25th April

No bowling practice today but I have been active and did practice another aspect to the game. Today I played 5 aside football with a team comprising mostly of MPA 1st XI players - Simon, Nick, Alex and myself plus one other bloke who's also oldish. So there we were 5 old blokes (lecturers) v a bunch of 17-18 year old youths, it was a foregone conclusion as to who was going to win, but then when we got there we found the odds stacked against us even more. First the ages - I'm 47 almost. Mark (The other bloke must be in his late 30's) Alex is in his early 30's and smokes. Simon is in his mid 30's and smokes and Nick eats pies and is about 25? They all drink as far as I'm aware so we didn't have a good start. Then when we get there we find that they've got reserves and that they're going to be using them. So - a 5 aside team - how many reserves do you reckon 1? 2 at a push? Nope.... 5 or 6 and they were being swapped about once every 2 minutes. So in affect they fielded 2 teams against us - a bunch of old blokes. Of the 3 matches we won 1 and were beat twice. But despite all the odds being against us we did okay. I'd go so far as to say that if they didn't have 10 players per team and played with 5 it would have been a much closer match and we may have come out of it having won at least 2 of the 3 maybe more!

So having done that this evening I was a bit knackered. I was tempted to go for a bowl but didn't have the car so couldn't. So my younger son and I (Joe - he's 5) set up some targets against a wall in a tarmac play area and practiced picking up moving balls bounced off of the wall and throwing at the target/stumps. I've noticed watching the world cup that when the pro's do this they tend to aim the ball short of the stumps so that it bounces first - is there a reason for this? I tried both direct throwing and this bounce technique and the bounce technique certainly seems to work better when throwing the ball from longer distances? I would also recommend the other team members if they're wasting their evenings watching East Enders to get some practice in doing these kind of drills, you might be surprised at how crap you are at it?

One of the good things that came of the football tournament was that the students that were playing were all from the same subject group (Actors). At one point one of us asked if they played cricket and one of them said yes and then another and another and it looks like they may have at the very least 11 blokes up for a game and already they're convinced that they'll be the winners if we play. Some of them already play it seems and it's looking promising, so I'll be following that up as well and trying to get a game with them.

I'm off for a bath and the world cup on the tele.