|How to bowl swing and seam|
|Around the Academy:
To get the best possible chance of any sort of movement in the air or off the pitch, a fast bowler should grip the ball "seam up".
Learning this basic grip will get your wrist behind the ball, an essential starting point for any bowler.
With the seam vertical, the ball is held in the fingers, resting on the third finger and thumb, with the middle and index fingers either side of the seam.
Try to land the seam as straight as possible on the pitch.
This will give you a much greater chance of any sort of movement, especially with a brand new cherry in your hand.
You'll find some days the ball will swing and seam almost every delivery, while on others it will do almost nothing.
This is because movement relies on four key factors:
A good side-on action will help a bowler to swing the ball away from the bat.
Bowlers can get movement off the wicket if the pitch is cracked. You may have seen cricket commentators showing cracks on Test pitches on TV.
Aiming for the cracks can help the ball move quite considerably.
As the ball gets older, it gets softer and loses its shine.
But polishing one side of the ball will help keep the ball moving in the air.