Spin Bowling Tips: How to Bowl a Wrist Doosra
Menno Gazendam is author of Spin Bowling Project. Get your free 8 week spin bowling course here
In part one we examined the role of the doosra and how to bowl the finger doosra. This article looks at the other way to bowl "the other one"
Variation 2 is the wrist variation that was pioneered by Murali and has been used to great effect by Saeed Ajmal. The ball is bowled over the wrist.
You need to get your thumb completely out of the way to make space for the ball to go over the hand. Getting the thumb out of the way also helps opening the hand and helps with the whiplash action of the wrist.
Above shot shows the release angle of variation 2. It is released with a flick of the wrist over the open palm.
This variation is more difficult to hide if you have a very orthodox off spinning action. It's quite obvious what you are trying to do when the back of the hand faces the batsman and you flick the ball over your open palm.
The best way to counter this flaw this is to change your normal offspinning action to look the same. This is what Ajmal does. His stock ball offie is very similar to this over the palm flick with the wrist. So, when he bowls the doosra - which is a lot - you do not really see the difference.
Add to that the fact that he scrambles the seam on every delivery, stock ball or doosra, and you have seriously dangerous bowler!
Above shows another shot of the how the wrist should be positioned just before release.
The following 4 shots show the release sequence for variation 2. You can see it will help a bit to open the chest a bit more and drop the right shoulder ever so slightly. This way it reduces the stress you have to put on your shoulder, back and wrist when you release the ball.
You do not need the doosra!
If you can bowl the doosra then please let it loose in games. Make batsman run scared of you. They must stand there and not know where the ball is going.
It's a batsman's game and I want to see spinners come out on top.
But, if you cannot bowl it then please do not worry too much. Graeme Swann reached the top of the test rankings without having a doosra.
Let me say that again, the best bowler in the world at one point was an off spinner without a doosra. It's just not essential.
Swann is wonderful in doing the basics well. I'm sure he would also love to bowl the doosra, but he decided to work hard on what he does best. And did not worry about what he cannot do.
If you find that you simply cannot do it. Then get over it, do the basics well, and go and become the best bowler in the world with good old fashioned drift, dip and spin.
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HI
I only bowl off spinners in between leg spinners when batsmen are slogging (it turns away from them because I'm left handed and they usually can't even pick it no matter how obvious I make it) but I bowl them just like this doosra only with the spin towards point for a right hander, it looks very weird but I get a lot more revolutions with this style (I can see why Muralitharan could spin the ball that much) and hopefully my wrist will stay this flexible so I can bowl it. Is it possible for your wrist to lose its flexibility when you haven't been bowling for a while or does it stay more or less the same with no damaging changes?
The phrase "use it or lose it" is certainly true, especially as you get older and more locked into movement patterns. How much you lose it varies from person to person, so it's hard to say how long you would need to go without bowling before you lost the ability (if at all).
You can also get it back because even if joint mobility is lost, it can be brought back.
So that is a long way of saying "don't worry about it"!
Thanks,
are there any articles on PitchVision.com that teach you how the carrom ball like Ajantha Mendis or Ravichandran Ashwin?
Im not sure about articles - but I know there was a one of the podcast episodes a little while ago where they talked about carrom balls in detail... cant remember the exact episode sorry - think it was early this year or just before christmas...
i want to be a professonial cricketer
[10:21:30 AM] adamkhan: 509… Leggooly has been added in leg break armory quite some time ago by an unknown cricketer, but unfortunately very few people have know about this new invention in the game of cricket. Usually in leg break bowling, bowler has depends on googly, top spin and flipper. How do these varieties function? What is googly? While a normal leg break spins from the leg to the off side, away from a right-handed batsman, a googly spins the other way, from off to leg, into a right-handed batsman (and is distinct from an off break delivery). The bowler achieves this change of spin by bending the wrist sharply from the normal leg break delivery position. What is top spin? A topspinner is released over the top of the fingers in such a way that it spins forward in the air towards the batsman in flight. What is flipper? Squeezed out of the front of the hand with the thumb and first and second fingers, it keeps deceptively low after pitching and can accordingly be very difficult to play. How does this new addition in leg break armory works? I already have described about other varieties of in leg break bowling. What is LEGGOOLY? Bowler shows purposely his bend wrist to the batsman, that he is going to bowl googly, but at the last moment bowler has quickly guide finger to change it course and bowl turns away like leg break. You need extraordinary command to bowl this unique and very effective delivery. LEGOOLY would be more effective, if you should have achieved command to bowl leg break bowling with your middle and ring finger.
Leggooly should be a great inclusion in cricket leg break bowling. I am sure those who bowl leg break should take full benefit of this new invention. I would like to appreciate Mr Adam kHAN TO DISCOVER THIS NEW DISCOVERY.
This "leggooly" sounds a lot like Clarrie Grimmet's variation the wrong wrong 'un! And also I have developed a similar delivery where the index finger turns the ball in the direction of a leg break but with the googly wrist position. I don't think this is a useful ball, to start with it's really hard to bowl and puts a lot of unneccesary pressure on your wrist, if you go crazy and bowl it every second ball you can also lose your leg break and get googly syndrome, and in any case your googly is supposed to be unpickable to every batsman you come across, if it isn't you should rather try to imporove your existing googly to make it unpickable rather than making up new balls that might work or might not. Remember you are a leg spin bowler, in leg spin bowling the most important thing is to master your stock delivery, if you don't no variations will be effective. Just look at Shane Warne, in the 2005 ashes series he had only two variations, the leg break and the slider but he ended up with 40+ wickets nonetheless. So I am not saying you shouldn't bowl this "legooly", I just want to remind you that no variation will ever be effective if you don't have the perfect stock ball and the more variations you have the more difficult it becomes to master your stock ball.
Got to say that the pictures above do make it look like a chuck, given the amount the elbow is straightening! Degree change looks like it is from around 135 to 180, well above the supposed tolerance.
Dave H
I don't think that the pictures were meant to show exactly how the ball should be bowled, but just how the ball should be released, otherwise they wouldn't let it look like a chuck?
I appeal to my fellow cricket lovers, please promote this new invention called "LEGGOOLY" belongs to leg break family. I am sure in coming years this LEGGOOLY will be very lethal delivery.
Imran Khan
The "Leggooly" isn't a new invention, Clarrie Grimmet was bowling this ball way back in the 1930's, and many other people have been bowling it decades before you claimed to have invented it.
I don't think it will ever be successful for a long period of time because batsmen aren't donkeys, they know when to expect what and as this delivery is already very hard to bowl it won't be worthwhile to practice it if you can just have a killer stock ball and a regular googly.
If they can pick your googly, just work harder to make it unpickable, don't make up a new ball which has been tested by many famous cricketers, each of them though the wrong wrong 'un (leggooly) isn't a great delivery.
You are right batsman's are not donkeys, but leggooly meant to be, to makes batsman donkey.
There is a variation which many off spinners use called the undercutter which spins like a flying saucer. It is supposed to drift in the air and skid on without turning. I can bowl the undercutter but even if the seam position is perfect it doesn't skid, it turns just as much as a normal off break. A leg spinner I know can bowl a leg spin-undercutter (leg break with an undercutter seam) and it also turns a lot. There is an other way of bowling the undercutter using Muttiah Muralitharan's method of finger spin with more wrist power and even this ball turns. The most ridiculous undercutter is a googly undercutter which I have also bowled and it doesn't skid. All these undercutters have the same effect on all surfaces, they just drift slightly more but turn just as much. Do undercutters only skid on international cricket pitches or is it the balls they are using?
dosra bol is very god delivry i am spin bolr from M J M club rawal pindi race corse cant