While a topspinner is released with the thumb facing the batter, a slider is bowled in a similar manner to a legbreak, but instead of imparting sidespin with the third finger, the bowler allows his fingers to roll down the back of the ball, providing a mixture of sidespin and backspin.
His dismissal of Ian Bell lbw with the delivery was a classic piece of spin bowling; Bell played for the turn of a normal leg break, but the delivery skidded straight into his front pad without turning.
[2] Although there is often a good deal of confusion on the subject, the slider is thought to be more or less an identical delivery to the "zooter".
[3] Finger spin bowlers, like Ravindra Jadeja, commonly bowl an exactly equivalent ball, which comes out of the front of the hand with backspin present.
However the name slider has not passed over into common parlance for its offspin cousin, and the terms arm ball, backspinner or, more recently, teesra are used instead.