You know all good leg spinners have a well disguised googly; the one that goes the other way.
So you practice hard in the nets, trying to get the perfect ball.
So hard in fact, that somehow you forget how to bowl a normal leg break. You are stuck in the hell of only bowling wrong ‘uns.
Are you destined to become a googly bowler for the rest of your life?
Not if you take fast remedial action.
1. Stop bowling
The very start is to stop.
Your muscle memory needs to be rebooted like a computer and you can’t do that if you are still using it every day.
Don’t bowl in nets, don’t bowl at all. Take yourself off somewhere quiet and go back to basics.
That means under-arming the ball with a leg break action, in the same way as you would teach a youngster how to bowl a leg spin delivery. Keep working away until you get the feel right of leg spin again.
From an underarm position you can watch what your hand is doing and can see where the back of your hand is facing.
When you are stuck bowling googlies you will quickly see that your wrist had got in the habit of going too far around, bowling underarm shows you this and allows you to reset the memory banks.
Patience is the key here, it may take some time to get back to where you were. More than one session. Don’t get down if you are seeing little progress.
2. Try again, without the batsman
When the feel is right, go back to nets but do it without a batsman at first. They just get in the way.
Bowl from a standing position about 18 yards away. There is no need to confuse things with a run up and you can focus on your wrist action rather than accuracy.
You may find you go straight back to bowling wrong ‘uns again.
Don’t panic; just go back to underarm for a bit. Everyone is different and some people take longer than others to adjust.
3. Take care
Once you have the basic leg break back, go back to bowling of a full 22 yards with a run up. Things should be working fine.
But take care because this problem can easily come back.
Stay away from googlies for a while.
Then, when you do decide you are confident enough to go back to them (and you should go back), practice by bowling 1 wrong ‘un to every 10 leg breaks.
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