7 Days to go..............

Good day in the field for all

The weather looked ropey, I screwed up the net practice and there wasn't a lot of communication prior to everyone turning up - but it all came together brilliantly. We had 2.5 hrs out on Great Berry with no rain, wet under-foot and spongey but we got the practice in. We had four sets of stumps lined up with with everyone taking turns to face the bowlers for 15 minutes or so. We even did the thing were we set scenario's such as - You've got 6 balls left and you've got to score 10 runs in six balls to win the match In order to bowl and bat under pressure. That was good fun and got people going and a few people managed it which was good.

Alex (The Captain) said that my batting had developed and was showing such an improvement that I'd be further up the batting order, so I'm looking forward to the email to say where I'm going to be - I'm hoping 6 or 7?

Richard Bottles it

For some reason Richard's bottled it with regards to being the wicket keeper - I didn't catch why and this now leaves us with a big problem as there's no-one else to replace him. The only other people that have kept wicket with varying degrees of success have been Alex, Me and Simon and none of us were that good as we didn't expect to be dropped in this situation at the 11th hour otherwise we'd have done more of it and put the hours in to practice and besides we're all bowlers.


Long Range Weather forecast



It's still some way before next Sunday and you can check it out as the week progresses at http://magicseaweed.com/UK-Ireland-Surf-Tools/1/ use the synoptic charts as they're the most useful. As it stands tonight the chart for Sunday looks like this.... http://85.214.49.20/wz/pics/Recm1681.gif
If you look closely the southern half of the UK is in the Yellow zone (warmer weather) in a high pressure anti-cyclonic system so that's good. The colder blue green cyclonic weather systems on this chart are moving north so by Sunday the warmer weather will be pushing in from the Atlantic probably dragging warm air from central Europe via the Balkans.

Next weeks nets

Next weeks on Saturday we'll have a formal practice in the nets. After a discussion today we'll be trying to get the nets for a 11.00hrs start and we'll only do an hour so as not to be knackered for the match the next day. We'll have 2 nets up with with each person having 15 minutes facing everyone else as bowlers - much the same as we did today. As it's the day before the match we'll waive the £5.00 charge and all pay £10 for the match fee the next day.

The Food situation

Consensus seems to be that we're happy to pay a caterer to do the food and this is going to cost us about £60 but it may be well over the top - but we'll see? We're going to have to pay Welstead £22 for tea - but it'll be unlimited it's the only way they're able to make money out of us.

The Bar shuts at 8.30 pm

I've got to check this as it might be that they want us off the premises by 8.30 pm.

Wanted - 2 Cricket Players (preferably ones that resemble Adam Gilchrists skills)

Gutted - one of our better players - Rod Jeanes 'The Aussie' isn't going to be able to make it to the first or 2nd match as he's on holiday so we need an 11th man and a 12th man still. What with Richard dropping his wicket keeping bombshell on us the 11th man would be good if he fanices or has experience at wicket keeping. (See next item).

New Kids on the Block

This evening Nakul and I had an hour and half of practice - batting and bowling and we were joined by a couple of youths (16 year olds) who fielded and kept wicket. Talking to them they said that they'd played on Great Berry last summer and that locally there was 4 of them that played cricket relatively seriously (School teams) and that they'd be up for joining us for our practices and I got the sense they'd be interested in joining the team. So if the weather holds off over the coming week they'll be joining Nakul and me and getting involved with our evening practice sessions. I'm thinking that if one of them is a wicket keeper and he also says he's handy with the bat - could he be our eleventh man? He'd have to get a helmet (ECB rules) but he might be who we're looking for?

Other than that - could this be the start of the MPA2ndXI ? Or the Great Berry First XI? They're definitely the real article as they have their own pads and bats so who knows?