Finger Spin Megathread

[Shady Slim]

people say it is easier to bowl finger spin over wrist spin

well they are very wrong to me, i find it very difficult to bowl finger spin though my natural action is wrist spin

 

[andruid]

Over the past 2 years or so finget spinners all over the world, and all sorts of levels, are bring called for chucking. Its a bit of an epidemic. Thoughts?

 

[cnerd123]

Bent arms.

I was in the nets a month or so ago and this club team were practicing there too, so I joined them and an offspinner on their team gave me some advice.

One thing he told me to do was to keep my arm slightly bent. It would help extract more turn at a faster speed. Otherwise you need to be really slow through the air, or be an exceptional spinner of the ball.

I didn't do it, but it was eye opening. And there are a lot of young Asian spinners being taught this. The problem is that a bent arm usually leads to straightening. Its probably a lot more likely if the action isn't your natural one.

 

[mr_mister]

off spin was my greatest asset as a cricketer, although i overused my 'quicker one' too much. i use to rub my head before i bowled so the keeper would know to stand back. lol it was basically as fast as i could bowl off two steps, very poorly disguised too as my action sped up 500%.


but my regular offbreak was handy and moved a bit. i became an offie because i was never super quick and felt my mediums were a small fish in a big pond, where as with spin i felt i could sort of.. maximise my bowling ability. i found leggies impossible to land, but dammit they just have so many more variations in that field of spin, it bothered me theres not much you can do with offies. i still maintain every doosra looks very dodgy in terms of legality

anyyyway all this posting on this site recently has made me want to take up cricket again, ill probs sign up for a season in summer

 

[cnerd123]

Yooo offies have a ton of variety.

It's so much easier to have subtle variations in flight, pace and spin as an offie.

You can also bowl top spinners, arm balls, and hold the ball across the seam instead of along when bowling the offbreak.

If you ro your fingers right at the time of release, you could even bowl a carrom-ball style legbreak!

You also can create so much confusion with angles. Go wide of the crease, go around.

Offspin is so versatile. Slow it up or fire it in based on the pitch, keep mixing things up, and before you know it you've run through your spell for not many runs at all, and hopefully a couple of wickets.

 

[mr_mister]

yeah I guess I don't include changes in flight and pace as true variation in the sense I that I consider the googly, flipper and slider variation. It's probably 100% due to the fact the leg spinning variants get cool nicknames :S

 

[cnerd123]

Give you balls cool names. My stock delivery is more of a topspinner - bounces a bit, spins a little, easy to control. Then I've got the Looper (really slow loopy ball; 0 pace, dies after pitching), the Skidder (basically a faster topspinner that slides out of the hand - ends up skidding off the pitch) and the Saucer (stole that from Swann - bigger spinning offbreak that lands with the seam perpendicular to the pitch. Still a work in progress). Got a legbreak I can throw out once in a while with no real control, and am looking to eventually develop a backspinner - gonna call that one the *****.

 

[Migara]

people say it is easier to bowl finger spin over wrist spin

well they are very wrong to me, i find it very difficult to bowl finger spin though my natural action is wrist spin

The issue is if you can bowl wrist spin, the spin, dip and drift on offer is very encouraging. And the ability to produce that spectacular delivery is very high with wrist spin, and like a right arm fast bowler you could blast through lower orders. Off spin is much more planning and subtle, and that "money ball" is rare unless you are Muralitharan.

I myself as a leggie spin it one and half feet with regularity, and sometimes to pitch foot out side off and still miss the off by a foot or more. But I do bowl lot of crap as well. Usual figures were like 7-0-42-3 like (35 over competition). I have two six wicket hauls and few shockers of matches as well. Then I tried my hand in off breaks. There was not much spin, but flight and speed variations I was pretty good. Because I did not spin a mile, my arm balls were ineffective. Then I found that the front of the hand leg break is a much better alternative to a carrom ball with greater dip, control and some times pretty decent spin. It only needed me to open my action up a bit. Actually I started bowling side on and front on off breaks, hence the change in action is not noticed. I found that side on off break spins more and bounces, while the front on one slide, keeps low and gathers pace after pitching. So my performance became conssitent, but never had that dream spells that I had a legspin bowler. Best was 7-4-4-2, had one three wicket haul but I was expensive.

 

[Migara]

looking to eventually develop a backspinner - gonna call that one the *****.

Piece of cake. The seam up is a back spinner. It will swing away from the right hander at pace. Deadly against lefthanders if you are getting drift with your offies. Then over the wicket balls will straighten up with the drift and pitch on stumps. Better batsman eventually will start leaving them. Once you throw in that inswinger, which straightens in air, pitches on stumps and hit them, then they have to play at all the filth that they had been leaving before. Other back spinner is the variation of front of the hand leg break. Rotate the wrist so the palm faces right, fingers face left, and will produce the Warne's backspinner. It will tail in through the air, and may break away ever so slightly and keep low. Once you have two backspinners tailing in and out of batsmen, that will keep them guessing.

 

[cnerd123]

Hmm. The one I was going to develop is just the reverse of a topspinner.

Same grip as a topspinner (palm facing left) but instead of your fingers and wrist turning anti-clockwise, you turn them clockwise, pushing the ball out from the bottom of your palm and using the thumb to help spin it.

I've done it with a tennis ball; but never a proper cricket ball. I'm still just working on my runup and delivery for my stock offbreak; haven't even tried an orthodox topspinner yet!

Seam-up deliveries are a nice variation I want to use though. As well as a normal offbreak but with a scrambled seam.

Not sure about the legbreak style backspinner. I have tried throwing in a legbreak for variation in the nets, and the batsmen have said it is really easy to pick. Can't disguise it enough with my current runup and action.

Have you had any luck with the carrom ball? Or the doosra?

 

[AndyZaltzHair]

any video of your bowling *****? video uploading can be a hassle though

 

[cnerd123]

I have one on my insta of my old action. Since then I've worked out a few kinks, I get a lot more revs and energy through the ball (I can actually spin it now!) but it takes me a while till I get into rhythm. And even then, I feel my runup and delivery stride is changing on a day to day basis - the fundamental release is consistent, but how I run in and how far my feet are in my delivery stride isn't at all.

So I'm refraining from filming myself against until I feel I can hit some rhythm consistently. I really like the way I release the ball now, so I'm probably just gonna work on the delivery stride first - basically just standing and then getting into the final few steps of the action right away and bowling. It'll be a bit slow but once I can get that nailed down, I'll then start walking/running a bit more and get the ball going quicker through the air.

Problem is I can't really do that in the team practices that I go for, because it's all experimental. If I do this in the nets against real batsmen I'll just be offering up garbage and hindering their practice. So I should book out the nets for a few days where it's just me and some stumps, and sort of re-learn my runup and delivery step by step, memorise it, make sure it's letting me release the ball the way I want to, and then take that into the nets against real batsmen.


There are a few things I like about my bowling now, but overall its still really **** lol. I won't be uploading any videos here till I have a decent, repeated, match-usable runup and action. I need some sort of framework in place before I start making minor tweaks here and there to improve it.

 

[Migara]

Have you had any luck with the carrom ball? Or the doosra?

Carom ball is THE front of the hand leg spinner. Whether the spinning finger is middle (classical variety) or the ring depends on what you have been using. S. Prasanna for Sri Lanka, a wrist spinner, but spins his leg breaks off the middle finger. The wrist spin leg break and carom ball leg break, the difference comes from the way the wrist is used.

Doosra is bloody hard to bowl without chucking unless you have a bit of joint laxity. I am pretty chunky and muscular, so this one is not for me.

 

[Migara]

Another variation some off spinners use is to coil the index finger to maximise spin on the ball. It's going to come out slow. so the action has to get bit more brisker. But works for some people (Aravinda was one of them) and that is the ball that crashes in to stumps (two famous deliveries to Ponting and Healy from Aravinda in '96WC are his coiled finger off breaks).

 

[Dan]

The other thing I haven't seen mentioned yet that I reckon is very important in bowling finger spin, is driving through with the back hip. From my experience, it helps you get revs on the ball and get it down the other end quicker, without compromising on flight.

Nathan Lyon does it well here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isyZ3YcewYc
Clarke gets his body into really good positions bowling his left arm orthodox, to the point that his less-than-stellar seam release doesn't hurt him too much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPZudnEgJFw
And Glenn Maxwell, bowling around the wicket, does it pretty well too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pob_HT9UWb8

Only Australian examples, but I think if you look at most conventional offies/orthodox spinners the world over, that powerful driving through with the back leg is a key part of their success.

 

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[cnerd123]

^ quality contributions

 

[AndyZaltzHair]

Cricket Monthly published this awesome article which contains interviews from Mushtaq, Tahir and MacGill. Although mostly about leg spin, it's useful read. Inspirational.

Straight from the wrist | The Cricket Monthly | ESPN Cricinfo

 

[cnerd123]

Bump

I've recently learnt a new key to bowling fingerspin - how you release the ball.

Basically your want to release it in a way the sends the ball upwards into the sky instead of down into the pitch. This means you rotate your wrist so that, at the moment of release, the ball floats out from your fingers/thumbs and your palm is pointing towards the side and turning upwards.

This allows your to transfer a lot of your energy into revs in the ball whilst also finding good loop.

It's a small thing, but something that's easier said than done. Has brought my offspin bowling ahead quite a bit. Finding more turn and getting nice loop on it too. It adds that element to your bowling that gets the batsmen reaching for the ball.