Legspin or Offspin?

[TendulkarFan]

Get yourself down and watch Caistor Town U15s, then.

Mirror image (right hander).

Wow, the kid must be very agile...I watch Paul and my back hurts.

 

[Neil Pickup]

More than useful at Under 13/15 club and district level but occasionally inconsistent (to be expected). Fringes of the County squad.

Also very much a capable top order bat, but with a horrible tendency to be involved in run outs. Three on consecutive days at one point, I believe. Was then called Inzy on fairly regular occasions for the rest of the season.

 

[deeps]

Excellent insight from all of you guys. I've kept up with my off-spin and things are starting to happen. One thing my coach asked me to do was go through the delivery a lot quicker and things seem to be getting better. I can whip it away quicker and as a result, have more speed on the ball and I can generate a bit more turn (although when I bowled a little slow a couple times, the batsman jumped on his backfoot and whipped me through on-side.....not a good feeling )

Leg spin is definitely a lot more difficult to control (but it feels unreal when the ball does land on the right spot and turns.) I am only practicing it enough so I can bowl a few decent "shockers" in the game.

wat do u mean go through the delievery a lot quicker? r u bowling it flat and not flighting iT? imho that's a bad move at times...There are times when u need2 bowl it flat,and bowl accurately and keep the runs down...but at times u should bowl wif more flight,..u get more turn,and u can beat the batsman in flight...Otherwise ur just a slow medium pacer bowling leg and off cutters!

 

[Neil Pickup]

And by the same token, you don't want to aimlessly toss it and watch as it disappears into a nearby field.

 

[Craig]

I bowl off-spin and get more control, I can never properly control a legbreak.

 

[Tom Halsey]

I advise you to keep practicing, because once you can control it, it is more effective than offspin, because it turns more

 

[marc71178]

And by the same token, you don't want to aimlessly toss it and watch as it disappears into a nearby field.

But that is better than bowling it flat surely?

You must flight it if you want to be a good bowler!

 

[Neil Pickup]

But that is better than bowling it flat surely?

You must flight it if you want to be a good bowler!

This had the makings of a semi-serious thread, but you have to turn it into another farce..

 

[Legglancer]

Well A main factor is also if you bowl left arm or right arm .... Left arm off-spinner bowling from round the wicket can be quite effective. I find that when I bowl left arm offies and pitch the ball about 6 inchers outside the offstick to a right hand batsman he often goes for the drive and gets beaten by the flight. If I bowl a little fuller ball, a little closer to the stumps a good RH.batsman will try to sweep but has a high percantage often get beaten and bowled.

Eventhough Its hard to generalize personnally I feel a left arm offie to the right hander are more effective all things being equal. Personnally I hate to bowl to LH batsman who are strong off the pads as I get killed by them. Therefore whenever I bowl to a LH batsman I find more success bowling over the wicket leg spin.

 

[luckyeddie]

. Personnally I hate to bowl to LH batsman who are strong off the pads as I get killed by them. Therefore whenever I bowl to a LH batsman I find more success bowling over the wicket leg spin.

I don't.

The biggest asset a leg-spinner or chinaman bowler has isn't the direction of the turn at all - it's the amount of turn and bounce - and the fact that, with a very slight variation (hand position at time of delivery) the ball will deviate in the opposite direction.

The actual speed of rotation with an 'orthodox' spinner (except Murali) is much reduced and along the seam, making it possible to 'pick' the arm ball in flight. A leggie giving it a real rip presents a much more difficult prospect as the direction of rotation tends to be obscured (with the seam being 'scrambled').

But then again, my eyes aren't that good.

 

[Legglancer]

I don't.

The biggest asset a leg-spinner or chinaman bowler has isn't the direction of the turn at all - it's the amount of turn and bounce - and the fact that, with a very slight variation (hand position at time of delivery) the ball will deviate in the opposite direction.

The actual speed of rotation with an 'orthodox' spinner (except Murali) is much reduced and along the seam, making it possible to 'pick' the arm ball in flight. A leggie giving it a real rip presents a much more difficult prospect as the direction of rotation tends to be obscured (with the seam being 'scrambled').

But then again, my eyes aren't that good.

Ditto .... Still I feel bowling left arm has some distingtive advantages and disadvantages which I really havent studied much ... But my Left arm off spinners are at most times better than your average right arm off spinner and I cant find an explanation for that.

P.s. Except for left hand batsman.

 

[TendulkarFan]

wat do u mean go through the delievery a lot quicker? r u bowling it flat and not flighting iT? imho that's a bad move at times...There are times when u need2 bowl it flat,and bowl accurately and keep the runs down...but at times u should bowl wif more flight,..u get more turn,and u can beat the batsman in flight...Otherwise ur just a slow medium pacer bowling leg and off cutters!

Not exactly. I should tell you that I just started learning off-spin a few weeks ago. My initial run-up and delivery action was a bit lazy. I am not bowling completely flat all the time, but the first thing I want to master is giving the ball a real rip so I can make it turn. Once I have that, I'll start working more actively on controlling the flight of the ball.

Another advantage I get out of getting through my action faster is that the ball goes through the air a lot quicker and gives the batsman a lesser chance to pick it up and play it.

Like Neil Pickup said, if I deliberately try to flight it now, it comes off very slowly, without much spin on it and is very very easily put away.

 

[luckyeddie]

Ditto .... Still I feel bowling left arm has some distingtive advantages and disadvantages which I really havent studied much ... But my Left arm off spinners are at most times better than your average right arm off spinner and I cant find an explanation for that.

P.s. Except for left hand batsman.

It seems to be something in the left-hander's make-up.
Something to do with hand-eye co-ordination, dominant hemispheres of the brane sorry, brain and the like, perhaps.

Take tenpin bowling (the only sport I can speak about from personal experience at the highest level).

Now, the percentage of left-handedness in the general population seems to be around 10% (estimates vary - I have seen as low as 5, as high as 20).

On the UK tenpin bowling tour when I was playing, that 10% figure seemed to be reflected in the number of 'lefties' - yet the population became highly skewed when you looked at the top half of the results - and even more so when you looked at the top 10%.

There were occasions when as many as 6 left-handers figured in the round-robin stages of tournaments out of just 10 bowlers (including me ).

A survey of artists revealed that 23% paint with their left hand.

Why?

Search me.

 

[Richard]

the doosra...saqlain mushtaq and muttiah muralitharan r the only two i can think off that can bowl the doosra...

Murali, bowl the doosra?
The doosra is a fingerspinner's delivery. Saqlain and Harbhajan are the only ones who bowl it.
Murali bowls many deliveries, but all of them use his wrist to spin the ball.

 

[Richard]

This sort of discussion invariably gets to sort of confusion that has arisen eventually...
Can we just forget the notion of "off" and "leg" spin? As LE points-out, the direction of the turn doesn't especially matter - sure, it's a little more useful to turn the ball away from the bat than into it, but not massively.
The basic distinction that we seem to have come to is that wristspinners (and Murali IS a wristspinner) will almost invariably turn the ball more than fingerspinners. However, they will more often than not be more expensive too.
However, a strange thought is that fingerspinners are of much use in one-day-cricket - if the ball's not turning, a decent batsman will just use his feet and hit the ball a long way if you're only bowling at 50 mph!
If you want to bowl effectively at 50 mph in a one-day-game you've got to turn it - simple as. The alternative for spinners, which Dharmasena and Kumble use, is to bowl at closer to 60 mph.
Accuracy is the number-one priority, but if you want to bowl that slow you've got to turn it.
My advice to anyone is don't bowl fingerspin unless you're Sri Lankan, West Indian or Bangladeshi. Well, at top level, anyway. Don't know what wickets at lower levels are like elsewhere in The World. Here in England my advice is simply don't bowl fingerspin.
Likewise, my advice would be to anyone: try bowling wristspin; if you can't start to get it right after a decent try, give it up. But everyone should try it. I tried it, genuinely put some work in, found I wasn't good enough, and reverted to seam. This is something, IMO, that everyone should try, because wristspin is a complex art and all the practice in The World won't make someone good at it who isn't.

 

[chris.hinton]

Or indeed chinamen...(Michael Bevan comes to mind)

it is very hard as my Bro can tell you.... but bowl leg spin as it gives you more chance

 

[chris.hinton]

Marc you are beginning to sound like me (Joke)

 

[Tom Halsey]

P.s. Except for left hand batsman.

I think it is because to left handed batsmen, the ball is spinning inwards, rather than away to slips.

 

[Langeveldt]

it is very hard as my Bro can tell you.... but bowl leg spin as it gives you more chance

Thats a big piece of sense, with hardly any legspinners in England I find its easy to get into places because coaches are so obsessed with legspin when they occasionaly see it...

 

[Paid The Umpire]

Offspin v Legspin

Leg Spin:
Less Acurate
More Turn
Harder to Hit

Off Spin:
Very Acurate
Little Turn
Have To Flight Ball or Get Bounce
Easy to Be Slogged

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I am an off spinner and have to say two things:

1) As a spinner you have about four out of five catches dropped. FULL STOP! If there is a catch go for it yourself, nobody wants to catch a spinners wicket, for some reason.

2) You will not get a bowl. Last weekend, i was the only spinner and didn't come on to bowl until the other team were 2-180ish and the openner was 90ish. You don't get any fresh batters, unless you get them out yourself. Spinner are sadly, the LAST RESORT for a captain regardless of your talent.