A question of spin

The recent crack-down on suspect bowing actions has caught several high profile spin bowlers, most notably Saeed Ajmal and Sunil Narine.

Among the cynics, there has long been a belief that it is (almost) impossible to bowl the doosra without straightening the elbow, and the recent suspensions perhaps support this point of view.

But are there other variations for the finger spinner?

It is very sad to see the mystery spinners being outlawed, as Ajmal in particular is a wizard with the ball in all forms of the game, but we have to assume that the scientists and biomechanists who measured his elbow flexion have got this right and Ajmal was indeed in breach of the ICC’s “15° rule”.  He is back in the game again, now, but it remains to be seen if he will regain his old mastery with a re-modelled action.

But with doubts re-surfacing about the actions of even the leading exponents of the doosra, spinners around the world might need to look for an alternative to their “other” delivery.

The teesra

I have written before about the teesra – essentially the flipper, delivered with under-spin (as opposed to top-spin) and intended to float further up towards the bat than it’s initial flight might suggest, whilst also (possibly) swerving in to the right-handed batsman and (perhaps) keeping low after pitching.

{n.b. in this picture, and all of the others, assume the ball is being delivered directly out of the screen, towards the viewer}

A devil of a delivery.

But with no-one in world cricket currently using it (or if they are, it is seemingly entirely unremarked), perhaps this is just a phantom?

The carrom ball

This one exists. I had the carrom ball demonstrated to me by a fellow coach last year, and I can now get my own carrom ball (bowled with a soft ball) to pitch roughly where I want it to and get a reasonable amount of turn, spinning it out of the front of the hand, between the middle finger and thumb.

I managed to fool a former first class keeper with the first carrom I bowled to him.

But – this was the very first ball I bowled to him, so he had no reference for the carrom as a variation. It was just “something odd” in a spinning competition. In a normal sequence of deliveries, I suspect it would stand out, if not obviously as a leggie then as something very different from the normal run of off-breaks and arm balls.

In addition to the movement of fingers and wrist, the entire arm action needed for the carrom feels very different to the off-break, and I suspect that it must look very different, as well.

Choosing weapons – building a suite of variations around the carrom

Watching Ravichandran Aswhin bowl, and Sunil Narine (before his suspension) in the IPL and CPL, I cannot work out how they spin their stock ball (or even if they really have one – Narine, in particular, sometimes appears to bowl 6 different spins each over).

Both seem to use the middle finger and thumb combination to impart spin, and some deliveries look like carrom balls to me.

They do both bring the ball into the right-handed batters (off-break), however, as well as delivering variations on both top- and back-spin and (especially for Narine) a variety of scrambled seam deliveries… but all with an arm action that looks very similar to their leggie (carrom).

So – how are they spinning the ball to bring it back into the right-handed bat?

Is it a thumb-middle finger “snap” – the flipper reversed, in fact, with palm to gully, the thumb moving up and over the top of the ball, and the middle finger down and underneath? This at least feels compatible with the “carrom” grip and action.

Or is the ball that comes back into the bat actually a version of Shane Warne’s “slider” – less an off-spinner, more a back-spinning, inswinging skidding delivery? Think carrom, but with the wrist rotated so the palm faces gully at the moment of delivery, thumb to extra cover, little finger to backward square leg.

Going even further “round the clock” with the carrom spin, so the palm faces extra cover, gives an extreme “carrom-googly”, but this seems to run the same risk as the doosra, with the elbow facing the batter at the point of release (and hence liable to flex). It must also be the most difficult way to impart off-spin!

The traditional approach

As Graeme Swann demonstrated, it is still possible to bowl finger spin, with great success, without possessing a mystery ball.

Swann spun the ball as hard as many wrist spinners (if the rev counter is correct), and used a curve-ball/arm ball as variation, to devastating effect against left handers, in particular.

Even this delivery has some mystery to it, if you listen to the commentators.  Was it an “arm ball” that “swings” back into the left-hander’s pads?  From the action, I don’t think so – Swann was a big spinner of the ball, and a seam up delivery would look very different at the moment of release.

 I think it is probably “just” an alternative release position, with the hand more “behind” the ball than “over the top”, and imparting more side spin and less overspin than the regular off break.

It worked, which is all that really matters.

Conclusions

I certainly have no answers, just lots of questions.

And lots of experiments in the nets to look forward to.