Really lovely day today with cricket going down all over the shop! (Mostly with my kids). At some point during the day around 5pm the temperature was 19.5 degrees centigrade and sunny and it had been sunny most of the day. Even this evening driving home at 8pm in almost darkness the temperature was 16c! It seems that by this time tomorrow a cold front is going to move down from the North and it'll be 0 degrees c or colder! Then on Sunday there maybe snow showers!
The exercise seems to have caught up with me at last as I'm exhausted today and I'll probably end up going to bed tonight at 10pm as opposed to my normal 1am. I've managed to do 30 rotational press ups today and pulling the elastic bands behind the head as well as loads of running around after balls this evening.
What with it being really sunny we went over to Gloucester Park this evening and I took the mower as Gloucester Park is probably the driest of all the 2 fields and the one that is most likely to have other people wanting to join in. I sent Suhail a text to let him know we were going over there, but he must have been at work. Thomas managed to join us 7pm or just after and then around about 7.30 a group of 3 blokes came over headed by a bloke called Ali from Pakistan and he offered to field. Again modestly claiming to not have played for 8 years and not being that good. He had a spell of wicket keeping, batting and bowling and did rather well especially his bowling - very accurate and fast. He too said that last year he'd seen all the other blokes playing cricket on the same field and said that we should all try and get together and have a game - so my master plan is coming together.
It also took a step forward in that we had the mower and as dusk fell and cricket was no longer an option we mowed the wicket. The only thing was the blades were not set correctly and the cut was too high and it didn't make that much of a difference. Having said that though you can see that it has been cut so hopefully it might get peoples attention? One down side was that in mowing it and rolling across the grass it became apparent how uneven the surface is. So we need to get the roller over there if this is to be our designated pitch? If Suhail is going to be involved we need him on board as soon as possible with blokes in tow who are willing to turn up at GBOS. But in the short term because GBOS is really wet still Gloucester Park looks like the short term option.
Ali was well up for more cricket and I've made arrangements to be over the field at 4pm on Sunday with him, so hopefully he'll come along with his two mates again hopefully more? I bowled against him and did quite well - would have forced a few catches off of about 10 balls, so that was pleasing. Thomas looked pretty good with his bowling and he took me a few times as did Ali. Thomas also bowled Ali twice, but it was dark. But Thomas's bowling looked a lot better than last year.
My two sons had a good day today, several of their mates were around in the afternoon one of whom had been bought a bat at Christmas and had been asking his Mum all winter "Can we go and play cricket"? So this afternoon we all went over the field and had a game. My youngest Joe who has picked up playing Front foot drives pretty well scored the most runs 16 and Ben the older one took a few wickets with his "Fast Bowling" and caught someone, so they were both enthused. But it got better later on when they came over to Gloucester Park. Prior to Thomas turning up they both had a go at batting with all their pads on against full size balls on the full size wicket against me bowling slow straight ones. They loved it especially Ben the older boy, he did really well again using his newly acquired skills with his front foot drives, he seemed really pleased with himself having faced real balls and hitting most of them - he said that hitting a real ball felt good. So that's promising.
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