prevention or optimising how much energy they transfer from their runup into the ball. But this overlooks the fact that their bowling actions have developed over years and years of practice and refinement. It may not be what's optimal for the average person, but it is optimal for them and their body. It's what works for them, and that's what matters.

At this stage in their careers, any tweaks will just force them to re-learn years and years of muscle-,memory, and require them to engage parts of their body that may not be up to the handling the stresses of an international bowling workload. An Ian Point-style intervention could just seem them struggle with rhythm and break down with injury for a while before it all clicks and comes together again.

They both have had quite a bit of success already, and neither of their actions seems complex or hard to reproduce. I think it would suit them better to take some time off, watch some old footage and current footage, and do some work in the nets to fix the tiny flaws and bad habits that have creeped in.
 
wellAlbidarned

wellAlbidarned

International Coach
***** said:
'Bio-mechanically poor' is a bit of a misnomer. You probably mean that in terms of injury prevention or optimising how much energy they transfer from their runup into the ball. But this overlooks the fact that their bowling actions have developed over years and years of practice and refinement. It may not be what's optimal for the average person, but it is optimal for them and their body. It's what works for them, and that's what matters.

At this stage in their careers, any tweaks will just force them to re-learn years and years of muscle-,memory, and require them to engage parts of their body that may not be up to the handling the stresses of an international bowling workload. An Ian Point-style intervention could just seem them struggle with rhythm and break down with injury for a while before it all clicks and comes together again.

They both have had quite a bit of success already, and neither of their actions seems complex or hard to reproduce. I think it would suit them better to take some time off, watch some old footage and current footage, and do some work in the nets to fix the tiny flaws and bad habits that have creeped in.
Click to expand...
this is all any reasonable bio-mechanics coach will advocate anyway. Pont works at making very small changes and getting them to stick. He worked with Steyn to fix his angled run up just before he went super-sayan
 
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P

Ponty

School Boy/Girl Cricketer
The secret isn't wholesale change for any bowler that's playing International cricket. It's about working on what they can do BETTER, not changing the very things that are working..

Oddly, people don't have problems 'coaching' batsmen when they have issues, but have trouble coaching bowlers as it is viewed as "changing' them.

Bottom line? Whoever you are it is always worth IMPROVING on what you do. IMO people settle too easily on what they have and the myth that we should 'leave things alone' is partly why there are so few pace bowling coaches in the world.

***** said:
'Bio-mechanically poor' is a bit of a misnomer. You probably mean that in terms of injury prevention or optimising how much energy they transfer from their runup into the ball. But this overlooks the fact that their bowling actions have developed over years and years of practice and refinement. It may not be what's optimal for the average person, but it is optimal for them and their body. It's what works for them, and that's what matters.

At this stage in their careers, any tweaks will just force them to re-learn years and years of muscle-,memory, and require them to engage parts of their body that may not be up to the handling the stresses of an international bowling workload. An Ian Point-style intervention could just seem them struggle with rhythm and break down with injury for a while before it all clicks and comes together again.

They both have had quite a bit of success already, and neither of their actions seems complex or hard to reproduce. I think it would suit them better to take some time off, watch some old footage and current footage, and do some work in the nets to fix the tiny flaws and bad habits that have creeped in.
Click to expand...
 
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