No real cricket this weekend despite the fact that I had two options - a Sunday game with B&PCC and then just before going up to Derby for the weekend I had a call from Neil at B&PCC asking if I wanted to play on Saturday, which I'd have loved to but was going to be away first thing Saturday morning. All these offers when at the moment my bowing seems to be coming out well.
Backyard cricket in the square
This is our set up, as you can see it's pretty tight for space with houses and glass windows in close proximity. The rules are that any ball that comes directly off the bat that hits the areas coloured red are out, so balls going to square leg or point are out. Any balls going through the Off-side where the house are over 3' above the gound are out. Anything hit through the legside that goes over the wall or straight back past the bowler over the wall are also out.
The only real option for scoring runs are to hit the ball hard along the gound through the red zone below and get it past the bowler - they get you 2's and 4's depending on how well you hit them if there's just a couple of you playing. When there's a few players, the only way 4's are scored are if you hit the ball through the off-side between the bowler and Mid-Off as there's a pathway there and the ball will go 30 or 40 metres down the pathway.
The other thing we're focusing on as mentioned yesterday is building partnerships, so that the emphasis is not on the individuals score, but the combined score or any 2 batsmen and this is working as I said yesterday. Normally Ben and Joe are loathed to play together but yesterday they formed the best partnership and both seemed quite proud that they had done so and looked determined to better it and maintain that record, so that's very promising and something I'm quite pleased at achieving with them.
