The Doosra

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I reprint this because it refers to me in the fourth and third paragraphs before the end.

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Article by Scyld Berry, telegraph.co.uk, 10:19 BST 10 September 2014

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Warne: 4.9 wickets per Test Match; average 25; economy rate 2.7.

Ajmal: 5.3 wickets per Test Match; average 27; economy rate 2.7

So Ajmal takes significantly more wickets per test than Warne, but at a slightly higher average per wicket.

However, if adjustment is made for the generally higher batting and bowling averages of modern cricket compared with Warne's era, this probably leaves Ajmal ahead. 

Ajmal is a really, really good bowler! In the same league as Warne and better than any other spinner in the modern game except of course the best of all: Murali.

This means that , from statistics, currently - now - playing each other in the same Test series - we have one of the very greatest ten or so spin bowlers of all time, and probably the greatest ever pace bowler of all time.

(I mean Dale Steyn.)

Why isn't more of a fuss made about this?

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Maurice Holmes was recently banned from bowling (he plays for for Warwickshire) due to suspicions of 'throwing' his doosra.


It seems that after being reported for a suspicious bowling action, he was unable - or unwilling - to reproduce his match play action under laboratory conditions therefore it seems he was banned by default. From my reading he was not actually proven to throw his doosra. I have previously suggested how Saeed Ajmal can bowl the doosra without chucking:

http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-does-saeed-ajmal-bowl-his-doosra.html

I have never seen Holmes bowl but from the photos available online he seems to use the same grip as Saeed Ajmal, therefore he may be using the same - legal - method for bowling the doosra.

Observe the similarity in the grip:



Purely on this basis, it seems possible that Holmes might actually or potentially be able to bowl a legal doosra.

Since Saeed Ajmal is one of the most effective spinners in world cricket this could be important.

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When a great bowler is banned for so-called throwing (actually, the back-chuck 'weak throw' - palm facing the bowler, used by a spinner - is not-at-all what was meant by throwing when laws were made against throwing), yet, if people are honest, there is no real problem with the 'gut-level fairness' of Ajmal's bowling method

- it is not dangerous
- it does not give the bowler an unfair advantage
- indeed Ajmal's is an extremely difficult type of delivery to master and nobody else has succeeded in mastering it...

Then the priority is to change the laws of cricket in such a way as he can play again.

If, as some leaked ICC reports suggest, Ajmal was straightening his elbow by 40 degrees in some deliveries, and given that cricket lovers have all delighted in the immaculate bowling of Ajmal for several years at the highest level - then we now know that 40 degrees of elbow straightening should be allowed for the weak-throw/ back-chuck.

40 degrees therefore needs to be set as the new standard (while retaining 15 degrees as the maximum straightening for the strong-throw - with palm facing the batter).

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I'm a big fan of Simon 'the analyst' Hughes as a writer and TV commenter - but this video of him supposedly trying to bowl a doosra is very annoying:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/sportvideo/cricketvideo/9034353/

Simon-Hughes-tries-to-bowl-the-doosra.html

The doosra is in the news because of Ajmal's mastery dissection of the English batters in the current test series, but what Hughes is bowling bears zero resemblance to Ajmal's innovative action.

Hughes makes the usual mistake of bowling a conventional off-break - where the ball is gripped between index and middle fingers, and which uses forearm supination to impart most of the spin; then trying to turn this action around to make it into a leg-break - which is pretty much impossible, otherwise off-spinners would have been bowling doosras ever since the beginning of cricket.

But Ajmal has devised a new way of bowling - with a 'back-flip' extension of the wrist, and ball gripped between middle and ring fingers - so Ajmal's off-break is nothing like Hughes off-break delivery.

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For heavens sake, can't people see the difference - it isn't subtle!

That's why I began this blog - because the pundits don't seem to look at the way that innovative spin bowlers are doing their tricks; and the most ridiculous tosh gets written about, say, Paul Adams, Murali and now Ajmal.

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I read that Saeed Ajmal will unveil a new 'mystery' delivery against England in the UAE test series. What could it be?

Since Ajmal is too shrewd to mess with his beautifully-honed action - which is making him into the best world spinner, overtaking Swann - and knowing the method of his stock deliveries

http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-does-saeed-ajmal-bowl-his-doosra.html

i.e. ball held between middle and ring finger, spin imparted by a forward flip (extension) of the wrist with the back of hand facing batter...

Then I can make a guess that the mystery delivery will be a straight, floating, wobbling ball with no spin at all (thereby creating turbulence and unpredictable movement, like a baseball pitcher's knuckleball) - and he will deliver this simply by not flipping the wrist forward and instead releasing the ball completely dead, seam sideways to the batter.

It's just a guess - and it will be interesting to see if my prediction is correct.

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Originally posted Wednesday, May 25, 2011

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I have been watching the West Indies v Pakistan Test series on TV, and thoroughly enjoyed watching Ajmal bowl.

He is a real craftsman, and looks like currently being the second best spinner in the world (after Swann).

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He also has the best doosra ever - in the sense that he is the first off-spinner to have a doosra good enough to be a stock delivery - it doesn't seem to cost much effort, seems impossible for the batsman to 'pick' from the hand, has a useful bats-width deviation and very good bounce.

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How does he do it?

Of course I don't know for sure - but I think this is the method:

1. He uses his middle finger as the spinning finger for the doosra (contrasted with using the index finger for spinning the off-break).

But the grip doesn't look very different for the two deliveries.

2. He also uses a flip of the wrist - specifically an extension of the wrist - to impart extra spin.

This is an important innovation, since without this extra wrist flip, the doosra would spin only slowly; but with this wrist extension he get good top-spinning revolutions which gives his doosra dip and bounce.

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The reason that the doosra is so rare is that the off break is usually bowled using a rotation of the forearm (anatomically called supination - like putting your elbow on the table with the forearm lying flat, and moving from having the palm on the table to palm facing upwards).

But supination cannot be used when the back of the hand is facing the batter (the forearm is already supinated), so most bowlers would need to rely on a small amount of finger-imparted spin, a small sideways movement of the wrist (called adduction) and perhaps an element of elbow straightening (a 'back-chuck').

But by flipping his wrist forward, Ajmal is able to produce plenty of spin without throwing.

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His other advantage is that (I guess) Ajmaal has built his bowling action around the doosra - with an almost vertical arm action, so that his off-break is bowled from a very similar action and hand position - his off-break is more of a top-spinner than most other off-break bowlers.

Most off-break bowlers build their action around optimizing their off-break - then they find that they cannot bowl a doosra - or at least not without chucking, or bowling something very obvious and easy to 'pick'.

So (leaving aside Murali as a one-off and unclassifiable bowler) I believe that Saeed Ajmal should be recognized as the first international quality true doosra bowler!

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I am delighted that Moeen Ali bowled so well in the Southampton Test against India - and I am not at all surprised.

He has a really nice classical off-spinner's action, and spins the ball almost as rapidly as Swann (and considerably more rapidly than either India's Jajeda or of Sri Lanka's Herath).

But I predict that Moeen will not be able to bowl a doosra - at least, he will not be able to bowl a useful doosra at teh test match level (i.e. that a delivery that is legal, hard to pick, reliable and effective). This is simply because he has a classic off-spinners grip and action - holding the ball between index and middle finger and delivering it from the front of the hand; and a doosra cannot be bowled with that kind of grip and action (nobody has ever done it).

The fact that Moeen has been tutored by Saeed Ajmal at Worcestershire is irrelevant; since Ajmal has a completely different method. He grips the ball between middle and ring finger, and delivers both off-spinner and doosra with the back of his hand towards the batter and a forward flick of the wrist.

http://the-doosra.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/how-does-saeed-ajmal-bowl-his-doosra.html

But Moeen does not need a doosra - he has already shown that he can beat the bat on both sides - even with very good players.

Given his excellent batting and superb temperament, England now solved their spin problem and have a really valuable all-round cricketer in Moeen Ali.  

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This report about Ajmal clarifies what seems anatomically necessary: that a reverse wrist spinner/ off-break-doosra bowler very probably needs to have a bent elbow, but does not entail chucking

http://www.espncricinfo.com/pakistan-v-england-2012/content/current/story/552579.html

This is quite simply because the elbow needs to be bent in order to rotate the arm (specifically to rotate the shoulder) to point the elbow towards slips (for a right handed batter) - which enables the forward flip of the wrist to generate the doosra.

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Note added 12 March 2012 - it is notable that the two best doosra bowlers so far seem to have had a permanently bent, unstraightenable elbow on their bowling arm.

Murali had this congenitally (i.e. he was born with a bent elbow), while Ajmal had a bent elbow as a result of an accident.

This suggests that unless a bowler has a bent elbw, he will probably not be a really effective (as well as legal) doosra bowler.

The possible exception is Saqlain Mushtaq; but for whatever reason, nobody seems to be able to replicate his method.

http://the-doosra.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/how-to-bowl-doosra-without-chucking.html

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In Mike Selvey's Guardian column today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/28/pakistan-england-changing-world-order

he used the term reverse wrist spinner to describe off-break/ doosra bolwers like Ajmal.

Sounds like the perfect name!

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(I found a couple of other previous uses of the term reverse wrist spinner on Google - such as this time ten years ago on cricinfo by Sambit Bal - http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/226249.html) . Perhaps the cricket journalists have been saying it for a while?

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The final nail in the coffin was the banning of Sunil Narine in November, who was the last top level doosra bowler. The ICC have had a concerted campaign to eliminate the doosra, on the basis that it is 'illegal' - and they have succeeded with astonishing rapidity and completeness.

The doosra is now as extinct as the dodo. I hope the ICC secret police are happy at their success, because the game of cricket is significantly worse as a result of their activity.

This blog was begun in 2006 to celebrate and explore this exciting new set of deliveries by which an off spinner could bowl a leg-break with minimal change of action.

The delivery was popularized in the mid 1990s by Saqlain Mushtaq and reached its peak with Saeed Ajmal up until 2014 when he was banned (he had been the best spinner in the world for several years, and my personal favourite bowler - but from then his career was destroyed).

For a few glorious years the game of cricket - and especially the fifty over and T20 forms, were enlivened by what seemed like a galaxy of 'mystery spinners' of many types and varying abilities - all of them now neutered or gone altogether except for Ashwin who used the 'carrom', finger flick method; and who has now become the best spinner in the world (especially since the new spinning superstar, Yasir Shah has been suspended after a failed drug test).

Is cricket a better game now that spin has been all but deleted from front line bowling? Of course not - it is a far worse game.

Was it necessary, or 'fair' to destroy the doosra simply because it was 'illegal'? Of course not! The answer was not to destroy it, but to legalize it - as happened in the past with round-arm bowling, then over-arm bowling (indeed, the original bowling delivery of under-arm is the one that is now illegal).

What harm did the doosra do in the recent era of its success? None that I can see - it simply enhanced the game, made it more exciting, mysterious - gave bowlers back some of the ground they have lost to bat technology and (whisper it not!) the batters increasing use of undetectable human hormones (such as testosterone and growth hormone) as performance enhancing drugs.

Why was it banned? Perhaps because: 1. Cricket is a batsman's game; 2. England and Australia (two out of three of the game's ruling elites) could not find any doosra bowlers of their own; 3. The cricket administrators short-termist but insatiable appetite for ever more and more runs (esepcially sixes) in the shorter forms of the game (which is why ridiculously unfair changes in bat technology and the batters ever more Hulk-like drug-induced physiques have been conveniently ignored).

Anyway, it is all finished - the kill-joys have won the day; the batters have got their way.


Reference: my doosra posts:
http://the-doosra.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=doosra


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The commonest type of spinner - the off-break and orthodox left arm spinners (like Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann) should properly be caused forearm spinners, since it is the supination of the forearm which imparts spin to the ball.

Supination is the rotation of the forearm from a position with the palm facing down and the thumb on the medial (middle) side being rotated to the palm is upwards and the thumb is on the lateral (out) side.

It is this rotation of the forearm which generates spin - and it has almost nothing to do with the fingers (they merely grip the ball firmly) - so the name 'finger spinner' is wrong and misleading.

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True finger spinners are those rare types who use a finger flick to impart spin - such as Mendis or Herath's carrom ball, or from the past Jack Iverson.

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Wrist spinners are mostly leg break and chinaman bowlers, who bowl with the forearm in pronation (thumb medially rotated - but Saeed Ajmal is a new kind of wrist spinner who bowls with the forearm in supination (thumb laterally rotated).

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What of Murali?

He was mostly a shoulder spinner. The whole of his arm rotated, and the ball was either an off-break or a doora according to whether the wrist was flexed/ folded palm towards arm (doosra) or extended/ with wrist 'cocked' and back of hand towards arm (off break).

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Some googlies are also shoulder-spun - bowled mostly from shoulder rotation, especially when the bowler has a round arm action like Shane Warne.

Warne's most serious injury was of his shoulder, and resulted from bowling a sequence of practice googlies to Ian Healy.

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(By contrast, right arm wrist spinners with a high or vertical arm action - such as Chandrasekar or Kumble - tend to bowl googlies (or top-spinners) as their stock delivery rather than leg breaks; and their googly is bowled with a flick of the wrist and not by rotating the whole arm from the shoulder.)

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1. Accuracy and reliability, obviously.

2. Usually a powerfully-spun (fizzing) stock delivery with lots of revolutions on it; but if not then plenty of bounce at slow-medium pace (e.g. Kumble, SF Barnes, Mendis).

3. A well-disguised variation. At the highest level is is vital that the variation be hard/ impossible to pick. If it is, then the variation need not be anything spectacular - a good 'arm ball' for a slow left arm orthodox/ of-spinner is as good as a doosra- or , and a legspinner's straight delivery is as good as a googly/ wrong-un.

Contrariwise, if the variation is easy to pick then it is pretty useless at the highest level; even if it is a spectacularly-turning googly, an excocet-missile flipper or a high-bouncing doosra.

Swann is evidence of all this. He is the best spinner in the world on the basis of accuracy and reliability, a high-rev off break and a straight 'gyro' ball. In particular he is better than any of the doosra bowlers, because his gyro variation is very difficult/ impossible to pick - unlike most doosras (exceptions being Murali, and perhaps Saeed Ajmal).