Gibbs for spin clinic

Former Guyana and West Indies spin bowling legend Lance Gibbs has been contracted by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to be the technical advisor at a five-day camp for orthodox spin bowlers (sometimes called finger spinners) in Antigua, starting next Monday.

Gibbs once held the world record for most Test wickets (309) and was the first spinner to pass 300 wickets in Tests.

"The aim of the camp is to provide some of the region's most promising orthodox bowlers with the fundamentals of a good bowling action and to examine and analyse techniques of effective spin bowling," said Dr Michael Seepersaud, the WICB's chief cricket development officer.

"It also continues our programme of involving outstanding former players more and more in the development of our cricket.

"We believe that greats like Lance and Andy Roberts, who recently conducted a training camp for our fast bowlers, has much to offer and you will see more of this."

Another former West Indies off-spinner, Clyde Butts, who holds the record for the most wickets in the regional first-class championship, will be the coach at the camp.

Critical areas

The young spinners will cover a number of critical areas identified by Gibbs, including: the grip, run-up and delivery, effective use of height and body, detecting and exploiting errors of batsmen, field-setting strategies, flight, loop and spin, and improving the spinner's armoury.

"We have targeted a number of promising spin bowlers but a few had prior territorial commitments and could not make the camp," Dr Seepersaud said.

"The camp has been timed to coincide with the beginning of the West Indies first-class championship and it is hoped that a number of these bowlers will be given an opportunity during the championship to expose their talent.

"Even if this opportunity is not available now, they would have learnt from the best and would have acquired skills that will serve them well in the future."

Seepersaud noted there was another strategic reason for the camp. He said the idea for the camp came out of a casual analysis of the weaknesses of the Australian team.

Australia are due to arrive in the Caribbean in April for a series of four Tests and seven limited-overs internationals.

"We noticed that as far back as the 1950s, the former great England off-spinner Jim Laker was effective against the Aussies and then the wiles of Lance troubled them in the 1960s and Harbhajan Singh destroyed them recently in India," Seepersaud said.

"We thought, therefore, that this was a good opportunity to provide our promising finger spinners with the skills and techniques that would improve their efficiency and effectiveness and, hopefully, enhance their chances for selection."

Ryan Austin, Anderson Sealy, Jason Smith (Barbados); Kevin Bazil, Zaheer Mohammed (Guyana); Chaka Hodge, Orson Nurse, Larry Joseph (Leeward Islands); Lorenzo Ingram, Philip Keating, Wayne Simpson (Jamaica); Amit Jaggernauth, Rodney Sooklal (Trinidad and Tobago); Dwayne Leverock (Bermuda); Shane Shillingford (Windward Islands)