A good day all round for all of us. Ben and Joe's net session/training is at 3pm so before that we had a bit of a warm up (I wicket keep). Ben was zinging them through incredibly fast and accurately so much so I was reluctant to get my hands on a lot of them. He was also bowling Leg breaks at the start he bowled one well outside of leg stump that came in and hit middle and this is with a non-seamed Hockey ball! Joe did okay and was asking what he needed to do to get it to turn and he found that when he wasn't trying to make it spin it turned a bit, so hopefully that might give him some incentive over the next few weeks to change his bowling a bit.
But the highlight of the day so far was Ben's increase in speed since last summer. We then went to their club practice session and that went well for both of them especially Ben. At the minute Ben seems to be enjoying it and as a result seems to be doing well. He got to face the bowling machine first and showed a lot of improvement with that - stepping forward to the pitch of the ball and trying to drive the ball and then went it wasn't threatening the stumps and was there to hit he was swinging the bat and hitting it. At the end of the session he had to face the other boys and I think generally he played the ball well keeping them from taking his wicket - he may have been LBW on one ocassion. He also bowled and whilst it looked like nothing as fast as earlier he did bowl the teams opener. Joe did similarly well, stepping to the pitch of the ball and driving it. As far as I could see both of them showed signs of improvement since last week which was good.
Once back it was still light and despite the fact that it was wet and only 4 degrees I went and bowled 60 balls or so trying out my repetoire. It went as well as expected considering I'm still not able to get out and bowl. It's still the Flipper that needs the most work so I'll give that a going over tomorrow night at nets. I'll try my tactic of bowling round the stumps at the RH mixing it with Leg Breaks and see what happens?
