Reflections of a fast bowler turned leggie

This is the end and the beginning, a farewell to a faithful companion and a warm welcome to a new comrade at the wicket.

I spent last season doggedly seeing out my 30-year marriage to outswing, a skill I first honed in the school nets with a Reader ball waxed with furniture polish. In three decades of wearing whites and charging in, if the wind blew in the right direction, and the ball shone with the kind of reflection my mother would buff into the dining table, and my usually distracted slip fielders snaffled those flying edges, teams crumpled before my curving deliveries.

And so has my body. In 2015 I wrote a piece about experimenting with legspin in the winter nets, in an effort to gain a new, more subtle ability that would take me gently into cricketing dotage - rather than into surgery for a new pair of knees. By May last season I was tossing up leggies, much to the chagrin of my captain, who was used to setting the field for metronomic outswing rather than for erratic hand grenades.

I made my spin debut on a blustery and incongruous ground in west London, without a sole spectator, but I was surprisingly anxious, stepping rather than running in to bowl that first legbreak. Gait and action stiff with nerves, as well as icy hands cooled by a sharp breeze cutting across the Thames, a waist-high full bunger announced my entry into the world of wristspin. It was biffed into a stiff breeze towards a huge boundary, over a wet outfield mined with goose droppings. The batsman only ran a couple from what was essentially a six ball.

So I tried again. This time it was short, but the drag down put revs on the delivery and it turned, ripping - okay, I might be employing poetic licence by describing it as "ripping", but I need the encouragement - past the outside edge. It was my first pitching legbreak. And it beat the bat.

Encouraged, I tried again. Although the length was good, it went down leg, sticking in the wet pitch and sitting up to be slapped down to the vacant fine-leg rope.

During my previous life as a man trying to bowl quick, after being hit for four, my temper, often spiked by a Tourette's-style muttering of swear words - aimed at myself rather than the batsman - would steel my focus for the next ball and I'd bowl faster, and on a good day, better.

But that doesn't work for spin. A shot of adrenaline disrupts the fine motor skills needed to grip and twirl. My next angry legspinner came out like a headhunting UFO, and would have been a no-ball in most games. Still, it was somehow a dot. Rather than try and relax and ease back into that drifting leggie I had bowled in the nets for most of the winter, I signalled the quicker ball to the keeper. I won't reveal the ridiculous gesture we've decided upon, as that would be sharing intel with the many enemy teams who probably spy on my articles, but I will let you know that it once formed part of a Michael Jackson dance routine. I whanged down an old-fashioned outswinger. The batsman barely got his blade in line, and only enough to snick that red blur to first slip.

A wicket. A few high fives, mostly for the fielder who had taken a sharp catch, and then the feeling that I had bottled it: after a few bad balls of spin, I'd reverted to pace.

I finished the game with a couple of scalps, but I knew I had many more half-trackers and full tosses to bowl before I could really bowl legspin when it mattered. For the rest of 2015 I alternated between bowling quick and bowling spin. When the game was tight I came off the full run, confident I could put an over in the blockhole. Then came midsummer, when my body refused to bowl pace more than once a week, and whether I, or my captain, liked it or not, I was tossing them up to proper batsmen on proper wickets.

And what a new delight. Due to sheer toil and repetition - and in no small part a sympathetic captain - a rhythm developed. The satisfaction of bowling those key middle overs in a tight run chase, and then picking up two or three wickets from pressure alone.

Finally, and importantly, I began to relax into the spinner's mindset. Rather than fling down a quicker ball after being hit - always four byes waiting to happen if slung down leg side past a flailing and cursing keeper - I started floating up an offspinner, a ball I can put on the spot five out of six deliveries an over. I should nod to Adil Rashid here, as it was watching him drop in the occasional offie that inspired me to experiment. It may not be as well disguised as a googly, but if it's line and length then good luck to the batsman who takes it on.

This season I plan to keep my run-up short and my bowling slow. Spin is mental agility, not brute force and anger. I know I'm a naïve twirlyman in comparison to the bowlers who have dedicated a cricketing career to spinning a cricket ball, but I promise to be a hard-working student.