Day 12 of 18

Another lovely Spring day with the temperature hovering around 15 - 16 degrees. If it wasn't for a NE wind it would probably be in the mid 20's, but can't complain. We invented a new game today for the Paddock 'Test cricket' where one player plays the role of the whole batting team and therefore is in for 10 dismissals. The other two - Joe and me, we just had to bowl Ben out and Ben mid way through it was saying things like 'I like batting' which before now was not something Ben ever said! We bowled him out for 118. We score runs on the basis of whether he gets the ball over or past the fielders marked out by cones and how fast the ball comes off the bat. It worked out well with all of us really enjoying it and playing cricket today for probably 5 hours!

Joe marking out his Middle stump using a bail to make a dent in the ground a la Sanath Juyasuriya. You clearly see that with only a few days cricket we've worn the grass away already at the batsmans end. There's no hope really of it recovering, so we'll just have to have a dusty wicket. What I may do though is move the wicket forward possibly and bat at the other end just so that we wear that down to the earth layer in order that we then expose the uneveness of the surface beneath the grass with a longer term plan of flattening that out as well?
Joe faces one of Ben's increasingly faster and straighter balls.

We lost 3 balls today, which'll cost us at least 10 quid to replace. The other option is that we put the net up on the On-side to prevent the balls going into the woods. We may get lucky though, because in the past the foxes in the woods have weirdly retrieved the balls leaving them out in the open in the paddock!

I filmed myself bowling today and it was inconclusive as I was bowling either at Joe or Ben was wicket keeping with no helmet, so I wasn't bowling with full commitment. The stumps are only about 6' in front of the fence so if you're wicket keeping you're on top of the stumps almost. Joe copped one of Ben's fast balls in the face today, fortunately as we're using real balls he had the helmet on and came to no harm, but if he hadn't had it may have been a concussion job and 2 black eyes. I've ordered another helmet last night, so maybe anyone who's wicket keeping can wear a helmet as well.