Wrist spin

Wrist spin is bowled by releasing the ball from the back of the hand, so that it passes over the little finger.

A wrist spin delivery is released with the arm held in a fully pronated position, with the fingers on the inside of the ball (to the left for a right-handed bowler).

If this pronated position is maintained through the release, the fingers will naturally cut down the side of the ball and produce an anti-clockwise spin.

The great Australian leg-spinner Bill O'Reilly is famous for bowling legspin in this manner.

The bowler achieves this change of spin by bending the wrist sharply from the normal leg break delivery position.

When the Cricket ball rolls out of the hand (from the side near the little finger, as in a normal leg break), it emerges with clockwise spin (from the bowler's point of view).

The grip is identical to that of a conventional leg-break: the only difference is the additional wrist and shoulder rotation, so that the batsman will see the back of the hand when the ball is released.

In either case, the bowler imparts the ball with top spin by twisting it with his or her fingers prior to delivery.

In cricketing terms, this means that the ball drops shorter, falls faster and bounces higher than might otherwise be anticipated by the batsman.

Tactically, a bowler will bowl topspinners to draw a batsman forward before using the dip and extra bounce to deceive them.

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".

Squeezed out of the front of the hand with the thumb and first and second fingers, it keeps deceptively low after pitching and can accordingly be very difficult to play.

In doing so the flipper will float on towards the batsman and land on a fuller length than he anticipated, often leaving him caught on the back foot when he wrongly assumes it to be a pullable or a cuttable ball.

The back spin or underspin will cause the ball to hurry on at great pace with very little bounce, though this may be harder to achieve on softer wickets.

A series of normal leg spinners or topspinners, with their dropping looping flight, will have the batsman used to the ball pitching on a shorter length.

Much of the effectiveness of the flipper is attributable to the "pop", that is, the extra pace and change in trajectory that is imparted to the ball when it is squeezed out of the bowler's hand.

The Australian leg spinner Bob Holland employed a back spinning ball that he simply pushed backwards with the heel of his palm.