Wrist Spinners Diary

Stuart Macgill

I've not posted on here much of late, there's a few things happening which if you read earlier entries you'll have some idea about what they are. To be honest the main hinderance is the XBOX and Battlefield 3 - pretty compulsive stuff and the fact that at work it just seems to be mental and that's in part down to the political landscape in this country, but I'm not going to get into that on here. But the BF3 thing is something that I need to curtail. I do think though that I suffer from a negative mind set during the winter and I look forward to December 21st and the fact that on the day is the shortest of the year and from them on we're heading towards the summer, so a part of me is pleased that day is approaching. Hopefully I'll buck my ideas up a bit and get blogging again.

But one good thing is that Stuart Macgill has surfaced on the internet ready to discuss wrist spinning and so far has done so with gusto and seemingly is surprised at the calibre of the discussion. At this point the people that he seems to be speaking about are the blokes that are a part of the forums that I'm intregral to and as part of that, Stuart has joined my little forum here. At the moment he's looking at Frank Farrington's bowling and analysing it and hopefully he's going to be coming back to me to give me some ideas about helping Frank with his bowling. He's had a look at one of my videos and he's already given me some feedback which hopefully I'll be able to implement in the nets in January and carry forward to the spring and the new season.

Fitness

At the moment its poor. I've still got it in mind that this may be my last season  attempting to be a bowler and if that's the case, I don't see that I'd ever get a game on the basis of my batting! So at the moment I'm planning a strategy to get my fitness back on track. Over October Ben and I had a pull-up competition and initially whatever he could do I could always go two better and then one day he got in front of me and I just didn't have the fight or incentive to put in the effort to pursue him and he's now officially better at pull-ups than I am. (No-where near the level I was at in my mid 40's though).  My main concern though is my upper arm muscles (Deltoids) as mentioned before, it was the deltoids that seemed to let me down last season. Looking at some of the vids on Youtube at physios and body builder advice, it seems to be an in-balance. The exercises and drills that I do seem to emphasis the deltoid around the shoulder rather than down the arm, so the arm area remains weak, so I'm looking to build up extra strength there.

Looking at some of the videos of me the year before last though, one of the things that I can see now and that other people have pointed out is that my arm speed is very slow, this is probably because I was looking at other aspects - wrist position and my action through the crease. Thinking all this through and knowing that I did try every now and then to increase my arm speed, it may be that I am too old to bring this aspects back into my bowling? I'll just have to put in the time to work on the arms and see how it pans out, if it works - that connected to the stuff that Stuart Macgill has said about me action I may have a half decent season ahead of me if the rest of my body holds out?

Joe

Joe's doing well, he's now starting to do PE at school which was initially almost a disaster. Joe had a new PE teacher come in and within his first few sessions the bloke had spotted Joe and the fact that he wasn't doing PE and probably though that he was a shirker or one of those types that think that their fitness and health is of no consequence at all and that they don't have to look after themselves at all because they'll just go to the NHS and get themselves all fixed up. Those days are coming to an end pretty soon I reckon, there's clamour for denying people free access to the NHS if you ailments are self inflicted (Beer, poor diet and fags) and a little beyond that you can see that you may be omitted if you've failed to keep yourself fit? Anyway that aside, the bloke then said to Joe "Next lesson you come in with your PE kit". Joe then comes home all excited at the prospect that - at last for the first time since April he finally gets a chance to be included in the lesson somehow. We were initially excited thinking it was his main PE teacher, but then reading between the lines I realised that it was a new bloke and that perhaps the scenario as described may be being played out? So as a precaution I wrote a letter for Joe to take to school to give to this bloke. In the morning still concerned and knowing how busy teachers are I also wrote another email to his Head PE teacher saying "You know the score - make sure you forward (Another detailed account with links to the photo's on this blog) this email to the new bloke. I got an email from the head PE bloke the same morning saying that he'd forwarded the email. So it seemed to be sorted. All the communications said that we'd love Joe to be doing something but no contact sport or anything that might impact on his leg.

That evening...
"Joe, how did it go at PE - what did you do"?
"Football".
"Okay, so what did you have to do"? Kind of wondering what Joe might have done.
"I told him that my leg was broke and he said, no you're be alright - when did you do it? I told him back in April and he said - Yeah you'll be okay now. I said, no Sir, I can't run about, so he said Well - you can be in goal then. So he put me in goal".
"Jesus - didn't he get messages! Were you okay - did you save any or get hit by any of the strikers or other players"?

"I don't know - he didn't seem to have - he put me in goal, and nah, I let a couple in, I didn't want to get hurt". Michelle then chipped in saying that at 4 o'clock, the new bloke had rang saying that only at the end of the day had he read the letter that Joe had handed him and then saw the email and he couldn't do enough to apologise and kept saying "I'm sorry - I'm so sorry". Luckily Joe hadn't been hurt and so it was okay. Since then,because Joe is getting better and is now starting to run a bit albeit with a limp, Joe gets involved in PE by being the linesman and stuff like that and upper body stuff that he feels is within his ability, so there's some good progress being made.

 This is the exit wound and the area where the surgeons accessed the leg to stick it all back in, nip bits of his bone off and try and repair it. (Above).

 This is the big hole and the scars either side of it are where Joes flesh split because his leg bent so much it ripped open the skin/tissue before the bone snapped.

This one above is the impact scar which doesn't get mentioned that much as it never really seemed to be that much of an issue, but you can see there's a big vein here, only just below the skin.

 

 

The images here were taken today 2nd Dec and show how the scars are coming along. It's difficult to judge how well it's coming along or get any sense as to whether there's any real hope that they'll improve much more than this? Fingers crossed they will.

The other good news is that Joe has at last started to do ‘Exercise classes’ as part of his physio. These classes are far more dynamic in comparison with his physio drills that have been set at home. Unfortunately I don’t go along and see what’s happening so I get the story later. But, there’s a lot more stress being put on his leg these days and the last class included bouncing on a trampoline and jumping up and down. I noticed too last weekend when he was playing football outside the house with some small boys, that when he does things like this he limps less and looks a lot more agile, so it looks as though things are coming along slowly and steadily. Sometimes it feels like this has been going on for year, but it is only just over ½ a year now in a year-long process and that’s the best case scenario! So with a bit of luck and some work and the removal of the pins not setting him back somehow in January in 5 months-time in early April we’ll have the old Joe back – the one that plays football, cricket, rides bikes and runs around the streets!