leg cutter

A leg cutter is a type of delivery in the

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cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

. It is bowled by fast bowlers. A bowler releases a normal spin delivery with the wrist locked in position and the first two fingers positioned on top of the cricket ball, giving it spin about a horizontal axis perpendicular to the length of the pitch. For a leg cutter, a right-handed bowler pulls his fingers down the left side of the ball (from his viewpoint), rolling the ball out of his hand over the little finger, in an action similar to bowling a leg break, only at higher speed. This changes the axis of spin to make it more like a leg break, which makes the ball deviate to the left when it bounces on the pitch. From a right-handed

batsman In cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the ball with a bat to score runs and prevent the loss of one's wicket. Any player who is currently batting is, since September 2021, officially referred to as a batter (historically, th ...

's point of view, this deviation is to the right, or from the leg side towards the off side. This deviation is known as ''cut'', and the delivery is called a ''leg cutter'' because it moves ''away'' from the leg side. What differentiates a genuine leg cutter from a seam-up delivery that simply moves away off the seam is that it is deliberately bowled. Leg cutters do not turn as sharply as leg breaks bowled by a

leg spin Leg spin is a type of spin bowling in cricket. A leg spinner bowls right-arm with a wrist spin action. The leg spinner's normal delivery causes the ball to spin from right to left (from the bowler's perspective) when the ball bounces on the ...

bowler, but at the speed of a fast bowler even a tiny deviation can cause difficulties for the batsman. If he is not quick enough to react to the movement, the batsman can edge the ball off the outside edge of his bat, offering a catch to the

wicket-keeper The wicket-keeper in the sport of cricket is the player on the fielding side who stands behind the wicket or stumps being watchful of the batsman and ready to take a catch, stump the batsman out and run out a batsman when occasion arises. T ...

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fielders. A fast bowler will typically use the leg cutter as a variation ball as it is most effective when it surprises the batsman. The leg cutter action can also produce a significantly slower ball with little obvious change in the bowler's arm speed, making the delivery doubly deceptive. On the other hand, the lack of pace of the delivery may be disadvantageous. Former Australian captain Ian Chappell described Jeff Thomson's leg cutter thus: "He had this leg cutter, and you were usually pretty happy to see it, because it meant that the ball wasn't coming at your head at 95 miles an hour." The most prominent users of leg cutter include

Alec Bedser Sir Alec Victor Bedser (4 July 1918 – 4 April 2010) was a professional English cricketer, primarily a medium-fast bowler. He is widely regarded as one of the best English cricketers of the 20th century. Bedser played first-class cricket fo ...

, Fazal Mahmood and of late Terry Alderman, Carl Rackemann and Venkatesh Prasad. Leg cutters are much more frequently seen in

indoor cricket Indoor cricket is a variant of and shares many basic concepts with cricket. The game is most often played between two teams each consisting of six or eight players.