How to Bowl the doosra

Cricket CoachCoach

I am an off spin bowler who often try things. Of recent I have been trying out bowling the doosre. I must admit that this close to impossible to do so hats off to those who had mastered it. Here is my take on the subject. Lets start from the bottom and work our way up. Bowling a doosra is simply getting the rotation of the ball to go in the opposite direction of the conventional off spinning delivery with very subtle changes in our bowling action (barely noticeable to the batsman). An offspinning delivery rotates from right to left and a doosra from left to right. I mention this because sometimes we become too taken up with the magic of the delivery that we forget this simple, most basic logic. Offspin is bowled with the front of the hand facing the batsman with the index finger rolling down the right side of the ball to produce the clockwise rotation. If you allow the back of your hands to face the batsman and pull in the opposite direction with the fingers pointing upright then you would also produce an off spin. This action however offers you more flexibility in the positioning of the wrist and you can change the angle of the fingers from 90 degrees to 180 or more and the seam position of the ball would change also. At this point it becomes easy to bowl the top spinner with good flight and dip as grip on the ball in not compromised. The Doosra however takes a little more bending of the wrist then flicking upwards of it, while pulling the arm down straighter instead of across the body as with the usual delivery. You can play around with the position of the ball seam in your hand so as to produce a greater angled seam without bending your wrist to o uncomfortably. The hardest part is producing the flick in the wrist and still maintaining control of the delivery. I find Mendez Doosra a more simple and practical application just use your thumb and middle finger to change the direction of your seam rotation. At first it would be hard to control and more noticeable to batsmen but then you can add your own personal touch and guile to disguise it and if you have what it takes you can become something special. Let me know if any of this makes sense.