Monday, April 22, 2013

Practice intensifies

One of the blokes on the forums was saying that he was lucky enough to have a garden that is long enough to practice his bowling in and that he steps outside rather like Grimmett may have done and bowls 20 balls or so. With the paddock in relatively good shape already and the additional light on the grass facilitating the recovery of the grass at the bowlers end, I've decided that I'm going to adopt a similar approach whenever I can in the evenings and use a few more balls - 75 to be precise and video the session and try and tweak my bowling by analysing the video.

So that's what I did this evening after getting home and having some dinner. I didn't feel too knackered after yesterdays mammoth 5 hour session with Joe yesterday, so that was good news too. I decided not to do a warm up and film every ball - the good, the bad and the ugly and then upload it and see how it goes, so by the time I get up in the morning the upload would have happened and you'll get a look at what my bowling action is going to look like this season. To be honest I'm still undecided, but a slightly shorter run up compared to some of the footage that is already on Youtube. I've got a few things to work on as well as making a decision about the run-up and one of them is the leg that comes past or round the pivot leg.
In this image here is the 'Leg kicking up and round the pivot leg'

Whereas in this image the leg at least appears to be coming through straight rather than kicking up and around.
One of the things that Stuart Macgill commented on with regards to my bowling was that I should adopt the coming through approach and from the evidence that I've seen and observed with my own bowling, there seems to be a lot of sense in the approach, which is partly bourne out in the newest video I've produced and edited tonight. The other thing that's been noticed is the lack of a cocked wrist when bowling and I'm looking to address that too along with getting up on my toes. Another thing I noticed when looking at the video is that I may not be getting 'Side - on' enough, so that's another aspect to work on.
 
Look out for the video on my youtube channel and any subsequent updates as I get ready for the season.