Bowling

BOWLING SKILLS : Stability of front arm When the front arm is pulled to the side of the body, it is blocked from moving any further and hence isolated. This stability of the front arm helps to stop the movement of the left side of the body and the right side of the body moves fast to deliver the ball. This also helps put body weight behind the delivery which in turn …

Bowling Action You must have seen that different bowlers bowl with different actions and get the ball to do things like swing, pace in the air and nip off the wicket differently. When you analyse all actions – at the test level or at the local club level – bowlers can be broadly divided into three categories: To begin with, this week, let’s discuss the side-on action : How do you get into …

Have you been lucky enough to have watched Michael Holding bowling? He was called the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of fast bowlers because he had such a smooth run up to the wicket. It was effortless, accelerating and flowing. The Late Malcolm Marshall on the other hand had a short run up. He sprinted in and bowled at great, menacing pace. Shane Warne just walks, trots and hops and puts great effort into the …

Bowling Run Up – Speed Every bowler has his own speed of run up which is developed over many years of hard work in the nets and in matches. There is no hard and fast rule for speed of run up, either for a fast bowler or a spinner. No two bowlers have the same bowling action or similar build. Hence it becomes imperative that speed of your run up is …

Running straight to the point of delivery Watch the run ups of all bowlers playing at the international level. One thing common among them, amidst diverse builds and diverse actions, will be that they run straight to the point of delivery. If you see the footmarks of the bowlers after a long spell on TV, you will notice that the strides are the same in every delivery. However, different bowlers have …

Rock back and setting action You must have heard coaches and fast bowlers talk about the rock back action in the delivery stride. What is rock back? It is the leaning back of the body just prior to the bowler’s delivering the ball. At the instance of the back foot landing for the delivery stride, the body leans backward, with the front shoulder at a higher level than …

Release of ball – Pace Bowling In earlier lessons, we have discussed how the ball is gripped for the in swinger and the out swinger. We have also discussed the basic bowling action. But all this will be of no use if you do not learn how to release the ball correctly. You will do well to remember that in the release, the basic technique of the release combines with your …

Grips for various deliveries To bowl well you need to learn how to grip the ball correctly. The various grips which shall be discussed in this section will neither guarantee success nor what was intended to be bowled. Because bowling skills largely depend on many components such as run-up, body position, front arm, wrist action ,etc., and the grip plays a minor role in getting the desired result. It is the …

The Open Action Last week we saw how to get into the classical side-on action for bowling. But if you have noticed over the years, most of the Caribbean fast bowlers have had an ‘open’ action. Players from the West Indies have always had a cavalier style of playing cricket. Their aggressive, attacking approach to cricket has won them many fans. Some of …

The off-break is the ball that turns from the off-side to the leg side for the right handed batsman. There is no difference in the grip for an off-spinner and a left-arm spinner, except that they use different arms to bowl. The left arm spinner is a mirror image of the off- spinner, but we shall discuss more of that later. To bowl the off-break, hold the seam of the ball …

Getting the length of the run up right is important to get a proper bowling rhythm. Each bowler has judge for himself, how long his run up will be, according to what he intends to bowl (fast or spin) and according to what suits his bowling action. One of the best way of marking the length of the run-up is : Mark a line in the outfield and start the run up …

A leg-spinner, when called upon to bowl, makes the spectator sit on the edge of his seat with the expectation that something exciting is going to happen. They inspire millions of youngsters to bowl like them. A few years back, I was one of the selectors to shortlist trainees for the under-14 year age group at Dilip Vengsarkar’s Cricket Academy in Mumbai. There were more than forty leg-spinners, and they …

Most teams prefer to have a left arm spinner in the side because the ball that drifts in and spin away from the right handed batsman is regarded as the most difficult ball to negotiate. Wilfred Rodes (1877-1973) of England was a master at the art of curving the ball in and controlling its flight, variation and turn. Derek Underwood who dominated English cricket for quite sometime was regarded as a …

In-swing is the delivery which moves towards the right-handed batsman, in the air, from the off-side. The ball may start swinging early – as in the case of ‘banana’ swing – as soon as it is released. Or it may swing late – moving in a more or less straight line and then swinging in as it nears the batsman – keeping him guessing all the time. Swing depends upon the …

The Follow Through The ‘follow through’ of the bowling action is the reaction of the arms and the body after the release of the ball. The follow through of the bowling arm and the back foot should be long, fast, straight and in the direction of the target. The head should ideally remain still and straight and should follow the bowling arm. The second …

The Basic Action The importance of the front shoulder & front arm action in bowling: The shoulder : The front shoulder gives direction to the delivery. In batting, we’ve seen how the front shoulder moves down first and then up to play the straight bat strokes and it also assists in the straight back swing and down swing of the bat. But in bowling, it’s the upward and downward movement of the front …