The weather held out again today despite forecasts from the Met office saying that it would rain for most of the day. Again no real practice myself as I'm trying to ease up on the Flippers so that my thumb can recover a bit. But I have realised that generally I'm out of shape and that I need to get running or power walking or something similar otherwise I'm going to end up getting pulled muscles in the first game, so I'm going to make a start on that in the next day or so.

The new practice wicket has drawn the attention of the kids on the estate and the crew of 7-10 kids that played last summer have already approached us and said that they're all looking forward to playing in the summer or even next week. Additionally there was a couple of new kids that said they'd join in as well and one of them joined me and Joe on the 'Oak Tree wicket' as I've decided to call it and he was good - very good medium pace bowler and pretty good with the bat. He looked as though at some point he'd had some tuition, but he said he'd only ever played out in his back alleyway. So it'll be good if he joins in.

Thursday

I've just been over the field and had 12 overs worth. That went pretty good due to the 'No Flippers' situation which meant that I was forced to bowl Leg Breaks and Top Spinners. The Leg Breaks went really well especially the first 6-10 balls. But depsite losing my way with them a bit I got them back and finished off the session on a high note for every 6 Top Spinners I was bowling 12 Leg Breaks, some of which I was pitching outside of Leg Stump that were then coming back onto the stumps and taking the bails off. But I have make a note of caution here - it might be that 90% of the success here was down to the rough ground assisting the spin?

The Technique Today

I'm going to make a note of the technique when I do this successfully. Today it was a loose grip but with the 3rd finger very much a key part of the grip. When the ball goes into the hand the 3rd finger is placed onto the seam first and then the grip follows the 3rd finger in a loose configuration of the standard Leg Break grip. The ball is the bowled very straight armed with a very concious effort in ensuring the underside of the wrist is facing the batsman and stays like that through the delivery. The other aspects is that ball is then pushed forwards in the delivery and that for me seems to work both in terms of accuracy and spin.

Additionally I was thinking about the leading foot bringing it up and over with an exaggerated step and giving it some ooph in the delivery. I also tried moving a lot wider in the crease and that was okay too. So all in all a good 12 overs worth.