Monday, November 01, 2010

Going round the loop - plus the gyro ball!

*

Interesting post at The Teesra

http://idontlikecricket-andrewb.blogspot.com/2010/10/looking-for-more-variations.html

which says:

" "going "around the loop" - keeping the finger movement constant, but rotating the wrist between successive deliveries, to change the direction of spin.

"So, for a right-arm wrist spinner, you might start with a "big leggie", releasing the ball with the seam pointing at gully, or even cover; then a "little leggie", with the seam directed to first slip; the top spinner, with the seam straight down the wicket; the googly, with the wrist now turned even further round so that the seam is spun towards leg slip.

"Shane Warne's "slider" might be the delivery at the opposite end of the loop to the googly - still with the same finger movement as a regular leggie, but now with palm of the hand towards gully and the seam pointing towards leg slip but with the fingers spinning the ball back towards the bowler."

*

To this might be added the idea of the 'gyro ball' which is rotating the ball on a vertical axis - either by pushing the right side of the ball going forward (towards the batter) or the left side going forward (towards the batter).

The ball rotating on a vertical axis will tend to swing away from the side which is spinning towards the batter - espcially if the exis of rotation goes down the middle of the seam, so that seam is like the equator of the earth.

This means that the ball will *not* usually spin or turn off the pitch when it lands, because the seam is kept away from contact with the pitch.

*

In other words, this extra variation - http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2010/05/gyro-ball-variation-for-off-spinner.html - is that one which which I believe is used by Graeme Swann, and which gets him so many LBW decisions against left handers.

There would therefore be an away-swinging (to the right-handed batter) gyro ball - produced by the off-spinner and chinaman wrist spinner; and an in-swinging (to the right-handed batter) gyro ball produced by the orthodox left arm finger spinner and the leg break bowler.

*

In 'going round the loop', the gyro ball variation would probably come next to the backspinner - produced by a 90 degree wrist rotation: at the end for finger spinners - following after the 'Teesra'; and at the beginning for the wrist spinner - preceding the 'slider'.

*