Lives in Cricket No 52 - Schooled in Cricket (2nd edition)

233 Appendix Three Giving a dubious guide to spin bowling When one describes a bowler as a leg spinner one is usually referring to a bowler who is right-handed. The terminology is such that leg spin means turn from the legs of a right-handed batsman in the direction of his off side – or the side which he or she holds the bat. The delivery itself is the same to a left-handed batsman but that means it comes in from the off side to the left-hander’s legs. Similarly off spin means from the off – to a right handed batsman. Off spin is also called orthodox spin. It relies on extremely tight line and length. It is perhaps – to most bowlers – a slightly more natural mode of over-arm bowling with the wrist and fingers rotating clockwise at the moment of delivery. It is also referred to as finger spin though the wrist is also involved. Similarly leg spin bowling is often referred to as wrist spin though the fingers are also involved. Leg spin is harder to bowl well because line and length are still vitally important but the leg spin bowler is even more of a ball artist who has more variety of spinning balls at his command (except in the case of a very exceptional and peculiarly modern type of off spinner such as Muttiah Muralitharan). The leg spin bowler can also bowl a googly – a ball that rotates out of the back of the hand at the moment of delivery – and in fact is effectively an off-spinner. It is thus also called a ‘wrong-un’. The top spinner is also a common delivery of the leg spinner and is more part of his natural variety than it is for the off spinner. It is a ball which spins straight onto the batsman and can cause the ball to hurry onto the bat or may incur extra bounce. The left handed bowlers provided a mirror image of the right hander – with the direction of spin always the reverse. Thus the left arm orthodox bowler – usually referred to as ‘slow left arm’ spins the ball in the same direction as the right-arm leg spinner’s stock ball. The left-hand ‘wrist’ spinner’s normal delivery is called a ‘chinaman’ and spins the ball in to the right-hand batsman from the off side.