Last game of the season

Couple of things today.


1. Swollen thumb; does anyone out there also bowl flippers? If so have you ever suffered from a swollen thumb? My thumb seems to have swollen up and seems to be really tender and has been for over a week now. I'm not sure whether it's suffering because of over-use with the flippers or something else. I can't think of any other reason it should be sore and swollen. Has anyone else had this happen?

2. Learning curves. W'hey I took a wicket today, but at the same time went for 52 off of 2 overs and my Captain understandably withdrew me. Basically at the end of the match I reckon I must have cost us the match as the opposition scored 242 and in return we managed 210. Anyway talking to the other blokes and watching one of their spin bowlers who I think bowled 5 or 6 maiden overs out of about 10 I asked what was it he was doing that made him so difficult to bat against? Our batsmen said that he was bowling a consistent line at off stump and at a length that was just out of reach whereby they'd have to come forward and out of the crease. So I can only assume that he was flighting the ball so that it was high enough to make it impossible to judge where it was going to land and possibly varying the length from time to time? Otherwise why couldn't our batsmen just step back and hit it?

After my performance today it looks like I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board and practice landing the ball consistently a just short of a good length, but obviously on target with the stumps rather than varying it. Although saying that I heard their best batsman commenting to one of their players that my bowling was confusing him because I was bowling both Leg breaks (My flippers) and Wrong Uns. The ball that got the wicket was a straight one that bounced up that was wide of off stump and a sitter, the bloke went after it and got caught at cover.

But it does look like at the level that I'm playing my main objective needs to be just to thwart the runs primarily?

So what now? G&CCC more or less shut down after the last game next Sunday and there seems to be no practice of any sort until February. There's an AGM on Oct 16th which'll be interesting as there's loads of new proposals being put regarding the fees we all pay. It seems that most people don't every pay thier subs and try and avoid paying the game fees, yet they all work! It seems they're aware of the fact that the club wants to play as many games as possible and to do so they have to pick blokes that haven't paid their subs.

I reckon I'll do as I did last year I'll bowl right through the winter if the weather allows. But I'm kind of looking forward to some bad weather that'll stop me for a while and maybe my sore shoulder and thumb will get better?