Can Off Spinner Bowl Googly? (Full Explanation)

The thing about cricket is that there are plenty of different deliveries that a bowler can use to the point that bowlers are often defined by the type of deliveries that they favor the most. In that sense, there are different types of bowlers such as off spinners and different types of deliveries such as googly. So, can an off-spinner bowl googly?

An off spinner cannot bowl googly. The reason for this is that it is only a leg spinner that can bowl googly. If an off spinner were to deliver the ball in such a way that’s similar to a googly, this would now be a doosra, which has similar mechanics to a googly but is totally different.

The game of cricket can be a bit complicated in relation to the type of deliveries that certain types of bowlers can make. Nonetheless, understanding the different types of bowlers and certain delivery techniques is the best way for you to learn more about how to become a better bowler and ultimately understand the game more.

What is an off spinner?

In cricket, there are plenty of different styles of bowling that certain bowlers tend to favor. One such technique is the off spin, which is a type of finger spin that bowlers use. The bowlers who favor this technique are often called off spinners.

Off spinners are right-handed spin bowlers. They prefer to use their fingers to spin the ball and then use normal deliveries such as an off break, which allows the ball to spin from left to right as soon as the ball bounces on the ground.

The advantage of this bowling technique is that, from the perspective of a right-handed batsman, what happens is that this will spin towards the batsman and making it difficult for him to hit it consistently.

In most cases, off spinners usually bowl off breaks but they do adjust their deliveries from time to time depending on the situation. There are some off spinners that do certain types of deliveries as well by varying their delivery techniques in terms of the ball’s spin, speed, and length of the flight. All variations are meant to throw the batsman off.

To do an off spin or an off break, what the off spinner does is that he holds the cricket ball in the palm of his hand with the seam of the ball running across all of his fingers. From there, the fingers roll down towards the side of the ball as the off spinner releases it to give it a clockwise spin.

What is a googly?

While we were talking about what an off spinner is, which is a type of bowler who favors a certain delivery technique called an off spin, let’s now look at a type of delivery that is actually a variation of a bowling technique.

The googly is a type of delivery that a bowler delivers from a right-arm leg spin. Essentially, the googly is simply a variation of the usual leg spin delivery that leg spinners often favor. And when you talk about leg spinners who use the googly, these are the bowlers who prefer to present the ball from the bowler’s hand that, when it touches the pitch, it changes to the opposite direction of a leg spin delivery.

To put it in a way that is best understood, a googly spins the other side from off to leg and towards a right-handed batsman. This is different from the normal leg break that leg spinners do as the leg break often spins from the leg to the off side and away from the right-handed batsman.

The bowler is able to achieve this kind of a change in direction as he bends his wrist sharply from the normal leg break delivery position. So, when the ball is released from the bowler’s hand, what happens is that it gets a clockwise spin. A googly is achieved as the bowler bowls the ball as a usual leg break but makes the ball spin a bit further in his fingers just before the timing of the release.

Can off spinner bowl googly?

Now that you know what an off spinner is and what a googly is, is it possible for an off spinner to actually bowl googly? To understand this, you need to know what a leg spin is in a brief explanation. 

The leg spin is another bowling technique that is similar to the off spin. It is the original and conventional leg break where the googly comes from, and that is why you need to understand what a leg spinner is.

Generally, what a leg spinner does is that he bowls right-arm with a wrist spin action such that the delivery will cause the ball to spin from left to right when the ball bounces on the ground. The reason why it is called a leg spin is due to how, from the batsman’s point of view, the ball bounces and spins away from the leg side. This is in stark contrast to the off break that off spinners use as the ball spins towards the batsman.

So, what happens if an off spinner uses the same googly technique that is known among leg spinners? Well, that is no longer a googly but is now what we call a doosra.

A doosra is a type of delivery used by an off spinner as the bowler now allows the ball to spin in the opposite direction during an off break delivery so that he would confuse the batsman, who thinks that the off spinner is now throwing an off break but is actually throwing a doosra.

So, what a bowler does during a doosra is that he delivers the ball using the same wrist action that he does with an off break but is now locking the wrist and is using the index and ring fingers instead of the index and middle fingers. As such, the ball gets a spin that allows it to go in the opposite direction from that of the usual off break. This will make the ball spin from the leg side to the off side of a right-handed batsman instead.

The way that many people see it, the way that that doosra is performed is similar to the way that a leg spinner performs the googly. So, in a way, an off-spinner can bowl googly but it is no longer called googly but is now called doosra, which is an entirely different bowling technique that has similarities to that of the googly.

• Read also: How to Bowl Leg-Spin Googly?
• Read also: How Do You Play T20 Cricket?
• Read also: How Do You Play a Top Spinner in Cricket?
• Read also: Can a Spinner Bowl a Bouncer?
• Read also: Can A Spinner Bowl Yorker? (And How To Do It)
• Read also: Are Yorkers Hard To Bowl?
• Read also: Can an Off Spinner Bowl Leg-Spin?
• Read also: Can A Bowler Bowl With Both Hands?
• Read also: Can a Bowler Bowl Two Consecutive Overs?