Sunday, December 15, 2013

Wrist Spin Drills and ideas

Nice find, promoted on Google + by David Hinchcliffe from Cricket Victoria in Australia. Has some useful looking drills and ideas that are worthwhile trying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f20jG_ErARg

David Warner's Test career batting average since quitting Twitter is 112.75 and counting. When on Twitter he averaged 36.86

David Warner's Test career batting average since quitting Twitter is 112.75 and counting. When on Twitter he averaged 36.86

I love this stat, not being a lover of Twitter and seeing it as a major feature in dumming down many aspects of what we all do, this I thought was quite telling. Jason Gillespie thought the same... click the link below...

http://inagist.com/all/412136236527017984/

Saturday, December 14, 2013

South Africa's answer to Frank Farrington?

As far as I know revolutions on the ball is the only thing that can cause drift. You have to put inhumane effort into spinning the ball, Shane Warne didn't get all that spin merely by putting a little effort in. He grunted louder than fast bowlers when they want to bowl 160kph!

Last year I opened the bowling and the sharp seam cut my ring finger till it bled. I kept on bowling without use of plasters and even though the pain was quite excruciating I could still bowl. Eventually the skin on my finger hardened and is now heavily callused. That rough skin allows me to grip the ball much more firmly, so I can still bowl with a new ball without it slipping because of the roughness of the skin. My grip is orthodox, but not entirely the same as most people's grips. The last knuckle of my ring finger doesn't touch the seam so it's contact with it is delayed (more revs) and my index and middle fingers point in the opposite direction of the usual grip. (Or are more or less straight) My wrist can bend a lot and has lots of "spring" power. When I started out I had a straight-ish wrist but now it's much more cocked and the more wrist I use the more revs I seem to get. The grip you demonstrate in your blog is slightly different, it seems more rigid and stiff, almost military like. I have tried it for myself and I get more revs with it when I spin the ball from hand to hand, but much less when I bowl with it.

The only thing that makes me spin the ball so hard is the fact that I try to spin it hard, and the above mentioned attributes that I have. At least once a week I have "revs practice" , where I start out by putting 100% effort in, and say that was 750 revs. Even if the next ball has twice as much spin on it, it was only 800 revs. I keep psyching myself up until I really feel that I'm putting at least 2700 revs on the ball, but no, defective Trackman, only 1000 revs. Getting angry and pumping myself up like that helps me get more spin on the ball.

One other thing I do sometimes is draw a line in the nets about 1 meter to the right of the stumps. From very early I start the ball on that line, wanting to drift it onto the stumps, and for the whole day I try to do it until I'm finally satisfied and believe I have done it.

Spin always comes first for me, I want to spin the ball more than Warne and I want it more than anything else! I want to turn the pitch into brimstone with fierce revs, and I want to scorch the cover off the ball. I'd rather bowl a hip high full toss and know I put everything on it than a good length ball with anything less on it than my absolute most. I adopted this mentality this season and hopefully by next year I'll be spinning the ball so much that I can start to work on other things as well.

This isn't really what it takes to get drift, anyone can get good drift if they just try to spin the ball a lot, but I'm not satisfied with a little bit. I want a pitches length of drift and even more turn, but I'm a bit crazy when it comes to wrist spin:D

13 year old Jacques Voigt from the Eastern Cape area.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Another blatant attempt to promote one of my other blogs

This is a massive list which is generally useful for anyone who's studying photography at level 3 or above. The list which is on-going and constantly updated, lists photographers who are seen by critics, curators, designers, editors, academics and peers as being innovative and unconventional tackling subjects in new and different ways, exploring 'The Human condition'.

As much as I can I glean the names from printed journals in the first instance or books. The list should be a starting point for your research if you are a student, you should try and access hard-copy magazines where possible and I would advocate that you use Journals and Magazines as your primary research tool.

http://southendasphoto.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/list-of-photographer-and-their-themes.html

Monday, December 02, 2013

Pre-season

I had a bowl outside the house yesterday, just mucking about and getting side on in my bound, wary that I hadn't done much in the last month or so I only did it a handful of times and then came in as it was too cold as well. Got up Sunday and noted that I'd got a sore knee! Proves you've only got to ease up for a little while and the process of getting back into it might be problematic?

I'm going to have to wait till that now fixes, do some massage and take it easy and once it's repaired start with some easy stuff and ease into January with some knee strengthening drills.