Swinging both ways

[Richard]

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]

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

First post in the thread:

No, I'm not talking about Mrs Hadlee

 

[bagapath]

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.

 

[Richard]

Aha, I see.

 

[zaremba]

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.

All true.

Botham has been mentioned as someone who could achieve both (orthodox) outswing and inswing. However while his outswinger was superb, his inswinger was a great unsubtle gallumphing sort of thing. Even Botham thought it was rotten.

The thing about Anderson is that he seems pretty much equally adept at swinging it both ways with the new ball - and then gets excellent reverse swing when the ball's older. All at a good pace. Given all this he should be capable of being the best fast bowler in the world. But sadly life doesn't quite work like that...

 

[G.I.Joe]

First post in the thread:

What's the dope on her?

 

[Manee]

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.

Cool, let me know how that goes. I seem to not have too much difficulty swinging it conventionally both ways to a left hander but to a right hander, everything tends to swing away or not swing at all, which is a bit of a bummer.

 

[tooextracool]

One of the great things about Jimmy Anderson is that he always tries to bowl outswing with the new ball, both to right- and left-handers. In other words, he bowls completely different stock balls depending on the handedness of the batsman. That is damn impressive. I've never seen anyone do that before.

It is impressive to observe yes, but annoying as well because Ive always felt that left handers in general are most vulnerable to the ball that swings into their pads than the ball that goes away from them (which in reality is the sort of angle they face from the majority of bowlers). Chris Gayle for one, would routinely be Anderson's bunny if he got the ball to swing and bowled the in-swinger, in-swinger, away-swinger combination.

When the ball is swinging though, there are few better bowlers around than Anderson.

 

[tooextracool]

Well he had to bowl for a couple of years with an remodelled action and be a drinks waiter.

According to Holding Anderson finds it hard to bowl around the wicket to left handers because of his bowling action.

Yes that is true, and I'd expect him to send far too many balls down the leg side if he tried. Anderson doesnt really swing the ball around corners, his strength is that he swings it very late. Going around the wicket wouldnt really help his case IMO, hed be better off bowling inswingers at left handers from over the wicket.

 

[tooextracool]

Bond is a strange one. First time I saw him I thought his stock-ball was the outswinger, but eventually it became clear it was the inswinger. Sometimes I got the impression he was really trying to swing it away but just couldn't do it, his natural inswinger was just too strong.

Yeah that makes 2 of us. He started off in Australia bowling a fair number of outswingers and it was only later that we got to see how far he could get the ball to go when he bowled inswingers. I would say that it would be a direct competition with Srinath regarding who got the inswinger to go the longest way in conducive conditions. Of course the fact that Bond did it at 90mph while Srinath (who only really managed to master the art of inswing late in his career) would do it at 80 mph made Bond far more lethal.

 

[oitoitoi]

It is impressive to observe yes, but annoying as well because Ive always felt that left handers in general are most vulnerable to the ball that swings into their pads than the ball that goes away from them (which in reality is the sort of angle they face from the majority of bowlers). Chris Gayle for one, would routinely be Anderson's bunny if he got the ball to swing and bowled the in-swinger, in-swinger, away-swinger combination.

When the ball is swinging though, there are few better bowlers around than Anderson.

When the ball is swinging and he's bowling with good rhythm he's very dangerous. However despite him regularly getting swinging conditions in England he rarely makes good use of them. Also regarding how much he swings it I found it very interesting on England's recent India tour how much more swing Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma were getting and for longer than the English bowlers. Botham did an interesting stint on commentary about it.

 

[tooextracool]

When the ball is swinging and he's bowling with good rhythm he's very dangerous. However despite him regularly getting swinging conditions in England he rarely makes good use of them. Also regarding how much he swings it I found it very interesting on England's recent India tour how much more swing Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma were getting and for longer than the English bowlers. Botham did an interesting stint on commentary about it.

He has been guilty of wasting conditions on occasion, but more often than not when the ball is swinging he has been lethal to the point where he is easily the best bowler on either side.

Ishant Sharma btw didnt tour England, I presume you are refering to RP Singh who got the ball to swing a fair bit. But yeah, on the whole I think Anderson used to be one who could swing the ball a long way when he first burst on the scene but since he has remodeled his action he hasnt been able to get nearly as much swing. However, you dont need to swing the ball around corners to get wickets and he swings the ball late enough and bowls full enough to get batsmen bowled or caught behind.

 

[tooextracool]

Hoggard was excellent around that time (not just against Smith) at bowling straight-on balls which were apparently undetectable from his stock-standard out(to-the-RHB)swinger. I honestly never saw him specifically make it go the other way.

He can of course also bowl an off-cutter, but it's nowhere near as good as Chaminda Vaas'.

Hoggard has bowled inswingers before, and did so on many occasions during the 2004/05 series in SA. Of course, hes struggled to get it to go consistently towards the right hander and thats been the case for all of his career.

 

[tooextracool]

Glenn McGrath developed an outswinger, but he was, of course, never known as a swinger.

McGrath it seems was better at swinging the white ball away from the right hander than the red ball. Rarely saw him get the ball to swing conventionally in tests. He did get the ball to reverse and used it to good affect in the subcontinent. He is a strange case, given the success that he had without having the ability to swing the ball either conventionally or reverse for the majority of the career.

 

[tooextracool]

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

Yeah Praveen has shown that he can swing the ball prodigiously both ways in ODIs. I am assuming he can do it in tests given his action and his pace. Tbh Im not sure why he isnt in the test squad.

 

[FBU]

Mike Selvey in The Guardian

Anderson will shield the ball with his left hand until the last split second. "We have talked a lot about how at this level people can see how you are holding the ball and on which side there is the shine. So hiding it is important. Our batters struggled with Sharma and Zaheer. We do it slightly differently and it is about finding something else that feels comfortable."

He might want to reflect, though, on a prestidigital facility possessed by Andy Roberts, the great West Indies fast bowler. Roberts, in the course of his actual bowling action, could spin the ball round through 180 degrees without losing rhythm or pace. Not even his own team-mates knew at the time he could do this. "Hide the ball?" he would say. "Why would I want to do that? I want him to see it." Next stop for Jimmy should be the Magic Circle.
----

Against SA last year he would run up with the ball covered with both hands when there was reverse swing but Pollock was saying that it is hard to do as it disrupts your rhythm in the run up. I see he has changed and now runs up with the ball covered in his left hand and then changes it to his right while covering it just before bowling. Anderson should be working on the Magic Circle so once the batsman has seen the ball he can change it in his delivery. .

 

[Smudge]

Simon Doull FTW.

 

[Richard]

Mike Selvey in The Guardian

Anderson will shield the ball with his left hand until the last split second. "We have talked a lot about how at this level people can see how you are holding the ball and on which side there is the shine. So hiding it is important. Our batters struggled with Sharma and Zaheer. We do it slightly differently and it is about finding something else that feels comfortable."

He might want to reflect, though, on a prestidigital facility possessed by Andy Roberts, the great West Indies fast bowler. Roberts, in the course of his actual bowling action, could spin the ball round through 180 degrees without losing rhythm or pace. Not even his own team-mates knew at the time he could do this. "Hide the ball?" he would say. "Why would I want to do that? I want him to see it." Next stop for Jimmy should be the Magic Circle.
----

Against SA last year he would run up with the ball covered with both hands when there was reverse swing but Pollock was saying that it is hard to do as it disrupts your rhythm in the run up. I see he has changed and now runs up with the ball covered in his left hand and then changes it to his right while covering it just before bowling. Anderson should be working on the Magic Circle so once the batsman has seen the ball he can change it in his delivery. .

Bloody hell. I knew Roberts had the two different paced short deliveries (he was famous for it) but that is unbelievably clever stuff.

If you can do that, for sure, give it a try. But I'd reckon some would and some wouldn't. Ian Harvey, for instance, I once saw drop the ball in his run-up, pick it up and keep running in, and bowl a perfectly decent ball. But he wasn't called "freak" for nothing. There were things - little things - that he could do which plenty can only dream of. I'd imagine he could've done that if he tried.

But I don't think everyone neccessarily could. Certainly, though, it'd make great sense to try.

And yes, I've always thought it must be disruptive to a bowler's rhythm to run in holding the ball with both hands. Wasim Akram often did that, he was the first I saw do it. Chaminda Vaas later on too (he was alerted to the need to do it by the batsmen who'd telegraphed his deliveries writing about the fact that he'd telegraphed it). But clearly some can manage it, and clearly it's better to have your rhythm slightly disrupted than have every batsman know what you're going to bowl before you bowl it.