Pile of crap

Man has it rained! Going in to work this morning all of the fields have loads of standing water and we're due more in the next couple of days too leading up to and into the weekend. So it does look at though the weekend could be rained off and I wont get to play. Still, possibly more time to work on the Gipper? Last night on the internet forums I came across a bloke that bowls 3 different variations of the flipper and he was saying that he's got all three working - The straight back spinner the one that turns into off from Leg (The gipper) and the opposite version which is a really difficult one to bowl I found so far. But he was also saying that he bowls the slider and described it in a way that I'd not heard before - like a wrong un but with the hand back to front. It makes sense but I can't imagine it's at all easy, just imagining that strains my brain!

Jump to Friday 30th....

After nearly a week of rain it looks like we may be in for a dryish weekend and some cricket. Looking on our clubs website last night though there was no mention of a game being organised just a note saying TBA. I've also emailed Neil the captain a couple of times now and as yet he's not got back to me so perhaps there's no game? This morning it was wet everywhere but not any rain, on the news overnight there'd been floods in West England (Somerset) so the whole place is really soggy and damp and crying out for some sun. At the moment it's overcast with little wind so if it stays like this the wicket will still be damp I reckon? Watched some of the world cup this morning England Vs Sri Lanka the game where Paul Nixon and Ravi Bopara had to get 3 off of the last ball to win and the Sri Lankan bowler ran up and stopped and then bowled Bopara out with the next ball. I was watching Mularitharan's bowling and realised that I bowl the Doosra as well! So that's another one of my experimental techniques that has now been recognised as being a standard delivery, so in my selection of deliveries I've got -

The Flipper
Top Spinner
Wrong Un
Leg Break
Doosra
Gipper

This morining I was experimenting with Flipper variations (The Gipper is a flipper variant). It seems possible that 3 variants of the flipper are possible - The straight one that back spins and goes straight on "The Flipper" but then you can turn your wrist and arm and make the ball spin into off from leg (The Gipper) and the reverse which is trickier but a bloke on Simply cricket was saying that he'd been bowling it and seemed to find it relatively easy. This morning just throwing the ball short distances I was able to do all this with just 90 degree turns of the wrist in different directions and get considerable deviation off the line with the spin. So it looks like there's a whole load of scope with the Flipper yet to be discovered?

I'm on the train at the moment and the suns come out - let's hope it stays out for the next couple of days.

Later - On way home.

It's remained dry today and fairly warm with sporadic sunshine so there wont have been any substantial drying of fields happening. Works really hard at the moment shed loads of stuff going on, both sets of students that I teach 1st and 2nd years are the worst students ever and each year it gets worse and yet somehow they have all got to pass and excel and there's other stuff going on as well so it's more stressful than usual, so I'm desperate to escape it all with a game of cricket. Over the next couple of days I should really avoid going on the internet as I should be working towards a teaching qualification that I'm doing - but I've got no enthusisam for it and just can't bring myself to do it, but I'm going to have to at some point otherwise I'll be out of a job!

Ignoring the fact that if I don't get the teacher qualification I'll get sacked I had such a crap day at work I had to do something different so I went over to Gloucester Park to the artificial wicket. (It's the light strip on the field in this ariel shot) http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=51.577923,0.446277&spn=0.00284,0.010772&t=h&z=17

Having watched Mularitharan this morning bowling Doosras and realising that I've already been experimenting with the Doosra not realising what it was! I was looking forward to trying it out and seeing if I could improve it. What I'd noticed on the video was the flick that he gives it, I bowl it without the flick and it turns fairly well, so with the addition of the flick it seems as though again this is another variation with loads of potential?

The practice session which was around an hour and half was a total pile of crap. My bowling was awful. The only ball I could bowl was the bog standard flipper, the top spinner and the Doosra. The ones I wanted results from were The Gipper, Leg Break and the Doosra with the flick. For the first hour or so I bowled badly. Towards the end I started to get it together a bit and then went on to try the Doosra again with the big flick. The flick works making it spin really well from Off to Leg, but I was bowling it massively wide either side of the stumps with hardly any control over it. But it feels like something I can work on and get right in time.

I'm not going to go over all the negatives because it's too depressing. What I'm going to do is go along with the idea that when I haver crap bowling sessions they're usually followed up by a good one later. So I'm going to be positive about playing Sunday and it's a home game.