Out of action

A matchless weekend for me, unfortunately, as I simply can't see how my knee will take it. If I am feeling up to it I might pitch up at the club just in case, as I'm told a fair few players might be at the V festival down the road. I seem to remember at the last match one guy saying "How many people are going to be at the V festival next week then?" getting the response of "Erm, a few hundred thousand probably". "No you imbecile, I meant how many people from the CLUB..."

Also nets last night was a no-show from me as firstly I was engrossed by whether Alistair Cook would survive the evening, then it was raining, and then my girlfriend was on the phone. My previous post seems to have garnered a few comments from the leg spin sages at the Big Cricket forum, so next time I get the chance I've got some pointers as to where to go from here. As my action stands my run-up does seem an unnecessary waste of effort, so I'll just concentrate on the delivery stride, particularly the pivot round my front foot, lifting my right leg up and round, and swivelling my my shoulders, and see about putting a run-up on once I've got that sussed.

I've also been playing around with my grip. I'm not even close to thinking about properly bowling a googly, but I have been trying to get my hands right around the loop and was having great difficulty achieving anything beyond a topspinner. It seems as if it's my grip that is stopping me, as my normal grip has the seem angled so that the centre of the seam is outside the tip of the third finger. This seems to naturally favour backspin over topspin, and perhaps this is why I find zooters relatively simple compared to what others seem to find. I've been playing around with it and have been trying a more orthodox grip with the seam straighter up and while the sensation of spinning it is slightly different it should do the trick in terms of making topspinners easier, and then when the time comes making a googly possible. I'll keep playing around with both grips and see what happens.