The weekend ahead #2

Looks like rain this weekend is going to scupper any plans for cricket, although looking at the surf maps on http://www.magicseaweed.com/ it looks as though there'll be a lot of rain Saturday, but then it clears through Saturday night leaving a lull throughout the day on Sunday to return again over Sunday night. I'll keep an eye on the situation and see if it improves.

I've been trying to get Richard Sainsbury to get involved along with Thomas and me, but he keeps coming up with excuses - current one is he's got to rub down his bannister. He's got a nice Centurion bat that's only ever made contact with a ball thrown in anger about 3 times and each time it ended up in someones mits and I think last year he went for 3 ducks! This is a bloke who in the nets looks quite handy and played cricket quite a lot as a youth, so if he doesn't get out and practice surely he runs the risk of the bat never ever being used again? I keep asking him if he wants to sell it, but he insists that he'll play again at some point.

This Friday I go and meet the Council bloke who looks after all the fields in our area including Great Berry Open Space and The Rec. I'm expecting we'll have a chat about what options are open to us this summer. As I said in an earlier entry I'm speculating as to whether any cricket teams are using the Rec on a weekly basis, which is a real shame if they're not, but I think he may offer it to us at discounted prices? The only thing is "Us" at the moment is at best 5 blokes until I can get the Gloucester Park blokes on board and that may not be possible because of the cultural and language barriers and the fact that I've got to get their trust in order that the idea of a team can be come something more tangible. I'm not that optimistic - I reckon I can forge friendships and make something happen at the 5 tree field, but to get them to move out of their comfort zone and over to either Great Berry or The Rec would be more problematic.

On a slightly different front I had a look at the cost of hiring plant - specifically sit-on compactors. I was quite surprised at how cheap they are to hire. A week would cost you £180 for a compactor with 2 massive rollers over 3' wide. That's well within the realms of any cricket club to hire one for a week and flatten/compact their wicket. Imagine if you had one for that amount of time, you could guarantee your wicket to be rock hard and solid! I would assume that they're delivered on some kind of low loader trailer. Whether that'd be possible to get a trailer of that description and it's lorry onto somewhere like Great Berry is another matter, but if the council was involved I'm sure it'd be possible?