If I was England’s Bowling Coach - Part One

If somebody asked you what your dream job would be, what would you say? You would probably name a job doing something that you were good at and enjoyed doing. It would probably be a job that allowed you to work alongside some of the world leaders in your chosen field. Maybe it would allow you to travel and to see new parts of the world. Finally, because this is your dream job, it would probably pay well.

I am very fortunate to have a job related to my lifelong passion - cricket.  I know how lucky I am to be able to make a living coaching young cricketers. But, I have to admit, it is not quite my dream job.  That would be to work with the Australian Cricket Board as their Head Bowling Coach. A close second would be working for the English Cricket Board as their Head Bowling Coach. 

However, neither of those jobs are likely to come my way anytime soon. I have not played First Class cricket as an adult, and I think that has hindered my coaching career. Coaching jobs at the highest level tend to be reserved for ex-professionals who have played the game at the highest level. 

Knowledge

I may not have played at the highest level, but I was fortunate enough to have been coached by some of the best in the business as a young man.  That, combined with my training as a PE teacher and years of playing and coaching experience, means that I have a good understanding of the mechanics of a bowling action. I have been passing this knowledge onto kids and adults for years now and I really enjoy what I do. Hopefully, one of my students will make the professional ranks one day and I may just get the chance to coach at a higher level.  

In the meantime, I will have to make do with writing about what I would do in my dream role. Since I live in England, and because all of us are allowed to dream, I am going to imagine I am employed as one of England’s bowling coaches. Over a series of blogs, I am going to analyse the actions of the current English bowling attack. I will give advice as to how I think they could improve as cricketers and become even better. The first player I would like to give advice to is Dom Bess. He is an off-spinner with great potential, but technique flaws in his action are holding him back. 

Dom Bess’s Action

There are a lot of things to be admired in Dom Bess’s action. He has a very good approach to the crease and he is aggressive through the popping crease. His wrist position is excellent and he imparts a lot of spin on the ball. He splits his arms well and his right hip drive through the crease is excellent. He also completes his action very well. These are all positives that I would never change and I would encourage Bess to continue doing these things.

What I would want to change in Bess’s action can be broken down into three flaws in his technique. These flaws are more clearly highlighted when he is bowling over the wicket to a right-handed batsman; they are not such a big problem when he bowls around the wicket to left-handed batsmen. 

So what are these flaws? They are:

• his alignment in Delivery Stride

• his head position in Delivery Stride 

• his bowling arm position at Release Point

These flaws are all connected and they are holding Bess back from being the best bowler he can be.  If I was his coach I would be telling him the following.

Alignment

Bess does not align himself toward the target in Delivery Stride. He steps across the stumps and in Delivery Stride, he is actually aligned towards Fine Leg. This is not usually a problem for bowlers who pivot and drive their hips through as aggressively as Bess does but his pivot and hip drive are not the problem. The problem is that when Bess drives through the popping crease to square his hips at release, his head is falling away towards the off side and at release it is positioned way left of his left foot. I believe that if I corrected Bess’s alignment he would find it easier to square his hips and he could concentrate more on keeping his head position still and horizontal and over his foot. The power generated from his pivot would be centred more on his left foot and he would remain more upright throughout the delivery process.

Head position

Next time Dom Bess is bowling, press the pause button at the moment he is releasing the ball. What you will see is that his head is tilted and is way outside the line of his body. His left eye is vertically underneath his right eye. If you take a minute to think about it, this is a terrible position for the head to be in. If you have a moment, pick up a tennis ball, turn your head so that the left eye is under the right, position your head to the left of your feet and try and throw a ball at a target. Difficult isn’t it? And yet this is what Bess is doing. 

I would work with Bess on performing a series of drills that encouraged him to keep his eyes horizontal throughout his action. I would show him videos of Nathan Lyon bowling. Lyon’s head is slightly left of vertical and if I was his coach I would work with him to keep his head over his left foot a little more. What he does well is that he maintains a horizontal eye position throughout the action. His arm is lower than Bess’s, and is very close to vertical when he releases the ball. This leads me to my next point.

Bowling Arm Release Point

I have written about the problems of releasing the ball from left of vertical previously. Vertical is the imaginary line drawn straight upwards from the bowler’s left foot in Delivery Stride. Because of his alignment and his tilted head position, Bess is releasing the ball from way left of vertical which hinders drift and accuracy. Maybe he feels that by bowling left of vertical he can turn the ball more? I don’t know, but I would love to ask him. I would point out to him that this is not the case because what might seem like turn is actually the ball just going on with the angle he has created. 

If I was coaching Bess I would work with him and coach him to bowl with a lower arm so that, similar to Nathan Lyon, he would be releasing the ball on vertical, or even slightly to the right of it. To some degree, this will happen naturally once we have corrected his alignment and head position. His wrist position (not to be confused with release position) is very good. He imparts good revolutions on the ball, and his seam position is also good. If he corrects his release point he will get the drift away he needs at test level and turn the ball sharply back into the right handed batsman. Bess will not get drift if he continues to bowl from the left of vertical, which is something I am sure he would like to achieve.

Variations

I have seen a very poor low arm slider which I would encourage Bess to put back in the locker. It is easy to pick at test level and I can’t see him getting a wicket with it. In its place, I would teach Bess the arm ball, which with an improved release position he will find much easier to bowl. To bowl an arm ball the release point needs to be at vertical or slightly right of vertical. It is no surprise that Bess does not have this bowling weapon in his artillery at the moment.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and have learnt something from it. Perhaps Bess will have the opportunity to read it - I hope he takes my coaching advice!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this blog, and which of England’s bowlers you would like me to assess next. 

In the meantime, the English cricket season ends soon, so make sure you have ordered Flickit Cricket to keep on playing through the winter!