cricket with balls

Australia has no spinners in England, one is at home with his kid, another is not taking cocaine, and then Nathan Hauritz.

This is a terrible situation, but Andrew Hilditch and I have been working on a plan.

The raelians are experimenting in cloning, so Andrew and I flew over to nevada, and gave them the coccyx of Tiger Bill O’Reilly.

Being that this is still an experiment, there have been problems.

The First Tiger Bill clone could only bowl long hops with a ridiculous slingy side on action, the second one bowled shit, but did spend hours explaining why he should be picked, and the third bowled ok but stole Andrew’s wallet.

At this stage we are expecting them to have perfected Tiger Bill in time for the 2nd test.

Tiger Bill O’relly was called Tiger.

Not because he was sleak and striped, but hecause when making love to a woman he took on tiger form.

Doug Ring invented a time machine.

And even though he was the second best leg spinner of all time, he decided to bowl in the same team as the best, Tiger Bill O’ Reilly, as a homage to leg spin.

Few people understood this, and they demanded that Doug use the time travel to go to the 70s or 80s where he would be better appreciated.

But Doug was a man of principle, and to him bowling behind Tiger Bill gave him a status far greater than Shane Warne’s.

He blew up the time machine, and never regretted it.

A few months back I came up with my best Australian XI.

Some people were dismayed at the fact I left out Don Bradman and Shane Warne, but I thought I had good reason to leave out both.

Warne was left out for the great Tiger Bill O’Reilly, a man who was never dominated by any batsman.

I have seen Warne dominated by Lara, Cronje, Ranatunga, most of India’s top order and his mum’s diet pills, so I chose the safer option.

Also, Bill has a far greater nick name than Warne.

As for Bradman’s omission that was simple, Keith Miller and Tiger Bill had to put up with that whiny little perfectionist their most of their careers, so I gave them a break from him.

Some international readers may not know that inside the Australian dressing room Donald wasn’t always the most liked man.

Tiger Bill said

“Don Bradman was a teetotaller, ambitious, conservative and meticulous. I was outspoken and gregarious, an equally ambitious young man of Irish descent.”

If Don Bradman wasn’t the world’s first probot, then he was Jango Fett.

A small boy entered the Pizza shop today and said

“Hey Unkie J, I want to be a leg spinner just like you”.

And I said

“Well I am hybrid Bubby/club legspinner”.

The little boy ran out confused.

That left me worried about the state of education in our schools.

Are kiddies not taught about the variants of leg spinning.

Maybe some on my blog are confused also.

Leg Spinning types and brief descriptions, by Unkie J.

The Aussie ripper leg spinner

Practised by Peter McIntyre, Sutart MacGill, and Shane Warne.

The main art of this leg spinner is the actual side spin imparted on the ball, which is done with a slightly rounder arm action and wrists made of steel. The objective is to spin the ball sideways on glass whilst maintaining a fairly consistent length and line. In a lesser hands it can go horribly wrong, in the hands of a master, can be combined with subtler straighter balls and gentle over spin to keep the batsman guessing. Mostly a leg stump line, can be less effective against a cack hander.

Signature move, the ball the spins past the outside edge.

The Bubbly Pakistani leg spinner

Practised by Mushtaq Ahmed and Abdul Qadir.

This is legspin with a touch of aerobics. It requires lots of hopping, arm whipping and an offstump line. This is the one form of leg spin that best encapsulates everything there is about legspinning, as all delivery’s are available from a straighter arm action whilst still spinning the ball. The objective is to trick the batsmen with a variant of balls so devishly devised that he regulary plays for a ball that spins one way whilst it spins the other way. Because the ball spins both ways it is effective against all batsmen, but the offstump line means a good length is every important.

Signature move, the wrong’un that cuts the batsman in two halves.

The Absurdist straight breaker

Practised By Tiger Bill O’Reilly, Anil Kumble, Shahid Afridi, Chris Harris, Cameron White and Piyush Chawla.

This is leg spin without the legspin. It is deception of the highest order. It is also almost impossible to make a living on. You must have the ability to sell the spin, whilst delivering the straight one. You can bowl any delivery you want with this style, but it doesn’t really matter, because you won’t be spinning the ball anyway, but if you are good at it, you will be aggressively accurate and steady like a train. The objective is to penetrate the mind of the batsmen through repetition and absurdity.

Signature move, the straight one.

The club leg spinner

Practised by Richie Benaud, Bryce McGain, & every West Indian Legspinner ever.

Not a huge spinner of the ball, has variation but mostly works on the fact that if they can land every leg spinner in the same place for a day wickets will come. The arm action is usually somewhere between straight arm and round arm, and this particular style comes in many wonderfully different actions. The objective is to beat you with subtle flight, spin and speed changes.

Signature move, the batsman losing patience and swinging across the line, but hitting it straight up in the air.

The Paul Adams leg spinner

Practised by Paul Adams, and me in the backyard, until I hurt my back.

Was once described as a frog in a blender. I like to think of it as a midget, wearing a bunny suit, trying to fling its head at you with a shoulder jerk so savage that it could kill the average ostrich. The objective seems to be not to fling your head at the batsman, but to make him think you are while you get him with your badly disguised wrong one.

Signature move, unknown.