Game tomorrow!

Another lovely September evening sweating my nads off coming home in a coat having gone to work on crisps and chilly morning – but equally sunny and autumnal. I asked both Ben and Joe whether they were interested in going over the field for a bit of a knock about, Joe almost did but then chose to go and play with his mates, so I ended up going over on my own and having a bowling practice which I wasn’t fussed about. You can still distinguish where the cricket pitch is so put down more markers so that I can keep and eye on it over the winter.

Bowled mostly flippers because they’ve been going really well and again tonight was no different. I was trying to bowl them all at a certain length at the off stump at varying speeds and for most part it went as planned. Using 10 balls (My white ones) I probably bowled 70-80 balls and only bowled three down the legside. Generally I bowled very well with a similar kind of accuracy as I did last Saturday which kind of makes me feel really optimistic about bowling and quite confident. The only worry is that last game was odd in that the players were not coming after the ball, but then maybe if they did maybe they’d be more likely to make mistakes. What I can’t believe retrospectively is the off-side/legside theory. Because this year I’ve committed myself to bowling wrong uns I’ve gradually got more and more accurate and bowl far fewer down the legside. But because I do bowl fewer down the legside I’ve now noticed that most RH bats love a ball that goes down the legside and they easily get onto it and hit it with a degree of pleasure and assuredness. Looking at the way Neil sets offside fields when I bowl there’s obviously less chance that they’ll be caught if they hit the ball to the legside? What I’ve now noticed is that if I bowl down the offside they’re a lot less reluctant to go after the ball and if you’re accurate and bowl at the off stump they’re really tied down and will normally play defensive shots. A lot of you reading this may think Duh! That’s obvious, but then as Super Dave reminded me on Saturday when I commented on how well Ross Fulbrook bowled he said “You got to remember he’s been playing cricket for 5 years whereas you’ve only been playing for 2”. But it’d be nice if I could bowl ten overs or more again this weekend and display the same amount of accuracy and put these theories into practice. I loved the way the flippers were going tonight and if the same accuracy could be applied to the game combined with the variation in pace and ball (Googly/Top spinner) I may be onto something?

Again I’ve been going over the principles of batting as a tail ender so hopefully this time I’ll be a little more alert and less inclined to ball watch with my ears turned off! Maybe I’ll get the elusive 12 runs that I’m after to set my PB. Okay let’s go for it let’s try and get 3 wickets as well and make it a bowling PB with a low run total as well!