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Cricket Coaching

Five spin bowling tutorials to help you hone your craft in the backyard

by Wisden Staff 3 minute read

While you can’t get a proper game going right now, perhaps it’s time to brush up on a few skills in the backyard with these spin tutorials.

We’ve trawled through YouTube and dug out a few retro coaching videos for you young tweakers out there. This is for leggies and offies – we don’t discriminate.

Kicking it all off, we head straight to Warnie. The greatest leg-spinner of them all explains five deliveries: the stock leg-spinner, top-spinner, the wrong ’un (or googly), the flipper and the slider.

How good is this? The late Richie Benaud explaining the art with brilliant nuance alongside Michael Atherton, who offers some useful advice despite never quite making much of a mark with the ball during his career. “I had some talent, but what I didn’t have was the sound fundamentals.” Props to 16-year-old Greg Buckley for somehow playing it so cool in front of a couple of bonafide legends.

Now, time for something that caters to all, courtesy of former Yorkshire leg-spinner Mark Lawson. Come for the advice, stay for WCM head honcho Phil Walker.

Now for some off-spin basics, with Gareth Batty offering some useful advice on the grip and how to change things up with it too. Plenty of importance placed on the hips and shoulders while going through the crease.

And this, from one of the best Test off-spinners of all time, is bound to help loads. 

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