Still no bowling - Day 4

No bowling at all today and no cricket despite being offered a game. Ben and Joe both had a game today and couldn't play either as we all went to Thorpe Park. A shame really as it was a glorious cricket day with full on blue skies and hot windless weather 24-26 degrees centigrade which is warm for late May.

Read some more of Grimmetts taking wickets whilst waiting in queues for the rides at Thorpe Park and this evening I cut our practice wicket. I noticed too that last week when I thought I'd lowered the blades I'd actually raised the blades so tonight I lowered them to the 5mm cut mark and this made a noticeable difference and the grass is now very short. Thankfully the rest of the field is still being cut at least once a week for some reason and it's very usable from our point of view. Football it seems has finished completely and the field is ours to use more or less whenever we wish.

Yesterday Joe, Ben and I went over the Rec for a knockabout which neither of them seemed that enthusiastic about, but then once we were there they got involved and later a group of boys joined in and we had a bit of a game. The game was enhanced by the fact that I'd had delivered yesterday boundary flags from Newitts which were dirt cheap http://www.newitts.com/product/PACK-41/Plastic_Flags.htm and we were able to identify a boundary. The reason I did this was that last Monday I noticed that both Ben and Joe were enthused by the fact that they'd both got fours and Ben had hit a six. Marking out an obvious boundary seems to give them incentive to try and hit the ball more purposely. I might even be able to engineer front foot drives as a preferable shot by creating shorter boundaries at the ends adjacent to the stumps - who knows? With this as an idea and the fact that the sun currently goes down at our wicket shining in our eyes I might even contemplate changing our wicket and having run the other way? This may also result in less lost balls as well as the short boundaries run parallel to the track and most shots the boys play go the short boundaries.

Yesterdays game with Ben and Joe went well with Ben scoring 48 off of about 6 overs most of which came off leg-side balls.

Hopefully we'll get something going tomorrow as the weather is going to be warmer in the morning deteriorating in the late afternoon to thunder and heavy rain.