Almost everyone assumes Shane Warne's "ball of the century" to Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in 1993 was a googly. It was not. It was a leg break, the leg spinner's ordinary delivery, and it still spun so far that Gatting never got near it. If a leg spinner's stock ball can do that, it is worth asking what the googly, the ball built purely to deceive, actually does differently.
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By the end of this piece you will know what a googly is, how a bowler hides it inside an identical action, where the delivery came from, and how to spot the tiny clue that gives it away on a replay.
What a googly actually is
A googly is bowled by a right-arm leg spinner and looks, for the first half of its flight, exactly like that bowler's normal leg break. Then it pitches and turns the other way. Instead of spinning away from a right-handed batter, it spins back in towards him, behaving like an off break bowled by a completely different type of bowler. English players in the early 1900s called it the wrong'un for exactly that reason. In Australia it became the Bosie, a nickname that has stuck for over a century.
The trick only works because the batter cannot tell which ball is coming. A bowler who relies on spin rather than pace has to manufacture doubt some other way, and disguising one delivery inside another is the oldest method in the book.
A leg break and a googly leave the hand the same way. Only the wrist decides which way the ball turns after it pitches.
How the wrist does the trick
Same action, different release
Watch a leg spinner's run-up and arm and you will see nothing change between a leg break and a googly. The difference sits entirely in the wrist and fingers at the exact moment the ball leaves the hand. For a normal leg break, the palm faces the batter and the ball rolls off the fingers with backspin that carries it away to the off side after it pitches. For a googly, the bowler rotates the wrist so far over that the back of the hand faces the batter instead, releasing the ball from underneath rather than the front of the hand. That single adjustment reverses the spin axis and sends the ball the opposite way once it lands.
Why it still surprises Test batters
Batters who face leg spin for a living know the googly exists and still get beaten by it, because the visual cue is so small. A bowler has perhaps a tenth of a second to disguise the wrist change, and the best ones barely alter their run-up speed or arm height to compensate. A batter who reads the wrong ball late usually ends up either playing down the wrong line or getting hit on the pads, which is exactly how many googly wickets fall leg before wicket rather than bowled or caught.
| Leg break | Googly | |
|---|---|---|
| Wrist at release | Palm faces the batter | Back of the hand faces the batter |
| Spin direction (right-arm to a right-hander) | Turns away from the bat | Turns back in towards the bat |
| Run-up and arm action | Same as every other ball | Same as every other ball |
| What gives it away | Almost nothing, by design | Almost nothing, by design |
Where the googly came from
The delivery was invented by Bernard Bosanquet, an English amateur who first experimented with the spin reversal in the 1890s while playing a table game with a tennis ball, trying to make it bounce in a direction his opponent could not predict. He first used it in first-class cricket against Leicestershire in 1900, but it took until his successful 1903 season for opponents to take the delivery seriously. By the time England toured Australia in 1903 and 1904, Bosanquet's wrong'un had won matches and given the sport a new weapon that spinners are still using more than a century later.
Who has bowled it best
Pakistan's Abdul Qadir kept the googly alive through the 1970s and 1980s when pace bowling dominated Test cricket, taking 236 wickets in 67 Tests and once claiming five wickets against Australia in the 1983 Boxing Day Test at the MCG. Anil Kumble, India's leading Test wicket taker with 619 dismissals, mixed the googly in among a fuller repertoire built more on accuracy and bounce than sharp turn, and used it to help take all ten Pakistan wickets in an innings at Delhi in 1999, only the second bowler in Test history after Jim Laker to do so. Both bowlers proved that the googly does not need huge spin to work. It needs the batter to guess wrong once.
Read next
- Off spin vs leg spin: detailed comparison, useful if you want to see how the off-spinner's equivalent trick, the doosra, compares to the googly.
- What does LBW mean in cricket?, because a mistimed googly is one of the most common ways batters end up given out leg before.
- Why do bowlers shine the ball?, the fast bowler's version of hiding a delivery inside an identical action.
Frequently asked questions
Is a googly the same as a wrong'un?
Yes. Wrong'un is the older English name for the same delivery, and Bosie is the Australian nickname taken from Bernard Bosanquet's surname.
Can off-spin bowlers bowl a googly?
No. The googly is specifically a leg spinner's variation. An off-spin bowler's equivalent delivery, one that turns the opposite way to their stock ball, is called a doosra, not a googly.
How do you spot a googly as a viewer?
Slow-motion replays usually show the giveaway before the ball pitches. Watch the back of the bowling hand at release. If it is turned to face the batter rather than the umpire, a googly is coming.
Do umpires or the review system get involved more often with googly dismissals?
Not by rule, but in practice a googly that beats the bat often produces a marginal leg before decision, and marginal decisions are exactly what get reviewed. The technology does not treat a googly wicket any differently, it just gets called on more often because the delivery creates more close calls.
Next time a leg spinner is bowling, keep your eyes on the hand rather than the ball. The wrist gives up the secret a fraction of a second before the batter has to react to it, and once you know where to look, you will start seeing the googly coming before the commentator does.
1 comment:
Good one
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