Josh Kennedy: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Cricket Matters podcast. Today we're talking about how to play spin bowling and uh, you will discover the four D approach to dominate spin, which obviously James will explain, um, 'cause he's just explained it to me, which is great. Uh, but before we do talk about the four D approach to dominate spin, um, let's talk about the end of the test match with India that we've just watched, which was mental, crazy.

Mental Chris 

James Breese: Wokes come out the back with a sling. India winning by seven runs. That was mental, absolutely mental fair play. India. I felt, uh, 

Josh Kennedy: I felt bad for Atkinson, you know, 'cause he had to try and keep strike, which he did a couple of times really well. But I mean, he was in such a difficult position when it was like, yeah, 

James Breese: he was damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And it was towards the end and like, but no fair play India. They absolutely came back so strong and made an exciting test match. Exciting test series. And, uh, yeah, test crunch Cricket isn't as boring as people may think it is. Is 

Josh Kennedy: it Josh? It's, I I never ever said it was boring. I, when I've been, say I've, I've always [00:01:00] enjoyed watching test match cricket.

Yep. Never. I've not club cricket. No. Can't say I've. Watch that, but test match, always watched it. That was amazing. And then it wasn't it. That's incredible. Good one. I was like sat there like really nervous that Chris Wils is gonna have to face a ball or something. I was like, what's he gonna do? It 

James Breese: was, it's quite good actually working in cricket.

We can have a company like moment to stop what we're doing and go watch the cricket. That's literally what I ordered everyone do basically. So, but uh, but no away from fast bowling and sirs doing well, let's get into the spin bowling things. It's quite timely actually. Because, kind of follow on from last time, last week's podcast.

Yeah. Follow from last time, but also we, I was away in Scotland with the Wales forties and the triple Crown playing against England, Scotland and Ireland. Wales came second and in the over forties age group, spin bowling tends to lead the, the bowling attacks. Some very, very good spinner still. As you get older, obviously fast bowling, you just, the speed tends to start to drop off a little bit, right?

Yeah. But as a spinner, you become more [00:02:00] wily, more experienced, and you become better bowlers in some respects. So there's a high level number of, of spinners playing, particularly for England, uh, and Scotland as well, which was, which was great to see. It goes into the theme I keep seeing week in, week out, particularly at the club level, particularly in higher level club cricket and as a step up from high level Premier League cricket to like say, div one, where the batters can play spin properly.

And again, yeah, having a plan, knowing what type of pitch it is, knowing what you are trying to do. But I wanna take it a step further and talk about what I call a four D, a four dimensional approach to playing the spin and bowling. Now, most people get trapped on the crease, right when they're playing spin.

It's 10 to block. Block. Oh, oh. I need help smash it over the boundary, right? Yeah. Oops, I missed it. I'm out. I saw that happen on Saturday from a few people. Yeah. Right. Uh, no names mentioned, but I saw [00:03:00] this happen in front of me and it was like, there's no plan. See if you have a plan to, to spin bowling, you are always gonna struggle.

If you don't what the pitch is doing, you are always gonna struggle, but. If you just stand, stand in the crease, stand back in the crease and try and just block it out and hope for the best. That's not gonna work either. So the best players are spinning, and what you hear the commentators talk about it now is that they either go all the way back in the crease.

And play it late, the back of the crease, or they go all the way forward and they using their feet. That's what I call a two dimensional approach, which is a great starting point in playing spins. So you wanna put the bowler off his line of length if they're good bolt. Remember this is if they're good bowlers.

Okay. Yeah. So if they're a bad bowler, then you just gonna wait for the bad ball and just smack 'em over with the boundary, which you would do them in the lower leagues. But when they get better and you start, this spin starts to dominate you, you've gotta think differently. 'cause it's a game of cat and mouse, right?

Mm-hmm. So you've gotta think in four dimensional a a four dimensional approach. Play all the way back to put his length off to encourage him to [00:04:00] ball Fuller so you can try and start driving, or you are using your feet to get to the pitch of the ball, right? So you, again, going down, down the wicket to try and play it.

So that's a, that's a 2D, 2D approach, forwards and backwards. But that's what everyone talks about, but they don't think about later. What about to the left side, to your right side, right? Mm-hmm. Going across, stepping across to your off side. Stepping across to your right side. 'cause what you're doing then is changing the lines.

The bowler is now bowling. Okay? So forward and backwards a hundred percent. You do this. An approach that works really, really well to really piss off the bowlers and particularly good spinners, is you wanna start manipulating the field. You can then start using the angles of going across your stumps, either to the offside or to the leg side.

Now, what do I mean by that? It's an approach I use a lot of. So if there's a good spinner bowling, what they tend to do for me off spinner, off stump, fourth stump sort of line. [00:05:00] What I will try and do, I will then literally step across to the legs. So I go right across my stumps, show my stumps. I'm happy to show my stumps 'cause I back myself.

Right To sweep and sweep. Well, so I'm going to the leg side. So. A ball that would be on fourth stump is now going on my leg side. Leg side. So I'm there sweeping to the legs quite comfortably 'cause I back myself to hit it. I'm a strong sweeper that puts him off his line. It's length the same. I've just put him off his line completely.

So what was a good ball? I then turned into a bad ball technically, 'cause I'm now batting as if the stumps aren't there. And I did do this quite a lot. I step across 'cause it not only annoys the bowler, it annoys the W keeper. The W keeper standing behind me. He can't see the ball anymore. So, you know, I don't do it like every ball, but a lot of the ball, I'll happily step across and encourage 'em to bolt on that leg side channel, because then what I can then do is one time to then manipulate the field around me.

I can then start stepping back to the leg [00:06:00] side. Because they'll moved a fielder across from my offside to my leg side, moved me out to suite for me, and there's now a big gap in my offside. So I then come across the stumps the other way and start playing cut shots and back foot punches through the open gap in the middle there.

So I'm then starting to anoint all the field is completely right, particularly as a hander where I've got the righthander combination most of the time too, going back and forth. So I'll use my feet a lot. So again, if there's a ring field there. If we were, if a ring fielding everyone's in, which was happening last week quite a lot, my first plan is to put the feelers back straight.

I put 'em back straight. I can start working ones easily, but then if they, if it's still not an option and the sweep is a better option, I then wanna try and manipulate to my leg side. So I start step across my stumps and leave my stumps on. But the, the most important thing is to have the confidence to bat as if your stumps aren't there.

Right. 

Josh Kennedy: What are the disadvantage of that though? I mean, could you potentially be caught LBW or 

James Breese: [00:07:00] you could be bold? There's a couple of things, but you have to have a hundred percent conviction. So yeah. It's only for someone who's confident in their batting ability to be able to take the game to them and know exactly what they're doing and where the feel placings are.

If you're thinking about a technique and thinking about if you're set up, you're not sure about your technique, then this isn't, this isn't an approach for you. This is kind of like an advanced approach to playing spin Boulder. Okay. And taking you outta your box and like trying to mess up what the ball is trying to do because it's a game of cat mouse.

So again, let's say, let's say against Ireland. Last week I came into bat, there was an absolute ring field around me 'cause there was pressure on quite a slow turning wicket. So I needed to put the fielders back to create space to open up the gap so we can try and win the game. So my first thing was to use my feet.

So I started using my feet down the pitch, try and put the fielders back. They moved the field, the back. I started taking the mid on, mid off on because I wanted to run at them hard because, no, no one really does that. So I'd argue if you use your feet, well, you can take a one to mid or mid off every single ball and they get closer, closer, closer.

And then there's [00:08:00] more gaps to hit past them and then they have to go back eventually. Right. So that's the first thing I was trying to do. But then I was then stepping across the left arm bowler who I go across my stumps. 'cause then there was no one out sweeper. Um, fine of square leg. So I was able to go around the corner.

If they then moved someone to there, I then started going for cow corner 'cause no one was there. So it's that game of cat and mouse, because I was, I was taking 'em around here and using the angles and lapping them around the corner and different things. But the negatives are, you aren't confident in your game.

You can't sweep properly, right? Mm-hmm. Or you're not co from your technique. So this becomes a, an advanced option to play spin bowling. To take you outta your comfort zone from thinking, I just need to go all the way forward, all the way back. No, you can use the whole regions of the crease forward, back, left and right, forward back offside on site.

It then changes the whole dynamic of how you're taking on spin bowlers, but you have to have the confidence to do it. So when we're talking about bigger plans of how to play [00:09:00] spin. This is a much more advanced plan, which needs a lot of practice and a lot of com. You know, you being confident and comfortable coming down the wicket, using your feet, but also comfortable sweeping too, and having that idea changes your game dynamically.

And interestingly, I think is the best way to put it, to put the pressure back on the bowlers. 'cause you see test, test match bowlers, they wanna try and take on the spinners as soon as they can put pressure back onto them because it's hard if they don't find their line length hard, they have to have to come off.

Mm. So that's what we're trying to do in club cricket. Whereas most club cricketers just sit there and block the crap out of it until they feel comfortable. 'cause they haven't got a plan. 

Josh Kennedy: I was gonna say is that, haven't got a plan, haven't got there. They're not confident in their technique. They need to practice their footwork.

More combination of all of those things. Everything, 

James Breese: everything. You know, they don't practice certain things. I don't think of it this way. So I'm trying to open up your horizons to thinking there's a better approach to playing spin and club cricket. Right. And you can learn from the very best in the IPL, how they play cricket and what they do, [00:10:00] manipulate the crease.

But for us, we turn into a system. So when I'm coaching young players to play spin. Technique is the first thing. They haven't got head and hands in place and a good setup. There's no point in doing anything with this. They needs to be comfortable in their game, but then we start teaching going forward, going backward.

But then with not just that, we just teach 'em going left and right to manipulate the ball on the crease, to give 'em the confidence to find gaps, rotate, strike, and hit falls rather than getting bogged down. So it's again, it needs a video, I think, to go with it. Yeah. To really dive into it, into the approach that we'd wanna try and take.

And then think of like a tactical scenario. 'cause again, look, think of our Cricket matters method. We talk about the physical capabilities, we talk about the mental, uh, resilience and mental capacity needed to play cricket. We then look at the technical side of things. Once you have those three kind of, not, not not perfect, but in a really good area, then you've got the tactical, and this comes under the tactical 'cause.

You're applying technique to the tactics of what we're trying to do. I think is the best way to put it. So [00:11:00] touch on it. Try and introduce our four D system of playing spin. Rolling, and we'll, uh, definitely speak to the guys very soon about more and create more videos around it. 

Josh Kennedy: Absolutely. Videos. Videos.

We definitely, we definitely need to do that, although we need nicer weather 'cause it's absolutely terrible here. I think, uh, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. And if you would like our free training plan, then go to cricket matters.com/train. And remember, our goal is to make you a better cricketer.