As cricket is evolving with every passing day, it has been a treat for the eyes to see everyone evolve alongside the game. One of the more fascinating aspects of the game has been the emergence of leg-spinners again. After the departure of the leg-spin emperor, Shane Warne and India’s menacing leggie, Anil Kumble, the art was more on a diminishing scale.
Things have changed now with the appearance of Yasir Shah, Imran Tahir, and other glorious monikers, a movement that is now being spearheaded by Rashid Khan. In an interview, he claimed how bowling those leg-cutters with pace has been a massively fascinating delivery for the Afghanistan spinner.
With everything said and done, one is definitely intrigued by the prospect of becoming a leg-spinner in the current canon of cricket, given the rarity of the artists in this holy format of bowling.
In a video where Cricbuzz got up close with Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, a former leggie in the Indian echelons, he showed it from close range what exactly are the staples of bowling leg-spin as he went on to demonstrate bowling a leg-break.
Bowing spin is more of an art that is aided by the strength in your fingers and the grips that you tend to put on the cherry. The first thing that you need to keep in mind in order to bowl leg-spin is where you are placing your different fingers.
Firstly, you will have to place your thumb, middle finger and index finger which acts as a support on the seam. The ring finger needs to be bent slightly and must be placed below the ball. It is the ring finger that acts as your spinning finger and turns the ball.
You must also keep a gap between the palm and the ball which helps you in bringing your wrist into the play. The gap places your wrist and fingers in perfect sync which makes it lethal. If you are closely following Amit Mishra, one of India’s primary leg-spinners, despite the fact that he grips the ball tightly, before releasing the ball, he tends to loosen his grip in order to emanate the space.
These are the basics of bowling leg-spin and in order to delve deeper, you will first have to strengthen your fingers to use the rudimentary skills of a leggie.
