Walking home from work tonight in the light I stopped off and had a quick look at the paddock to see if it looked any dryer and to be honest it didn't in the wettest areas. I'll just keep an eye on it over the next few days with a view to rolling it again at the weekend if not sooner? Today was the last of the sunny days for a while and we're now set for a series of cold days with cloud and possible rain and the continuation of cold weather. This means the prospect of sewing any seeds is reduced. What I might do is hold off until some of the trees flower as a natural indication of spring coming. I'm hoping that as the weather improves I'll roll the wicket more and once the grass sowing has taken place I'll roll it a couple or three times more to get the seeds well into the surface. Under good conditions the seeds will then sprout within about 17 - 21 days and then I'll be into cutting the grass and keeping it maintained and roll lightly. Anyway I'm off to nets now - be back in a few hours...............
Driving back from nets the temperature was a consistent 5 - 6 degrees centigrade. If that temperature is maintained that'll mean the grass will be in growing mode.
So the net session..... Not so many people this week and it seems that each week less and less people turn up? Not that I'm worried as it means I get to bowl more - 2 blokes in a net is too many I reckon!! Give me a bucket of 24 - 30 balls and I'll spend an hour bowling non stop.
Wayne was up first and I had some success against him forcing edges, trapping him with my wrong un and possibly taking the bails off with the Top-Spinning flipper, so that went well and he came off shaking his head saying 'I can't pick your variations'. The next two blokes including Neil I lost my concentration and was put off my rhythmn partly because there were too many people bowling. It wasn't till Martin put the pads on that I got back in the zone as he's probably one of the better batsmen - as far as I know he no longer plays for us and plays for a bigger team as it means he plays against far better teams/players? Anyway, he nets with us and is a decent batsman - first XI league player kind of bloke. By this time there were four of us in the net and I held back and let the other 3 bowl to get a look at how he played them and right away noticed that there was potential for bowling right into his legs. Anything that was on the off-side he was getting hold of it and putting it away nicely. So, I bowled round the wicket leg breaks looking for the off-stump off the turn and then the ocassional over the wicket off-stump line looking for the edge of the bat mixing that with the Top-Spinning Flipper and the Wrong un. My line and length was good and it appeared to me that even the balls that he was getting hold of, he was mis-hitting and they were flying up rather than along and might have ended up in the fielders hands?
The balls that were round the wicket he was having to block or sweep and again with the sweep shots he was mis-hitting them and they were flying into areas where there would have been fielders? That's how it looked to me. He commented while I was bowling that the bowling was good and that it was causing him problems and as we left at the end of the night walking back to the car park, I asked him 'How was my bowling'? He had nothing but praise saying 'The balls that were coming into my legs were all back of a length and were all landing in the same place about the size of a hankerchief - all I could do was block them or try sweeping them - but you'd have just put someone down on the boundary and cut that option off, besides when I was hitting them - nearly all of them went up and would have been caught - same with the off-side deliveries.... It was good bowling". So that was pretty good.
The legs and feet have held out and it looks like all the stretching I'm doing is now paying dividends so a good start to the season looks on and hopefully I'll get to play in some of the early games instead of having to wait till May to get a look in?
I had a bat again and that wasn't too bad, so I've set myself a target of 10 runs in a game this season. I think batting against Ben is beginning to pay off as he gets stronger and faster, I'm getting better at batting.
