It's still summer!

19 degrees centigrade on Oct 13th! I almost had my shirt off it was that warm! So it was hazy sunshine and dry so that means bowling practice. Venue - just across the road to where I live and a football pitch. My youngest son Joe came with me and he set up a wicket as well and he bowled at his stumps and I bowled at mine.

Today I'd practiced outside my house beforehand for a few overs and then left some time in between the warm up and the actual practice on the field in order to replicate cricket game conditions where you get the chance to warm up before the game and then don't actually bowl for some time.

It seems to have worked. In the first over I hit the stumps twice and one of the balls went over the top of the stumps only just. The other balls included two possible wides.

I bowled 17 overs (102 balls) with 50% good balls e.g. perfect line and length of which 17 balls hit the stumps. There were 21% wides and 29% balls that were indifferent e.g. just wide of the stumps. It's the wides and the indifferent balls I'm working on reducing the number of. I wont really know how the indifferent balls get played till next spring when we play again or before that if the club gets in the nets leading up to the new season. I'm thinking if I can increase the number of good balls - those that pitch right in front of the stumps at an awkward length and then sometimes turn, it may work out that those that are only just slightly wide may still cause problems because the batsman will not know whether they are going to turn or not?

Overall looking back at the previous blog today was a result as it marks another slight improvement. I thought that it may have been an indifferent session or one that took as step backwards but....

Last week - 47% good balls. Today 50%
Last week - 14 Wickets Today 17
Last week - 25% Wides Today 21%

So I'm quite pleased with that. I'll probably practice again tomorrow and see what the results are then? General observations were that when I try and bowl e.g. put some kind of extra effort into it e.g. faster or determination to hit the stumps it seems to go wrong. The more relaxed I am about it the greater the chance of it coming together and being the correct line and length. Today I was talking to a bloke that used to play cricket and he was saying the same thing - the harder you try and do it right the more inclined you are to do something wrong, then once it does start to go wrong the more tense you become and a spiral into disaster becomes unavoidable it seems?

All the data for today was for Top spinners. My top spinners have a tendency or are easily turned into Wrong Uns.