Sunday, January 29, 2012

Reverse wrist spinner - the best name for an off-break-doosra bowler like Ajmal

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In Mike Selvey's Guardian column today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/28/pakistan-england-changing-world-order

he used the term reverse wrist spinner to describe off-break/ doosra bolwers like Ajmal.

Sounds like the perfect name!

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(I found a couple of other previous uses of the term reverse wrist spinner on Google - such as this time ten years ago on cricinfo by Sambit Bal - http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/226249.html) . Perhaps the cricket journalists have been saying it for a while?

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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Simon Hughes blows a fuse over the doosra

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I'm a big fan of Simon 'the analyst' Hughes as a writer and TV commenter - but this video of him supposedly trying to bowl a doosra is very annoying:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/sportvideo/cricketvideo/9034353/

Simon-Hughes-tries-to-bowl-the-doosra.html

The doosra is in the news because of Ajmal's mastery dissection of the English batters in the current test series, but what Hughes is bowling bears zero resemblance to Ajmal's innovative action.

Hughes makes the usual mistake of bowling a conventional off-break - where the ball is gripped between index and middle fingers, and which uses forearm supination to impart most of the spin; then trying to turn this action around to make it into a leg-break - which is pretty much impossible, otherwise off-spinners would have been bowling doosras ever since the beginning of cricket.

But Ajmal has devised a new way of bowling - with a 'back-flip' extension of the wrist, and ball gripped between middle and ring fingers - so Ajmal's off-break is nothing like Hughes off-break delivery.

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For heavens sake, can't people see the difference - it isn't subtle!

That's why I began this blog - because the pundits don't seem to look at the way that innovative spin bowlers are doing their tricks; and the most ridiculous tosh gets written about, say, Paul Adams, Murali and now Ajmal.

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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Forearm spinners - the commonest type of spinner

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The commonest type of spinner - the off-break and orthodox left arm spinners (like Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann) should properly be caused forearm spinners, since it is the supination of the forearm which imparts spin to the ball.

Supination is the rotation of the forearm from a position with the palm facing down and the thumb on the medial (middle) side being rotated to the palm is upwards and the thumb is on the lateral (out) side.

It is this rotation of the forearm which generates spin - and it has almost nothing to do with the fingers (they merely grip the ball firmly) - so the name 'finger spinner' is wrong and misleading.

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True finger spinners are those rare types who use a finger flick to impart spin - such as Mendis or Herath's carrom ball, or from the past Jack Iverson.

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Wrist spinners are mostly leg break and chinaman bowlers, who bowl with the forearm in pronation (thumb medially rotated - but Saeed Ajmal is a new kind of wrist spinner who bowls with the forearm in supination (thumb laterally rotated).

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What of Murali?

He was mostly a shoulder spinner. The whole of his arm rotated, and the ball was either an off-break or a doora according to whether the wrist was flexed/ folded palm towards arm (doosra) or extended/ with wrist 'cocked' and back of hand towards arm (off break).

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Some googlies are also shoulder-spun - bowled mostly from shoulder rotation, especially when the bowler has a round arm action like Shane Warne.

Warne's most serious injury was of his shoulder, and resulted from bowling a sequence of practice googlies to Ian Healy.

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(By contrast, right arm wrist spinners with a high or vertical arm action - such as Chandrasekar or Kumble - tend to bowl googlies (or top-spinners) as their stock delivery rather than leg breaks; and their googly is bowled with a flick of the wrist and not by rotating the whole arm from the shoulder.)

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Friday, January 13, 2012

What will be Ajmal's new 'mystery' delivery? A knuckleball?

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I read that Saeed Ajmal will unveil a new 'mystery' delivery against England in the UAE test series. What could it be?

Since Ajmal is too shrewd to mess with his beautifully-honed action - which is making him into the best world spinner, overtaking Swann - and knowing the method of his stock deliveries

http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-does-saeed-ajmal-bowl-his-doosra.html

i.e. ball held between middle and ring finger, spin imparted by a forward flip (extension) of the wrist with the back of hand facing batter...

Then I can make a guess that the mystery delivery will be a straight, floating, wobbling ball with no spin at all (thereby creating turbulence and unpredictable movement, like a baseball pitcher's knuckleball) - and he will deliver this simply by not flipping the wrist forward and instead releasing the ball completely dead, seam sideways to the batter.

It's just a guess - and it will be interesting to see if my prediction is correct.

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