Kids cricket

Blimey, I get home from work chuck some tucker down my neck and I've got 8 boys clamouring for a game of cricket! Can't be bad! With me that's nine of us, so they went ahead while I had a cup of tea and I caught up with them as they were all arguing about who was going to bat and who was going to bowl - mayhem. Anyway getting the little kids to bat first and the bigger kids to bowl first seemed to work okay - the bigger kids bowling sensibly in view of the fact that the little kids were batting.

What with the bowling being a bit ropey it meant that whoever was batting was probably in a bit too long to keep some of the other kids involved. Similarly with the bowling - some of the kids are so much better than others that they then start to get on the case of the weaker bowlers and then it all starts to go a bit pear shaped. My own son Ben who in these situations (The 9 year old) bats quite well and bowls well too was dismissed easily and was then getting bored with the fielding. He missed 2 dead easy catching opportunities that went straight to him - high floaty balls simply because he'd sat down. If he'd caught either - his 2nd batting opportunity needless to say would have come round a lot sooner. I pointed this out to him and he seemed to grasp that this was true, so maybe he'll take more notice.

It's fairly tricky this lark - all these boys seem to be up for it, but I've got to be careful not to allow any of them to feel excluded or hard done by. In a smaller group they were getting to bat a lot more frequently but it wasn't really working at the fielding level. None of them get the importance of fielding and obviously fail to concentrate on the task at hand. So somehow I need to adapt the games to either rotate all the roles more quickly. Perhaps what I should do is rotate the batting so that each batter only faces 1 over and has to score as many runs off his over as possible? But that's problematic in that if the Bat has to face a bowler who's crap he's going to be whinging about that - saying he's at a disadvantage to those that face straighter/better bowlers. But then I can't penalise the crap bowlers because they need the practice!

Blimey what a can of worms - what have I got myself into! And all the time I've got the prospect of some thug in a West Ham shirt strolling across the field one day and punching my lights out because I'm cutting his grass and using his football field for encouraging boys to play a "Noncey game like Cricket"!

Wicket cutting news......

I've probably cut 1.5 yards of the 17 yards required so far and I did some tonight and may go back and do some more in a minute! The practice wicket is looking very worn now - so that punch on the nose looks more justified!

Count - 829.