Types of spin bowling explained: finger spin and wrist spin

Spin bowling is the part of cricket that most rewards patience from the viewer. Fast bowling announces itself. A spinner's work is quieter: a ball floated a fraction wider, a seam tilted two degrees further over, a batter playing for turn that does not arrive. Most of what matters happens in the bowler's hand in the last quarter of a second before release, and then in the six inches of pitch where the ball lands.

There are only two ways to impart spin to a cricket ball with any real control, and every named delivery in the game is a variation on one of them.

The two families

Finger spin uses the fingers to rip across the ball. The wrist stays relatively firm and the index finger does most of the work, dragging down the side of the seam as the hand comes through. It is a natural, low-stress action. Children discover it by accident.

Wrist spin uses the wrist and the third finger. The hand is turned so the back of it faces the batter at the moment of release, and the ball is flicked out with the wrist unwinding and the third finger flipping under and across. It is unnatural, hard to repeat and takes years to control, which is why wrist spinners are rarer and why sides tolerate more wayward overs from them.

The two families produce opposite turn from the same hand. A right-arm finger spinner turns the ball from off to leg to a right-handed batter, which is an off break. A right-arm wrist spinner turns it from leg to off, which is a leg break. Reverse both for a left-armer: left-arm orthodox is finger spin turning away from the right-hander, and left-arm wrist spin, still often called the chinaman, turns into him.

That gives four basic bowler types before a single variation is added.

Bowler	Method	Stock ball to a right-hander
Right-arm off spinner	Finger	Turns in, off to leg
Right-arm leg spinner	Wrist	Turns away, leg to off
Left-arm orthodox	Finger	Turns away, leg to off
Left-arm wrist spin	Wrist	Turns in, off to leg

Notice that a left-arm orthodox bowler and a right-arm leg spinner do the same thing to a right-handed batter by completely different means. Notice too that the whole question of matchups, which so dominates modern white-ball selection, falls out of this table. A captain choosing between two spinners is often choosing a direction of turn rather than a bowler.

What actually makes the ball turn

Two things: revolutions, and the angle of the seam.

Revolutions come from the rip. The more revolutions per second the bowler puts on the ball, the more violently it reacts when the seam grips the surface. Bowlers talk about ripping the ball rather than rolling it, and the difference is audible: a well-spun ball makes a distinct fizz through the air.

The seam angle decides what those revolutions do. If the ball spins about a vertical axis, the seam is presented sideways and the ball, on landing, skids off in the direction of spin. That is side spin, and it produces turn. If the ball spins about a horizontal axis running across the pitch, that is top spin, and instead of turning it dips in flight and kicks up off the surface. Every real delivery sits somewhere between the two, and the great spinners are the ones who can choose exactly where.

Spin also acts on the ball in the air. A spinning ball generates a pressure difference across itself and drifts sideways, which is why an off spinner's stock ball so often floats away towards the slips before turning back in. That drift is the first half of the trap. The batter follows the ball out towards off stump, commits, and then the pitch does the second half.

The finger spinner's kit

Off break

The stock ball. The index and middle fingers are spread across the seam, the ball resting in the top joints rather than the palm, and at release the index finger pulls down hard across the outside of the ball while the hand turns over. Right-arm to right-hander it pitches on or outside off and comes back towards the stumps.

The wickets come in three shapes. The ball that turns past the inside edge and hits the pad or the stumps. The ball that takes the outside edge as the batter plays for turn that does not happen. And, on a surface offering bounce, the one that lifts and takes the glove or the shoulder of the bat to short leg.

Arm ball

The most useful and least glamorous variation in the game. The bowler holds the ball with the seam upright and angled, as a swing bowler would, and releases it with much less finger spin. It does not turn. It goes straight on with the arm, and on a good day it swings a little away from the right-hander.

Its value is entirely contextual. After six overs of ball turning in, a batter's whole defensive shape is built around the inside edge. The arm ball attacks the outside edge and the front pad from a batter whose weight has already committed the other way. It is the delivery that produces most lbw dismissals against off spin, because the batter is playing for turn that never comes and the ball hits the pad in line.

Top spinner

Same finger action, but the hand comes over the top of the ball rather than around the side, so the axis tilts towards horizontal. The ball dips late, which makes it drop shorter than the batter expects, and it bounces higher than the stock ball. It goes straight on or turns very slightly. Against a batter who is happily driving on the up, one delivery that dips and climbs is often enough to produce a leading edge.

Doosra

The finger spinner's version of the wrist spinner's googly: an off spinner's action producing leg break turn. The bowler cocks the wrist so the back of the hand faces the batter, and the ball is pushed out of the front of the hand with the seam rotating the other way.

It is enormously difficult to bowl legally. The natural way to generate that rotation from a finger spinner's position is to straighten the elbow through delivery, which is why the doosra sat at the centre of the game's long argument about throwing and why the fifteen degree tolerance on elbow extension was introduced. Bowlers who can produce it within the law tend to be those with unusual hypermobility in the wrist and shoulder. Saqlain Mushtaq, who is credited with developing it, and Muttiah Muralitharan, whose shoulder rotation was extraordinary, are the names most associated with it. Many bowlers who tried to copy it were reported, remodelled their actions and lost the ball entirely.

Carrom ball

A third method of imparting spin, distinct from both families. The ball is squeezed between the thumb and a bent middle finger, and at release the middle finger flicks outwards, snapping the ball forward like a carrom striker. Depending on how the finger is set, the same action can produce turn in either direction, and the release looks nothing like a normal spinner's.

Its virtue is disguise: the arm speed and the flight look conventional, and the difference is a finger movement the batter cannot see. Its cost is control. The flick is a fine motor action performed at pace, and a carrom ball that is not quite right becomes a long hop. Bowlers who use it well, Ajantha Mendis and Ravichandran Ashwin among them, treat it as a surprise ball rather than a stock delivery.

The wrist spinner's kit

Leg break

The hardest basic skill in cricket. The ball sits under the fingers with the seam running across them, the wrist is cocked so the palm faces the sky and then the batter, and at release the wrist unwinds while the third finger, curled under the ball, flips upwards and across. The ball leaves with the seam spinning from leg to off.

Bowled well it does three things at once. It drifts away from the right-hander in the air, dips because of the top spin component, and then turns back sharply the other way off the pitch. That combination, drift one way and turn the other, is why a big-turning leg break beats an outside edge that is trying to follow the ball. It is the most attacking delivery a spinner can bowl and the least reliable, which is the trade every captain makes when picking a leg spinner.

Googly

The leg spinner's masterpiece. The wrist is turned further over so the back of the hand faces the batter completely at release, and the ball comes out over the top of the little finger. The seam still rotates in the same physical direction relative to the hand, but because the hand has rotated, the ball now turns from off to leg. An off break out of a leg spinner's action.

To the batter it is the same arm, the same speed, the same trajectory, and the ball goes the wrong way. Its danger is not the amount of turn, which is often modest, but the fact that the batter's bat has already come down the wrong line. Bowled to a batter looking to work the leg break through the off side, it hits the front pad or takes a leading edge back down the pitch.

Top spinner

The halfway house between leg break and googly. The wrist is turned so the seam axis points more or less straight down the pitch, the spin is almost pure top spin, and the ball goes straight on with heavy dip and steep bounce. It is often the wicket-taking ball in a leg spinner's over precisely because it does nothing sideways: the batter, primed for turn in either direction, plays for movement and the ball beats the bat straight.

Slider

The delivery that has quietly become the most important variation in white-ball spin. The bowler releases the ball with the fingers coming down the back of it rather than around the side, imparting backspin or something close to it. The ball holds its line, skids on low and fast off the surface and does not bounce.

Everything about a slider is designed to defeat a batter's timing rather than their line. Against a leg spinner the natural attacking shot is to wait, use the turn and work the ball square. The slider arrives earlier and lower than the eye expects, and the shot is played over the top of it. Bowled at the stumps it produces bowled and lbw dismissals, and it does so without the bowler needing any help from the pitch at all, which is why it works on flat surfaces where the leg break is neutralised.

A related delivery is the flipper, squeezed out from between the thumb and first two fingers with a clicking action that gives it heavy backspin. It skids and hurries on in the same way but with more of a click at release, and it is famously hard on the fingers.

Which are hardest to pick, and why

Batters read spin from three sources, in this order.

Out of the hand. The position of the wrist and the direction the seam is rotating are visible at release for a fraction of a second. This is the earliest and best information, and it is why wrist spin is harder to face than finger spin: the difference between a leg break and a googly is a wrist angle, whereas the difference between an off break and an arm ball is often visible in the seam.

In the air. Drift and dip. A ball drifting in has side spin one way; a ball dipping sharply has top spin. This is slower information but it is available for the whole flight, which is why batters against quality spin come down the pitch: it converts a long read into a short one and removes the pitch from the equation.

Off the pitch. The last resort. Playing spin off the surface means playing late, with soft hands and the bat close to the pad, and accepting that you will be beaten sometimes.

Ranked by difficulty, the deliveries that hurt most are the ones that give the batter nothing at the first two stages. The googly and the doosra are hard because the hand is disguised. The carrom ball is hard because the release mechanism is unfamiliar. The slider and the flipper are hard because they look identical to the stock ball in the air and only reveal themselves after pitching, by which time the shot is committed.

The arm ball is the interesting case. It is not disguised at all, and good players pick it easily. It works because of what came before it, not because of what it is. That is the deeper point about spin bowling: almost no delivery is dangerous in isolation. The wickets come from the sequence.

The conditions in which spin dominates

Spin needs the surface to grip, and grip is a function of dryness, texture and how much the pitch has broken up. The variables are covered in more depth in our guide to pitch types and how they are prepared, but the essentials for a spinner are these.

• A dry, abrasive surface. Moisture makes a pitch skid. As it dries, the top layer becomes granular and the seam bites. This is why spinners come into a Test match on the third and fourth days and why the toss matters so much on subcontinental pitches.
• Footmarks. By the second innings, the fast bowlers' follow-throughs have scuffed rough patches outside each batter's off stump. A spinner turning the ball into the batter can land in that rough and produce turn and bounce that no amount of technique fully solves.
• Bounce, not just turn. Turn alone gives a batter time. Turn plus bounce takes the ball past the edge and into the glove. The best spinning surfaces are hard and dry rather than soft and slow. A slow, low, turning pitch is easier to bat on than a fast, bouncy, turning one.
• Air. Heavy, still air helps drift; strong wind can be used or can ruin the flight. Spinners generally prefer to bowl into a light breeze, which holds the ball up and increases dip.
• The ball. A slightly worn ball with a proud seam grips best. A brand new ball is hard and skids; a very old, soft one loses the seam that does the gripping.

In white-ball cricket the conditions equation changes. Dew is the great enemy: an evening ball that will not stay dry cannot be gripped, and captains who win the toss on dewy grounds bowl first for exactly that reason. Two new balls in an ODI innings mean spinners bowl with harder, less worn balls than they used to, which shifts the emphasis from turn towards pace, dip and the slider.

How spin is used across formats

In Test cricket the spinner's job is to bowl long spells, control an end and take wickets when the surface offers something. Flight and dip are used to invite the drive, and the field has catchers in front of the bat.

In fifty-over cricket the spinner owns the middle overs, bowling with the field spread and being judged on economy as much as wickets. The mode is faster, flatter, into the pitch, and the wickets tend to come from batters attacking rather than from beaten edges.

In Twenty20 the calculation is different again. Spin is used at the top of an innings, in the powerplay, precisely because a batter with no fielders to hit past still has to get the ball off the square, and it is used at the death because a slower ball that grips is harder to hit than a slower ball that skids. The premium is on variation and on bowlers who turn it both ways, which is why leg spinners and mystery spinners command the prices they do at auction.

The one constant across all three is that spin is a bowling discipline built on deception rather than force. A fast bowler beats a batter by leaving them too little time. A spinner gives them plenty of time and makes sure they use it wrongly.

Related reading: how reverse swing works, for the other skill that turns an ageing ball into a weapon, and our player pages for career records by format.