Another good session today for Joe and Ben at James Hornsby following a good work out an hour before playing Badminton where both of them beat me in individual games! Ben's getting to the point where he's getting fitter, stronger, faster and more agile than me because of the fact that I'm falling to pieces with injuries, so that gap between us is growing smaller at an exponential rate. One of his mates came round this week not having seen Ben for 7 days and as soon as he opened the door his first reaction was 'Whoa'! You've grown"!. Slightly bemused at Ozan's claim that Ben had physically got bigger in just seven days, we checked a record we keep. We measure him against a mark we have on the wall in the kitchen and sure enough since Jan 11th Ben had grown about a centimetre and a half! So it's not that much of a surprise that he's catching me up.
Ben didn't bowl so well this week, but he was still okay causing virtiually everyone problems, his biggest issue was that some of his balls went Leg-side and to me he looked like he was trying to hard. Later in the day he did try and bowl much faster and it was obvious that he can change his speed considerably and these faster balls tend to be yorkers. Ben later in the session said that he was going to bowl Leg Spin because he dabbles with it and he pitched one up just outside leg that turned across the batsman and hit the top of off-stump which he was well chuffed with, but he was able to repeat it.
Joe in the meantime was bowling nice Leg Breaks in the Under 11's nets causing all sorts of problems and given half decent fielders would take loads of wickets. He hit the stumps once or twice too with leg break picthed on or around Leg Stump. Dave Ayres, who I think is the manager of the U13's wants Joe to be in the U13's team for the first match as it's a cup match (Joe's 9), so that'll be nice if that comes off.
I've not been very clear about the age group that Ben's going to play for, as there's a load of boys that come in to the hall after us who are in the next group up and they're Under 15's, but watching them they look younger than Ben who's only 12. It turns out that some of these boys are still of the age that they'll play in the U13's, so it sounds like they may make up the numbers of the U13's if they're short on players. From what I've seen of the U13's they currently look like this...............
Ryan Davies - All rounder
Harrison - All rounder
Anthony Ayres - Batsman/Keeper
George Barclay - Middle order bat PT Leg Spinner
Finlay - Middle Order Bat -
Mark (Steve Smith Look alike) Bat
Frank Farrington (Leg Spinner) All - rounder
Ben - Fast Bowler
Harry - Fast Bowler
Joe - Leg Spinner *
I'm aware that the format changes and from what I can glean from the internet it sounds like it'll
be different in that.............
When you're out you're out.
The lads start to specialise e.g. only the bowlers bowl max of 4 overs.
But what of the team size? Is it the full 11 man team? I'll have to ask tomorrow. Looking at the team they've got at the minute, I reckon this looks fairly promising, if these boys get into their stride as the season starts, this could be an interesting summer. I just hope I'm right about the bowling aspect e.g. the boys that can bowl are given their maximum allocation of overs.
The Day of Reckoning
So, tomorrow night will be the day of reckoning, after Thursdays hour over at The Rec bowling with the bound at a single stump tomorrow night at Adult nets will be my first opportunity to roll it out with a batsman. All the experimentation over differing lengths would suggest that in a fairly short time this will lead to an improvement in my bowling, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes over a couple of hours, hopefully I'll persevere with it and if I get spanked I wont be reverting back to my intermediate walk in method?
