The Teesra

Category: bowling

  • Introducing swing; what is “coaching”?

    Interesting re-post from @ImSporticus, just before Christmas.

    It got me thinking about how I would coach someone to swing a cricket ball.

    And the programme I came up with included a bit of direct instruction, a lot self-guided discovery, maybe some feedback, a demo & a drill to scaffold learning.

    Rather more to it than “hold the ball like this, follow-through like this”.

    This post started as a (lengthy) reply to the tweet from @ImSporticus. If you follow @theteesra, you might have seen all this already.

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  • WBBL thoughts (1) — what a final; what a wonderful advert for the game!

    I have enjoyed watching the WBBL, on BT Sport, over the autumn. Mostly the highlights packages, but I did catch the 2nd semi-final live, and the final on Saturday.

    What a fantastic game of cricket.

    No, I don’t think the Stars batted especially badly, or that the pitch, or the ball, misbehaved.

    Yes, the new ball did swing and bounce, but not excessively…I thought it was meant to do a bit. Or should we give the bowlers a bowling machine ball to bowl with, or a baseball, and have them learn to swerve and curve. (A discussion for another post.)

    Most certainly not a “disappointment”, as I have seen the game described.

    It’s good to see bowlers winning matches (IMO, and writing as a bowler myself). This just might inspire a youngster to want to be a quick bowler, or a spinner, or a cunning, calculating, pace-changing medium pacer.

    Who’d put in the hard yards to be a bowler when you are only in the game to feed the batters’ more outrageous hitting?

    So — WBBL a great advert for the women’s game; a great advert for the game of cricket.

    I want to get back to bowling, after watching Shabnim Ismail!

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  • Bowling meditation

    • How my legs & feet are moving as I approach the wicket;
    • where back- and front-foot land, and the sensations from the floor;
    • tension between index & middle fingers, spread around the seam;
    • how the bowling arm unfurls from the gather and swings down, then up again, over-the-top or slightly round-arm;
    • the feel of the ball as it is released…

    And repeat.

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