U13's first game of the season

It's Saturday night 23.30 and I've been watching the forecast all day and it's not been that good with the prospect of rain, but I've just seen the most recent update and it looks like we may be lucky? Joe's going to be there and he'll be taking along a score book and he's going to see if he can score it.

Sunday -

Up early and at the ground at about 9.10 ready for a 9.30 start. Getting there at that time didn't work out as the other lads had been warming up and speaking to the coaches and Ben joined in just as that finished.

It's at this point I have to write about Ben and his attitude towards Cricket and everything else other than XBOX games and Scooters. Currently the things that consume Ben's time these days are scooters - when he's outside and XBOX war games (Battlefield 3) at all other times. Balancing these obessessions with cricket and other stuff - school and homework is becoming increasingly more difficult. I have to admit I'm pretty much obsessed with cricket and I have to be careful not to go so over-board with my obsession that it puts Ben off of the sport - e.g. expecting him to want to join me everytime I practcie which at the weekend can be 2 or 3 times a day an hour or more each time and an hour or so most evenings.

Ben has said in the past that he feels that he does better going straight into his bowling cold, not having had a practice bowl, so today and yesterday I didn't suggest that he practiced and went with that approach. You'll see from the score sheets and his bowling figures below he didn't do that well. The disappointing thing was that he didn't seem to be that bothered by it or make the connection between having not practiced in the last couple of weeks and being hit for 10 runs an over. Once off he then bowled to me off the pitch and it was perfect, his response was...

"What's that all about, I bowl three over and the balls all over the shop and then I bowl one at you and you're bowled 1st ball"?
"Maybe the 3 overs out in the middle served as looseners and now your warmed up and ready to go"? I offered, he shrugged his shoulders and didn't bowl anymore.

Because we were down on numbers - only 10 turned up, we had a couple of lads from the U11's in - Charlie Blerkom and Sam Good. We fielded first under grey skies and a cold wind. It was a rusty performance overall apart from Sam Goods. Sam it has to be noted is only 9 and stands about 3'6"easily the smallest bloke on the pitch, but he's an exceptionally good bowler and as you can see from his figures saved the U13's from an embarassing start to the season. I can't really say what went wrong for Ben I know he was bowling wides some of the time, one ball he looked as though he was trying a bouncer, but overall it looked as though right from the outset he was just trying to bowl too fast and G-Man had a word with him after the first over and suggested he take it a little easier.

To be honest the opposition had some exceptionally strong looking players especially the opening bowler, he looked very fast and was a big lad, some of the lads joked about which car was his. One or two of their bats were a bit handy as well, so overall given that the side was depleted in numbers and have so little in the way of training leading up the game because of the weather, they did okay.