A couple of days ago the weather was cloudy and windy with a North Westerly and averaging around 12 degrees, last night Tuesday and tonight at 6pm it was more than double that at 25-26 degrees!
Last night the 'Senior lads' in the U13's had Frank McLeod training them and doing some interesting Batting drills with them, which with a bit of luck and some application Ben might have taken something from and be able to apply it to his game. Given that Ben's highly unlikely to show any enthusiasm or appreciation for anything let alone cricket, today he let slip that he thought that the session was good/useful and that he liked Franks sense of humor. The boys involved were...
Ben
Mitchell McLeod
Harrison Birch
Frank Farrington
Stevie Wyatt
Anthony Ayres
Frank had one stump in the ground and an off-side field set up where all of the others were spread out evenly and one bloke on the leg-side. He then did throw downs making them drive the ball back at him as straight as possible trying the thread the ball through the ring of fielders. He then threw the ball out wide instructing them to leave those and not go after them. The objective seemed to be to get over the ball, keep your balance and bring the bat through straight in order to middle it, rather than edge it and hit the ball square. If you did that be it first ball or otherwise you gave up your go and the next bloke was in. It was a good drill in that it was ruthless, if you wanted to stay in, you followed Franks instructions and these were simple. The one that they had trouble with was, that once they'd been there for a while and were getting settled, he's always offer one out wider and so many of them went after it rather than leaving it!
Then today, Ben took that out onto the square at his school game, unfortunately Ben was batting at No.8 today so ended up with 7 not out, but he did give me the impression that he'd taken on board what Frank had been teaching them and he was looking to go on and score more runs, if it hadn't been for the fact that the lads that followed him all lost their wickets in quick succession.
