I've had an almost cricket free 48 hours and I'm beginning to suffer psychologically! It got so desperate today along with the knowledge that over the coming week it is likely to pour with rain that I ventured out onto 'My wicket' just across the road from my house. Last night I was at a party and didn't get in till late so I'm going to be blaming the increase in wides on that.
Anyway - managed to throw 138 balls with a result of ........
22% wides
11.5% Strikes
34% Good balls
Despite the wides I think I was bowling quite well. I was aiming to bowl really short to leg 5-6 yards in front of stumps and 2'-3' wide of the leg stump and generally was getting the ball to turn, sometime so much so that it was going wide of off but most of the time it was very threatening both sides of the stumps hence the 34% good balls tally. See this Warne Video - this is what I manage to do on concrete and on my wicket - (See the example 6 minutes 19 secs into the clip) on a consistent basis http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8735581696703543175&q=cricket+shane+warne But for the life of me I can't seem to do over at Great Berry Open Space.
For some reason it just seemed that I was able to get a lot more turn off the ball on this wicket 'My Wicket'. Looking at the surface (This is the field I rolled over the winter) it did appear to be much harder (Clay) than the surface at Great Berry which appears to be more loamy and that may have helped? The surface of the football pitch is criss-crossed with enormous cracks where the field has dried up and it just appears to be much harder. So maybe this is what's helping me to get the ball to turn. A lot of the strikes came off the much faster straight balls, which are pitched full toss or much fuller length - yorkers. This seems to be a good tactic and very accurate, so they're something I'll be trying on Nakul or anyone else that gets over there when we practice next.
What I might try and do is get Badger to video me doing the equivalent of Warne Bowling around the back of the batsmans legs and see if there's some way I can get it on Utube or the google video website so that you can link to it as proof. In the meantime if this expected rain happens and the ground softens up at Great Berry I'm probably going to roll the wicket and see if I can compact the ground more and get some spin off it like the other places. If I can - it will seem to be that it's the hardness of the surface that helps to enable the spin, if this is the case you are all going to be stuffed because man can I make my flippers turn! Lets hope the wicket at Welstead is rock hard!
Lasith Malinga - World Cup Classic
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1779541781890831292&q=cricket
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