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[Woodyspin]

So recently the 1s skipper has been asking me to bowl my legspin, it's always been very part time but come really natural with turn and bowling a googly. Unfortunately not many wickets turn a hell of alot.

Our top bat praised me this weekend for my pace and flight (lack of) when bowling it. Which admittedly is pretty quick.

Bowling again today i seemed to be more of a handful bowling with more flight and not turning it square.

As Ive never bowled it at many really good batsman, id like to know their thoughts and how they struggle with field placings also. I usually have deep cover rather than a deep mid wicket and a square leg and fine leg on 45.

Any advise will be brilliant, top premier league batsman obviosuly preferable as id like to bamboozle the best!

Moving from seam to spin is really tough and the mental part of the game is so exhausting as seam is much more natural for me!

[Silver Bullet]

So recently the 1s skipper has been asking me to bowl my legspin, it's always been very part time but come really natural with turn and bowling a googly. Unfortunately not many wickets turn a hell of alot.

Our top bat praised me this weekend for my pace and flight (lack of) when bowling it. Which admittedly is pretty quick.

Bowling again today i seemed to be more of a handful bowling with more flight and not turning it square.

As Ive never bowled it at many really good batsman, id like to know their thoughts and how they struggle with field placings also. I usually have deep cover rather than a deep mid wicket and a square leg and fine leg on 45.

Any advise will be brilliant, top premier league batsman obviosuly preferable as id like to bamboozle the best!

Moving from seam to spin is really tough and the mental part of the game is so exhausting as seam is much more natural for me!

What format do you play ?

[Jaffa]

Maybe I can help with what I've been through as a leggie learning the trade.

Where I am at the moment is realising that keeping it simple works best. As a latecomer to the world of cricket the level I play is 'recreational' meaning I mostly play with/against guys who used to play in the firsts. These guys no longer come to training so I've arranged it that I turn up for the 1st and 2nds training and just bowl at them. There just to keep them on their toes I mix it up a bit which include a 'quicker' yorker and a seamer which comes in at waist height and can catch them out. In a match I normally stick to three types of delivery and their variations. Legspin, Overspinner and a type of slider/flipper. Last year that was enough to get be to be joint top wicket taker in the league. Keeping it simple and letting the batsman make the mistakes.

The better batsmen will have the time to place the ball around the field at will and using their feet come forward to meet the spin to put you off your rhythm. Varying your flight and speed try and keep them on the back foot. If they're still coming forward, I've used a topspinner (great for when they're sweeping) or a quicker full toss to get them in knots. Even an accidental wide gets good batsmen out. Let them make the mistakes. Luckily for me I can call on the expertise of my team mates for field placings but I normally go for long on, mid off and a short third man (no slips).

Of the better batsmen I was fortunate to get out, legspin flight kept one guy on the back foot so all he could do was slap the ball to our Jonty Rhodes till a 'flipper' came in lower/straighter and bowled him. Another legspin to a lefthander I used Warnes master class and used the crease a bit more. Wide on the crease coming over the wicket I fired in some quicker flatter ones in, then moving in a bit more I floated one in which dug in to spin and take his offstump.

What has helped me is that I realised with bouncy wickets I wasn't threatening the stumps. I'd beat the bat only to see it bounce over the stumps so I worked on deliveries out of the front of the hand. One has a scrambled seam so will either go straight or turn. The other is rotating on the horizontal axis so it looks like a straight full toss but will dip and come on quicker.

Everyone has their own style and work at it to see what works for you. In a nutshell though, keeping it simple makes me more consistent and makes them make the mistakes.

[Biggie Smalls]

im a left arm finger spinner , so same but different , haha...anyways .
work on trying to spin the ball 'up and over' . try to get to a point where the slower , tossed up balls spin as hard , or harder than the quicker balls. thats a sign of getting more revs. also , if you spin the ball more with quicker deliveries it might mean you rely on bowling the ball down and in to the pitch and your spin is a bit 'seamy' in its movement.
re field placements... I'd  try to not have 2 behind square on the leg side (back yourself not to stray too far down leg ). also , think 'in-out' field as much as possible . oh , and its ok to leave some leg side positions up or vacant - after all it means the batsman has to hit against the spin.... so let him see how good he is. he might get hold of a few , but if you vary your pace and flight law of averages says you'll eventually get them out to those shots.

[Woodyspin]

Play 45/45.

Being 6'4 its like turning up and thinking Suleiman Ben was going to steam in first over but really he's just making up numbers!

Yesterday i tried chucking a few up with more flight and more top spin which still spun from middle to outside leg but anything that slow will get despatched by better players

[Calzehbhoy]

You will settle at an optimum speed that works for you, just keep trying different things to different batsmen. Just because one smashes your slower flighty delivery doesn't mean the next one will. I will often bowl even flightier and even slower if somebody has just whacked my for 6 often challenging them to do the same thing again.

I find as well the older I get and the more I have bowled that turn really isn't everything, you only need the odd couple to turn to get into a batsman's head. Bowling leg spin is all about control, if you can bowl a decent line & length for long enough while turned the odd one either way you'll be fairly economical and take wickets.

[uknsaunders]

I went from medium pace to left arm soon so know how it feels. My advice is to keep it simple and be patient. Imagine you are batting and what you would least like to face. The less bad balls you bowl the more pressure you create, so spin the ball hard but accuracy is more important. I've found sometimes the ball turning less gets you more wickets ie.the big turning tracks do too much.

[Nothing2SeeHere]

The leg spinner in our team bowls wide around the wicket. Batting against him I have noticed this really accentuates any spin he does make as the angle is already across the body of the right hander. It makes even slight levels of spin look like massive levels.

Whilst he has picked up a couple of bowled wickets (mainly against the left handers), his normal dismissal is to get top edges caught from a sweep.

I'm also currently learning but I have decided not to emulate his lines. He bowls with a much lower/round arm action which limits his variations to pretty much lots of side spin or some side spin. He has pretty much no chance of ever getting an LBW as for a RH batsman the ball is always pitching outside leg. 

My plan is to emulate the lines of my slow seam bowling. I normally bowl either close the wicket for middle and off or wide over the wicket aiming for middle and leg. The dismissals I'm aiming for would be either the one that straightens against a batsman going for the sweep or the one that catches and edge against the drive. With those two plans, the field sets itself.

[mohawks94]

As a leg spinner I find that most of the runs I go for are the lesser batsmen chancing their arm. I can tie down the best bats in the league easily, but when the tail start having a go I sometimes get expensive.

Confidence is half the thing for me- I go into every battle with a batsman expecting to win/dismiss them. If they can read me, fair play, but being 6'3" means I can get the ball to leap up. If they try to sweep me my drift or bounce will do the job. I'm a quiet guy, but on pitch I put on a show of being arrogant.

Another big point is that Terry Jenner and Shane Warne both said that it is not about where the ball lands, it's about how it gets there as someone learning to bowl leg spin. Give it a rip and the control will come. Until my second year at uni I bowled the odd ripper but sprayed it. Third year something clicked and I started bowling consistently with big turn. Let the control come organically rather than worrying about it, experiment with variants at nets etc. I'm in a position where my skipper is also a leg spinner, but I have overtaken him as the club's number one, but can still learn from him tactically before I move on to bigger and better things.

[JK Lewis]

I make no claim to be a premier league bat, but a few thoughts from my side.

I open the batting, so by the time a spinner comes on I'm generally well set. Of course, some teams do open with a spinner, but usually I face them 2nd or 3rd change - maybe around the 18th-20th over, something like that. This means I have some advantage in terms of knowing how the pitch is playing, and have taken the hardness out of the ball. You'd likely be bowling to me when I'm confident, but starting to tire.

In that situation, it's my opinion that spinners usually tend to try too hard. They have waited for a bowl, and then want to attack. They look to vary their deliveries too much, because they think that attacking immediately is the best way to get me out. In fact, the opposite is true. By then, I've seen off the faster bowlers, at their freshest, with the new ball. Honestly, at that point, any sort of spinner looks like a breather, and a chance to push on. The better spinners recognise this, and look to tie me down.

The most important thing is to fix the line you want to bowl me, and pitch it up. You say you're bowling leg spin, flat and fast, so to me, I would aim at middle/middle and off and hope to turn it away a little bit (I bat right handed). Critical is not to pitch it short, by the 20th over I've got my eye in and am keen to hit boundaries rather than run 2s and 3s. Anything short will get the treatment, either cutting or pulling. If you can hold the line and turn it away from me you can then pack the off side field. I'd set a 3rd man, backward point, extra cover and mid off for sure, all on the single. Then set a sweeper out deep to try and cut off the boundaries, and probably a long on. You need to force me to find gaps, to come down the track and to hit over the top.

The best spinner I faced recently bowled left arm orthodox, so not unlike you bowling leg breaks (I'm assuming you're right handed). He bowled 5 balls an over flat, good length, on middle and off. The pitch was turning enough for it to be awkward, so it kept me tied down. I was in the 40s and was looking to push the score along, but he forced me to defend, or improvise. One ball an over was given a bit more air, but on the same line, inviting a drive over mid-off. I hit a slightly shorter delivery through point for 4, and took a few singles off my legs into the gaps. Otherwise, he kept it very tight, and got me out LBW trying to sweep a straight one in his 4th over I think. Good bowling. It was a frustrated shot, gambling that my eye was there to hit it, but knowing that the consequence of missing was inevitable. Looking back, I'd have been better to have tried to disrupt his length by stepping out of my crease to every ball, to try and force him to pitch shorter.

If you've got a googly as well, good on you. Honestly, it will have less effect on me in the 20th over as I should be able to play it off the pitch - defensively or maybe turned through square leg. You're probably better to save that for a new batsman and keep me tied down with the delivery that turns away.

Best of luck!

[LcWoodward]

Echo the above....Too many spinner try to attack attack attack at lower levels. The best spinner I've faced know what they do well and use those skills instead of gambling with different toys.
Consistency and making the pressure build should be the biggest asset, Make the batsman try something wild and outlandish. If they don't make them dot down to your hearts content.

[Woodyspin]

So glad i read this now @JK Lewis ! Litterally perfect, cheers.

[Woodyspin]

Didnt get chance to bowl yesterday, but bowled today. Action felt really good and actually bowled with a bit more flight than normal. 2 decent bats too, but took it slow bowled what i thought was a tight line and didnt particularly go for loads (well 33 off 7, so i did but it never felt like it was being tonked around) fairly happy, considering I'd still class myself as a seamer

[JK Lewis]

Didnt get chance to bowl yesterday, but bowled today. Action felt really good and actually bowled with a bit more flight than normal. 2 decent bats too, but took it slow bowled what i thought was a tight line and didnt particularly go for loads (well 33 off 7, so i did but it never felt like it was being tonked around) fairly happy, considering I'd still class myself as a seamer

Sounds to me like you should be happy with those figures @Woodyspin . You went for fewer than 5 per, in context that basically means an average of 1 bad ball per over. Bowling at 2 decent batters that's a pretty good return. Shame you didn't get one of them out, 1 wicket can often bring a spinner another couple. Next time you'll likely bowl worse and take 4-fer!

Nice job, best of luck this weekend. Dunno where you are, but over here we had about 2 inches of rain yesterday so the groundsman is facing an uphill battle!

[mo_town]

Question...how can a spinner who normally bowls quick and flat, slow things down and flight the ball without losing the length. I am a left arm spinner and I have been struggling this season trying to flight deliveries as I end up pitching it up to the batsmen and they just hit thru the line. Whats the best way to make that adjustment? Any tips?