Basildon & Pitsea U 11's v Horndon

A much better performance this week by the U11's at Basildon & Pitsea. They all pretty much improved massively on their bowling. Last week they prodeced in excess of 60 wides and No-balls where as this week there were 21 (Approx). Actually looking at the score sheet there's still some slight discrepiances, but there were three of us doing the scoring including Anthony's Dad in the score box and we generally had consensus. But the key is the extra's were massively down.

I think this is down to the fact that this week I took my stumps and got them all having a bowl before the game started. I know for sure that both Joe and Ben like me can't just start bowling without having had a few balls beforehand maybe 12-18 to get us into the rythmn. Whereas the last 2 previous weeks they've gone straight into bowling without any form of warm up which I think is a catastrophic approach and is reflected in the poor bowling figures. Having said that I think 'G-Man' their coach also had a go at them telling them that they weren't to give away their wickets. So whilst the other team did almost exactly as we did with their bowling regarding extras, they were looking to hit the ball rather than defend their wicket when necessary and subsequently lost through the loss of 9 wickets which costs them -72 runs.

Here's Joe batting, his wicket was one of only 2 that fell, the other was Killer a much older and more experienced cricket player.

Here's Joe in the image below bowling. He didn't take any wickets this week and probably produced the worst bowling figure regarding extras. (Not enough practice during the week). He's also bowling a lot more round armed which I reckon is part of the problem and where he's got that from I don't know and he's carrying on with this idea that he should also bowl seam up too. He wont listen to me so I just have to let him carry on and just see how he gets on.

Ben the older of my two lads did okay he bowled his two overs only conceding 2 runs. He was chuffed to get a mention in the U11's news letter for his 2 wicket performance a couple of weeks ago. At the time of writing they've not been picked for the next match which is a shame.