Gipper update

I'd noticed the last couple of days that my practice wicket was growing to the point that it needed to be cut. So just after sundown I went over there with the mower and gave it a trim. I also cut the long grass another foot towards the uncut end.

Having cut it, it was still fairly light and I was tempted to throw a few balls, so I took the mower home and collected some balls and a set of stumps. You can see how close the field is to my house in this ariel image below.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=51.565777,0.426144&spn=0.001421,0.005386&t=k&z=18



The practice wicket is on the football pitch that you can see here in the botton right hand corner where the trees are casting a shadow. My garage is at the bottom of the image right next to the cluster of houses in the bottom centre here. See the red cars just to the left of these and slightly lower beneath the text that says "Images". This is the very same garage that was home to the only ever case of a Steatoda Grossa in Essex http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=steatoda+grossa&btnG=Google+Search&meta= It was a biggun!



So anyway being wary that there might be more of them around I got the stumps and went and threw a few balls as dusk fell. Initially I just threw a few top spinner, these went okay but I'm looking to bowl Leg breaks so gave those a go and nothing. With my thumb getting progressively better and being able once more to click the ball out of my fingers flipper style I thought I'd give the Gipper a go.



I threw 16 up there and 12 of them went okay turning acutely, so I might start looking at it again now with a view to getting it moew under control. If I could repeat what I did tonight on a regular basis I'd say that I might be ready to unveil it to the public in a match situation where we'd already batted and established an unasailable lead and were clearing out the last 2 bunnies with overs in hand and no chance of them catching up. It was going so well I'm hoping that Friday will bring fine weather in the morning and I might get an hour or so on the field before work?



The balls that I was pitching very wide down the legside were hitting the off stump just about or going wide as in the diagram here.












Admittedly it's still ridiculously slow and sometimes it bounces 3 times to a roll and would go for a no-ball, but when I do get it right it looks like a wide which then turns viciously. I desperately need to bowl it on a wicket and see what happens.