How to Bowl Spin to Tail End Batsmen
Menno Gazendam is author of Spin Bowling Project. Get your free 8 week spin bowling course here
Bowling to tailenders is hard. In fact, sometimes it feels you would rather bowl to a proper batsman who play normal looking shots than to a tail-ender that does not know which end of the bat to hold.
And you know as a spinner they all back themselves to have a go at you. They will swing at everything, and occasionally they will connect big. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing a poor batsman cart you all over the park.
The lesson here is that you must see it in context: A tailender will get stuck into you at some point in time. You will not really remember the time you removed them quickly, but the bad times will stick in your mind. So, keep context in mind, most of the times they do not stick around.
But, what to do when they get stuck into you?
Well, you simply have to bowl as you would bowl to any other batsman. Don't get frustrated and try other bowling differently. If you do that you are panicking. And when you panic all sorts of things can go wrong, If you bowl well and it sails over your head then he got lucky. No need to change your game plan because of a few lucky shots.
Stay calm is the number one thing to remember here.
If you keep doing your thing then you will win 9 out of 10 times. The other 1 out of 10 times that the tailender win is just the luck of the draw. It happens. Just forget it and move on.
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Comments
If a ball is bowled above head height, (over the batsman's head) but it dips and hits the stumps, is it out, or a no-ball? It's happened a handful of times in the nets that I bowl a ball which seems to be way too high, the batsman ducks and the ball dips over his body and hits the stumps, but apparently this is a no-ball. One time a batsman double stepped me, and the ball slipped out of my hand, going over his head while he was almost in the middle of the pitch, and it dipped, and hit the stumps. Again, according to him, it was a no-ball ! What is the rule regarding this and why can't you intentionally bowl a ball over a batsman and hit the stumps when you see him coming down the track?
If a batsman jumps out half way down the pitch and the bowler bowls over his head and it hits the stumps, the batsman should be out because had he not jump out it would have been a normal delivery.
Law 42 (6) (b) states:
"(i) Any delivery, other than a slow paced one, which passes or would have passed on the full above waist height of the striker standing upright at the popping crease is to be deemed dangerous and unfair, whether or not it is likely to inflict physical injury on the striker.
(ii) A slow delivery which passes or would have passed on the full above shoulder height of the striker standing upright at the popping crease is to be deemed dangerous and unfair, whether or not it is likely to inflict physical injury on the striker."
Bear in mind, however, that some leagues have specific playing conditions that change or extend the ruling above, for example, to consider any delivery that passes above waist height on the full to be a no-ball, regardless of the pace of the bowler.