I love it when a spin bowler comes along with something different.

And not just for the reasons you think.

One of the spinners at Millfield School has gained so much confidence from his winters practice sessions that he felt it was time to bowl his "doosra" against batters in the nets for the first time.

The young lad has been working on developing his own version of the ball in his technical sessions, and also down the corridors of his house. He has been delivering tennis balls into an upturned bucket in order to master the release position and now is letting the delivery go in nets.

This boy's journey reminded me of Shane Warne at Hampshire in 1999.

He was working on a slider by flicking cricket balls down the changing room into an upturned rubbish bin. Warne was struggling with his googly as his shoulder and knee were beginning to flare up so needed an alternative wicket taking delivery. The result was very effective.

So, back at school, our batters were perplexed by this "mystery ball".

A discussion started about how to pick the delivery. After videoing our spinner from front on, the batters all had different views and counter views. Eventually they came down to one very simple way of picking the doosra from the off spinner.

"If the pitching line is outside my off-stump then I reckon it’s the offy, and if it lands on or inside my off stump then I'm going to play it as the doosra."

said our attacking middle order right hander.

This took me back to the Somerset changing room in 2005 when Sanath Jayasuriya talked about how the Sri Lankan batters had learnt to play Muttiah Muralitharan in the nets. They picked his doosra and off spinner in exactly the same way.

The batters tried this with success.

After facing 20 or 30 balls using this strategy a few players reported that it became possible to pick up on some of the bowler's visual cues that they weren’t able to pick up on initially.

Great discussion.

The bowler strikes back

The young spinner now had a problem that needed solving; to re-introduce deception.

I told him how Muralitharan had put the mystery back into his bowling once England and others started to pick him based on pitching line.

Quite simply, he bowled around the wicket at everyone!

Think about the angles (geometry made interesting!)

Muralitharan would pitch both deliveries on the line of the stumps, and his off spinner bought LBW into play.

The doosra bought the keeper and 2 slips right into the game.

No batter could use the line strategy to pick the delivery type.

Genius is often simplistic.

Our spinner is now creating chances regularly from around the wicket. Can the batters strike back again? We shall see!