Billericay had an open day today, so given the chance to have a look around their club and have a bat and a bowl in their nets we were up and at em and there for the start at 11.00hrs. We took Kieran - one of Ben's mates and had a good bowl albeit a bit crowded in the net with 10 people at points all queuing to bowl. It was interesting for me, as I haven't bowled in ages and if you follow my blog and youtube channel you might remember that I'm in the process of changing my bowling action and dropping the skip action I have. I'm also aware that a feature of last season was a re-occuring injury - plantar fasciitus, which seems to have cleared up 99%, but I'm aware that it may come back. So todays bowling was a bit iffy until the end when I resorted to bowling off of 1 or 2 steps and that worked far better with the ball turning far more - pitching outside of leg and just bouncing over the top of the off-stump or wide of it. Overall, off the 1-2 step approach I was able to get all sorts of things happening, including a good variation in pace and flight, so after a very average start the end was very promising.
Recently at home I've even explored the potential to include a bound and it looked as though it might be possible with a bit of work, but, in the short term I'll just work on the 2 step walk in as I was today as that was obviously the best approach. So it seems today was the start of the prep for the new season. B&PCC's nets start at the end of January and it looks like Grays start even sooner so I may go along to the Grays net sessions first and then when B&PCC get started I'll join them. I was hoping that they'd be on differing nights so I could get two sessions in per week, but turns out they're on the same night.
Paddock News
Went over there today for a couple of minutes - looks okay and I raked a few more leaves away. I've got a change of plans where the paddock is concerned this year which might mean we'll get more use out of it. One of the good things I noticed this year was that with a bit of TLC I was able to establish good new growth in the most badly worn parts of the wicket with relative ease and success including the bowling area which gets really badly damaged. Last year I toyed with the idea that we'd bat at both ends then rejected the idea because it would have meant that we'd be bowling/running in all over the best and flattest part of the wicket. Now, with the evidence that I can easily repair pretty serious damage that's not a concern anymore and I've got the following plan. We'll work on getting the usual end prepared for use through mid May to June. That will be expected to last and be usable for about a month or so if it's hot and dry again like last summer when it eventually cracked and then crumbled. Then once the batting end becomes unusable because of the crumbling we'll establish a new batting end at the opposite end - but further back from we'd have been bowling. What this'll then do is totally ruin the are we usually bowl into as that'll be where we're bowling - but I believe that like this last year we'll be able to repair it again.
