A mate of mine has just posted this over on www.bigcricket.com it's an account of his sons bowling and it's pretty impressive and worth a post on my blog...
Dave, hope you and the family are well and that you and Ben are both enjoying the experience of playing together and that Joe too is starting to get a few junior games (sorry if I have missed this on your blog).
Anyway, without the benefit of a blog, I really, really need to tell someone (everyone) about Ollie's performance on Saturday. We both play for the 2nds in the lowest local league which is made up of half village teams 2nd XIs bringing along juniors (like us) and half of teams trying to get promotion. This week we played a similar club to ourselves, we fielded 10 due to a late call of in the 1sts with 2 under 14s and an under 13, whilst they fielded 11 but with 2 under 16s, 1 under 14, 1 under 13 girl and an under 11 (I wasn't happy but he was the opposition captain's son and they took responsibility for him) but their adults were mostly in their 20s and ours are mostly in our 40s. There were two batsmen in particular who had put Ollie to the sword in his first game for the 2nds this time last year who were both in the team again on Saturday.
I lost the toss so we had to bat, in the absence of our usual opener I promoted myself from no11 to no2 as no one else likes opening, going OK until a very close run out saw the end of my knock, but 12 is a top score for me since returning to play. We ended up with 72 which is never anywhere near enough and their captain did ask if tea was ready or should they go out to bat (inference being 'it won't take us long to knock this off'), but I politely declined and had a good chat with him over a sandwich or two about the youth development at both clubs.
I should at this point mention Ollie and me had an extra bowling session on Friday evening because there were no school or club junior matches last week due to half term and we got his in swinger back working (technical issue with back foot landing position). This, combined with lots of cloud cover made me hopeful that Ollie would have a reasonable day. First over was uneventful and they moved comfortably to 5-0, Ollie opened up from the other end. First ball yorker hit the batter on his back foot, we all go up and the umpire gives it LBW (Ollie has had similar shouts the past two weeks but not given - one umpire saying he doesn't give his son out LBW - that sort of league I suppose, so Ollie was well chuffed), couple of balls later and a big inswinging ball accounts for the no3's off peg and they are wobbling at 9-2. Jimmy keeps the next over tight but Ollie comes back with a wicket of the first ball of his second over (bowled) then another with the third ball (bowled) and then another with the final ball of the over (caught by the keeper off an edge playing inside the line), so Ollie's figures read 5-6 off two overs and both teams are in disbelief with the score at 15-5 off four overs! Ollie then bowls their no4 off the last ball of his third over and he has accounted for their top 6. Couple of overs later he then puts the icing on the cake with a direct hit run out to remove their no7 and its all over bar the shouting. I desperately try to swap the bowling round to give a couple of lads a bowl but we end up skittling them out for 36 off 14 overs, with Ollie finishing with figures of 5-0-13-6. Full scorecard is here http://gooderstone.play-cricket.com/scoreboard/scorecard.asp?id=11691474
Sorry for going on, but to be on the field when that sort of thing happens is a fantastic 'dad' moment and even if Ollie bowls that well again I can't see everything else coming together, umpire might not give the plumb LBW, keeper might drop the edge, etc
All the best
Tony (still high as a kite nearly 48 hours later)
