The cats out of the bag, the Grays boys know I'm off to Basildon and Pitsea and have been pulling my leg tonight about the fact that I'm using them for practice, with no intention of signing up this season. It was ironic that 'El' one of the younger blokes that played in the Sunday team last year said..........
"Dave you ought to play more this season, there were loads of games last year where we were men down". Yeah, they'd have been the games that I'd been waiting all week for and never got the call to turn up! Despite paying my club fees and match fees on time. I didn't say that though and just let it go. There's one more session to go next week and then it'll be Basildon nets at James Hornsby which is virtually throwing distance from my house, which'll be a lot better and it's going to be an hour and half session which is good.
Bowled okay tonight, but nets isn't something I take much from as the blokes batting are just playing mental strokes and getting themselves out all the time, so coming away having potentially got wickets all over the place through catch situations isn't going to excite me too much, but observing that the balls that are tossed up nice and floaty cause all sorts of problems is interesting and something to take away for the season and work with - which I suppose slots in with the need to vary pace and flight. I did go with the intention of watching the batsmen to see if I could spot any particular weaknesses, but other than really obvious things I have to concede that it's an aspect of my game that I need a lot more work on. But overall it was a good session with pretty good accuracy and one or two wrong uns doing their stuff perfectly, I'm going to have to work on the wrong un a bit this year to get it going well. One of them turned massively I noted - outdoing anything that I can produce with the Leg Break.
The Paddock
I had a look at the Paddock a couple of days ago and currently it's a swamp. we've had some really mild weather as well - 15 degrees centigrade a couple of days ago and tonight it's 7 degrees which means the grass will be growing.
