Your Cricket How to stop bowling wides?

[SpitfiresKent]

Just how exactly do you do this?

I'm not the quickest bowler but one thing I would like to do is cut out all the leg side wides and concentrate on hitting a consistent line and length.

Is it a case of keeping your head and arm straight when delivering the ball? And not falling over to one side?

Any advice would be much appreciated

 

[T.J.Hooker]

Not really easy to say very much technically unless you video yourself and post it.

How often are you bowling leg side wides, and do you swing the ball at all? If you're not swinging the ball then it's probably some sort of consistency problem with your action. Either you're not arriving at the crease in the same spot or at the same angle consistently or you're not delivering your arm or driving your chest the same way consistently. The key to control is being able to execute your action the same way every time so you can naturally calibrate your radar.

If you are swinging the ball, then you're going to produce more misdirected deliveries just naturally. If you bowl an outswinger that doesn't go then you'll drift down leg. If you bowl inswing then the odd delivery is going to swing more and go down leg. If you're not really in control of your wrist position then you're going to swing the ball unintentionally and that messes your line up.

Best plan is to go into an empty net and video yourself so you can actually see what you're doing. Your natural sense of what you're doing can be very misleading. You might think your front arm is higher than it really is, or that your delivery arm is coming through straighter than it really is.

Make sure your run up is sorted first. Get a really good feel for where your jump is and try and hit that spot every time. Try and get your delivery stride happening with both feet in exactly the same place every time. If you're not running in dead straight then try it.

Trying to get as close in to the stumps as possible is prob worth a go.

 

[Aislabie]

I used to have this problem to some degree - I'd strain a bit when I was bowling, my front arm would fall away and I'd just push it down the leg side trying to compensate. The best way to fix this was to avoid really sprinting in and to just bowl at a pace which felt natural. I'd then stop straining and stop falling away in my action.

I'm firmly of the belief that the best way to bowl well is to get it feeling right. If there's anything that feels different when you push it down the leg-side, then that should be a fair indicator of what might be going wrong. As the previous poster said, going on feel isn't great if you're looking to iron out technical nuances, but if you're looking to do something consistently, then my best advice is to make sure it feels consistent. It worked for Glenn McGrath.

 

[ethybubs]

How good is your control on balls that aren't slipping down leg side?

If you have a good line and length for five balls and over and one down leg side it may be technical issue, but if you bowl erratically every ball it will just be practice. You can't expect to be a great bowler from day 1.

 

[Fenil]

Just how exactly do you do this?

I'm not the quickest bowler but one thing I would like to do is cut out all the leg side wides and concentrate on hitting a consistent line and length.

Is it a case of keeping your head and arm straight when delivering the ball? And not falling over to one side?

Any advice would be much appreciated

Can you post of a video of yourself bowling? It'll be a lot easier to tell you where's your mistake after having a look at your action.

 

[Prithvi]

Well, I have a morale booster here, for bowlers. This works for me 9/10 times, to be right in the spot.

Whenever I start a run up, I have a particular imaginary target on the pitch to knock. While releasing the ball, I guide the ball in such a way that the ball is fired down right towards that imaginary target, and depending on the speed I want to send down the ball to the batsman, I vary the force. I also change my bowling action sometimes, if I feel uncomfortable with my approach to release the ball.

This might look like a bowling tutorial, but this is the mental booster I give every time before I start my run up.

Also, this requires a lot of practice. It went horribly wrong when I tried to implement it for the first time. Slowly my accuracy of hitting the target shot up. Also, I would like to suggest to start this off with small targets first (like chucking ball to some point on the ground) and then implement this with bowling.

 

[Samuels]

Well, I have a morale booster here, for bowlers. This works for me 9/10 times, to be right in the spot.

Whenever I start a run up, I have a particular imaginary target on the pitch to knock. While releasing the ball, I guide the ball in such a way that the ball is fired down right towards that imaginary target, and depending on the speed I want to send down the ball to the batsman, I vary the force. I also change my bowling action sometimes, if I feel uncomfortable with my approach to release the ball.

This might look like a bowling tutorial, but this is the mental booster I give every time before I start my run up.

Also, this requires a lot of practice. It went horribly wrong when I tried to implement it for the first time. Slowly my accuracy of hitting the target shot up. Also, I would like to suggest to start this off with small targets first (like chucking ball to some point on the ground) and then implement this with bowling.

That is an interesting input but I believe for the tall bowlers particularly the ones having a high arm action might end up banging the ball in the pitch in a bid to hit the target. I may be horribly wrong though as I was never a good bowler myself.

 

[Prithvi]

That is an interesting input but I believe for the tall bowlers particularly the ones having a high arm action might end up banging the ball in the pitch in a bid to hit the target. I may be horribly wrong though as I was never a good bowler myself.

Ha ha, as I said, I had experienced few such things- where the ball took the second bounce before reaching batsman too

 

[grkrama]

im a spinner so cant give technical suggestions for pace especially without a vid, but what i do is change my approach to the crease by moving closer or away from the stumps depending on the side im bowling if i happen to be on a pitch were im sending a few on the legside. this works if your are feeling good with your action and are generally bowling consistently, if not its better to learn more control by analyzing your bowling and practicing/

 

[SpitfiresKent]

Thanks for all the feedback guys

You can't expect to be a great bowler from day 1.

I think this is a great point, I'm still fairly new to playing cricket (I watch loads on the telly) so perhaps I need to be less harsh on myself, whenever I send down a wide I do get really angry though.

Can you post of a video of yourself bowling? It'll be a lot easier to tell you where's your mistake after having a look at your action.

Won't be possible unfortunately.

I'm a right arm bowler and my right arm goes really high before releasing the ball, I think my problem is that I fall away to the left hand side too much.

Regarding my run up (which is short) I tend to struggle for the first couple of balls but then after that everything feels nice and methodical.

But like I said I'm probably being a bit harsh on myself considering i'm still a n00b

 

[Fenil]

Thanks for all the feedback guys


I think this is a great point, I'm still fairly new to playing cricket (I watch loads on the telly) so perhaps I need to be less harsh on myself, whenever I send down a wide I do get really angry though.


Won't be possible unfortunately.

I'm a right arm bowler and my right arm goes really high before releasing the ball, I think my problem is that I fall away to the left hand side too much.

Regarding my run up (which is short) I tend to struggle for the first couple of balls but then after that everything feels nice and methodical.

But like I said I'm probably being a bit harsh on myself considering i'm still a n00b

While the approach towards the left side might be one of the reasons, I guess you might not be keeping the seam up right. By what you have said, you must have a front on action unless you are very tall. Try bowling from away from the stumps. There's nothing shameful about being a noob level, most of us here in fact are at noob level ( ) but that provides us a great opportunity to experiment. If you are too concerned about wides and willing to make big changes, try side on action. Makhaya Ntini is your man!

 

[ParkedTheBus]

For a pacer, it is all about how you feel at that moment. For example, if you go close to the stumps on a particular day and bowl a lot of wides, going towards the wider crease might be a solution. On another day, if you happen to bowl wides releasing the ball from wider, it is better to go closer to the stumps.

Also, the batsman plays a part. For a left arm bowler who angles it away, it is better bowling from wider to a right hander to prevent balls sliding down the leg side. Closer to the stumps if the batsman is a left hander. This, I guess, works out for right arm bowlers too.


* Or probably these are the reasons why I did not make it past TNCA under-14

 

[MUFC1987]

My advice would be to keep looking at your target for as long as possible. Whether that be the stumps, or a spot on the pitch doesn't matter, just watch it as long as possible. That's because if your head drops away, your body follows and your arm ends up pushing it down the leg side of a right handed batsman to try to compensate. If you're bowling well most of the time, then it's probably not a huge technical issue.

As well as the head, the other main point I see a lot in kids (like you, new-ish to cricket) is that they run in at funny angles. By that I mean that it's not straight. You can run in straight down the pitch, or angle in or whatever, but just make sure that you're keeping it at the same angle all the time. If you're moving in and out in your run up, then when you hit the crease, your body will be at a strange angle as it adjusts in your delivery stride and aims towards the stumps, which is why the line can go wrong. Try putting something on the pitch to lineup your run-up too. Whether that be cones if you can get them, or just something like jumpers. Just make sure that it's not something that you're gonna hurt yourself on if you run over it by mistake!

 

[AliB]

I too had this problem a year ago, I just took a less runup and a from a Malinga like action and everything was solved.

 

[Markkkkk]

Also maybeif you are falling to the legside you could naturally be adjusting your wrist to counter act yourself falling over (Hope you can make sense of that).