[?] Subscribe To This Site

The Googly
Cricket's Deadly Weapon

The googly or "wrong 'un" is a delivery that looks like a normal leg spinner, but turns toward a right hand batsman like an off break.

If you’ve ever faced up to a leg spin bowler, you’ll know that the "wrong 'un" is extremely difficult to detect. As a budding spin bowler, I learned the skill from watching Richie Benaud on TV. And, to my delight, I found that although most junior batsmen had enough difficulty playing a leg break, a well delivered googly was almost unplayable.

The vital words here are “well delivered”, because leg breaks and googlies are difficult to bowl with consistency. As you’ll see, I found this out to my cost but you can learn from my mistakes.

Both leg breaks and googlies impart strong spin using wrist action. At the point of delivery, the palm of the hand faces the batsman when bowling a leg break, but the "wrong 'un" shows the back of the hand to the batsman at the same point, meaning that spin is imparted in the opposite direction. The batsman sees the same wrist action, but he needs very sharp eyes to spot the different timing of the release of the ball.

To bowl a googly, hold the ball as if for a normal leg break, with the top joints of the index and middle fingers across the seam and the ball resting between a bent third finger and your thumb. As you release the ball, rotate your wrist anti clockwise so the palm of your hand faces upwards, the back of your hand faces the batsman, and the seam points towards fine leg.

The wrist and third finger do the work of spinning the ball anti clockwise – flick out this finger toward the batsman. This is difficult to do, but practice makes perfect – try using a soft ball to help improve your wrist flexibility while spinning the ball from hand to hand.

Once you can do this, you can experiment with flighting the ball different ways, and develop intermediate deliveries like the top spinner.

Leg breaks and googlies can be difficult to bowl accurately because of the wrist action involved, so you can expect to be hit for a few runs. But you’ll also take wickets more quickly because they’re so difficult for batsmen to play.

Here’s the big health warning. If you over bowl the googly, your bowling action will get “bitten” so that your natural delivery becomes the “wrong ‘un”, and you lose the ability to bowl a leg break. This happened to me, and has been a massive loss to my bowling even until today. So, please take care to use the "wrong 'un" as a surprise, but deadly weapon.

Return from How to Bowl a Googly to Cricket Coaching

footer for googly page

The GooglyCricket's Deadly Weapon

The Googly
Cricket's Deadly Weapon