Net Report Feb 26th

27th Feb

I went to nets last night, but even beforehand I was knackered and suffering from the affects of being a bit run down or ill so once I got there I couldn't even motivate myself to get warmed up. The first part of the session was fine, some drills - running between the stumps, picking up and throwing balls at the stumps etc. I felt that the batting drill went okay, as I've been having a bit of a practice indoors, but longer term - my God how complex is this batting lark, it's as though I'm learning the 2 most basic strokes and I'll need to take a check list out there in order all the things that I'm supposed to do I'll remember and this is all reliant on the ball being delivered in a particular way!

So the main intention was to practice the Leg Breaks and not being in the mood and already feeling miffed I was further Miffed because a load of people ended up in the net with us and yet there were 4 nets set up, but seemingly a lack of people wanting to bat. My first ball was okay but from then on in it kind of went down hill for the rest of the session. The biggest problem seemed to be length, all the Leg Break balls seemed to be going too long.

It did seem to be the grip, it felt that I couldn't float the ball in and I didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. But retrospectively it may have been down to how I was feeling and the fact that this meant I wasn't concentrating that well which seemingly is essential. I also felt that I wasn't getting the 3rd finger to work at all. On the odd ocassion when the ball did go down the offside wide-ish and you could see the deviation off the line of flight it was turning but not much at all. As far as I was concerned I couldn't tell either whether there was any extra bounce or dip, but then as I said the length was the main problem. So all in all it was an awful session. I've also woken up this morning with a stiff back which isn't good.

Additionally since Sunday and the 5 aside football game I've still been suffering with a bruised heel and this maybe something connected with the bruise that occured in the summer after jumping off a wall which had been giving me gip for months but seems to have not troubled me in the last couple of months until I started to play football again. So I reckon last Sunday was my last match as I don't want to jeopardise my potential to play cricket because of football injuries.
We're supposed to be in the nets at the school this weekend, Simon, Mark and me are up for it, Badger has text me back saying no and Alex I've not had a reply from yet, but my Phone needs recharding so hopefully once I do that I'll have a positive message.

Later.....

It looks like there'll be just the 4 of us, but Mark wasn't in today so I can't confirm whether he'll be there. I've emailed Neil at G&CCC to see if he wants to turn up but he smacked his lip last night when a ball came off the edge of his bat and caught him in the lip off of Cats bowling. What I may do is see if Ben and Joe want to come as well and whether they want to bowl in the other nets?


Much later....

I've repaired the stumps as they were smashed to bits last week and wont last that much longer I reckon and I'll have to come up with another solution. It still looks like there will only be four of us unless I can get someone like Keith at Swimming to come down and have a go or perhaps Nakul? I may email him and see what he's up to?

Other than that I've been thinking about what happened last night in the nets and why it was so wrong? It did seem that I was obsessing about the fingers a bit and forgetting other aspects. The whole bowling action retrospectively I now realise was disregarded to some extent and I may have not been putting any extra ooomph into it. I'm writing this section on Saturday mid day and have been doing the stand start drills outside the house and not obsessing as much about the finger positions and it's turning okay. So maybe it is a case that I just wasn't concentrating and bringing everything together? The length issues may have been down to releasing the ball too early because I was concentrating on not dragging the ball down which at this juncture seems to be the result of concentrating on ensuring the 3rd finger rips across the ball on the release at and through the 11 o'clock position in the delivery. If I can focus on that aspect and get it right I know the ball will turn more positively and maybe that's also integral to the bounce being improved too?