Nets and Snow

I've just gone in from our net session in Grays. Coming home from work I walked home in the snow just as it started, at 7.30pm I drove to Grays and then coming out at 10.00pm it was still snowing so there was a lot of it about. Driving home I have to go up a biggish Hill - South Hill, Langdon Hills and the car only just made it and I reckon I must have been one of the the last normal cars, as I only just did so, anyone coming much later would have had to have a 4x4.



It's late so I'll have to write up the report tomorrow, but here's a picture of the snow at 10.15. If it continues or stops and gets cold overnight tomorrow is going to be chaos. Even the A13 looked as though it was going to get snowed over once the roads quietened down. The predicted weather was for rain, so maybe it will rain later tonight and we'll be okay. If it gets cold that's another story.

To be continued......

So where was I? Yeah last night more snow, making this one of the worst winters we've had down here in the South of the UK for years. Fortunately the temperature hasn't dropped over night and the snow although lying on the ground is primarily slush and we're supposed to have sunshine later and hopefully it'll all melt? The field once again has been covered, so like so many fields in the area will absolutely saturated and then once it thaws even more water logging and that will mean there'll be no football. I don't remember people stopping football back in the 60's and 70's when it was a bit wet - football pitches used to look like buidling sites - thick mud.

Last night I took the Canon G9 to Nets and shot a load of clips and did try and film myself batting, but the resulting file which is in excess of 1.86GB won't download to my computer, so in future I'll have to try and get some of the others to record my batting in short clips. I haven't had enough time as yet to go through all the bowling clips, but I'm not expecting much as I was bowling rubbish last night and again I noticed how slow my bowling is in comparison to the others. Again 'The Wizard' was bowling really well when he got it on target, he gets loads of turn and nearly had one go round the back of someones legs. Neil this time was determined to not show any mercy to my bowling and was hitting me all over the shop like I was Dan Von Brunger. But it did look like my best form of attack was changing the speed. Against some of the others 'Colonel' for instance it seemed to be changing the spin direction that worked - bowling Flippers, Gippers and Leg Breaks all going off towards slips and then bowling a stray googlie. The same seemed to work with Danny who again was in good form hitting me all over the shop with the balls that were spinning away to the off-side.

As for my batting - it was better from the point of view that I did manage to hit a lot of the balls and I'm not so scared of the ball, but with regards proper strokes - that seemed to go out of the window, but I do think it is the concentration factor. Today Terry (The coach) was teaching us lead with the head rather than the foot, if you move forward keeping you head and eyes in-line with the ball, your feet will follow, whereas if you do it the other way round it can cause balancing issues. Again that made sense and towards the end of the session I was beginning to implement it a bit, but it does feel that when I try and put in place the proper techniques, I start with a positive outlook thinking right do this properly and I'm less likely to be bowled and then the opposite seems to happen, I get bowled more! This is especially the case with front foot drive type shots. I always seem to miss the ball or edge it, but to be honest I'm probably not concentrating enough. I think this is one area I can work on with Simon in the nets at the MPA net sessions? But despite all that my ball to eye timing seems to have improved.

I've now looked at some of the video clips and played back my 20 minute batting clip in camera (Still haven't figure how to download it from the camera to the computer). One of the obvious problems seems to be that I hold the bat in a ready to swing round position rather than a swing through position, so that might be something to look at. Terry suggested that we practice the drop the ball & bat technique on our own as that's supposed to help with these issues, so I might try that?

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Last night using the MS paint program I made a digital image of a cricket pitch layout to use in the testing of my boys and their knowledge of the fielding positions. Once I'd made the basic version I was able to then use Photoshop to mark the fielding position on the next slide using the first image as the template, then name each new position in a numerical sequence and save as individual files. This means you can play them back as a slide show to teach and test the kids on the fielding positions.