First match of the season v Chelmsford CC 3rd XI

After weeks of arctic wind freezing us to death, the weekend came good despite loads of people declining to play across three teams. The club didn't even attempt to get the 4th XI team out knowing full well that the cross-over with the end of the football season would mean it would never happen. It turned out that only two teams played this weekend the 1st and 2nd XI's.

Weather was bright and sunny, bit of a breeze and 13 degrees on the thermometer in the car. Although during our innings a squally April shower passed by, potentially threatening the game, but it missed us. But as it passed by the wind increased, the sun went in and the temperature dropped by several degrees.

Wayne freezing to death with several layers. I had two pairs of trousers on, a long t-shirt, a cricket shirt and a jumper and then a coat and was still cold when scoring.

We were fielded first and in the first few overs I dropped a ball that was hit at me whilst at mid wicket -looked like a ball that would have been one of those that rockets for a 6 at head height. I managed to parry it and bounced up and forwards a bit and I thought 'I've got this' only to then fumble it and it went to ground. But, somewhere in the process I twisted on my knee and something went awry. This then meant that I couldn't run around without limping. We had an extra player and the other team what with it being a friendly said that we could swap over players pretty as and when we felt like. I persevered and knowing there was a bloke on the boundary I came off for a while.

Joe bowled well, taking our first wicket - a bloke that was doing okay and the lead scorer at that point in their team. It was at that point I left the field.

I then took the opportunity to go and take some pictures for my Typology project see here. At this ground there were 4 pitches, one of which is Galleywood CC and that had a really nice traditional style pavilion. The only thing is I had a crap camera, but I still got the shots.

Walking around my knee didn't feel any better, but as I came back to the match I was called back on and asked to bowl. I tried to come off of the new run-up and bowled, but it wasn't good and then decided to come off the Terry Jenner style run-up which is a lot slower, but more accurate and gives me the options of a Wrong-un and a Top-Spinner. I took me 4 balls to get it right, but in the first over against a left-hander one turned nice and bounced well, cramped him up and the ball came off the top edge and he was caught at Mid-wicket by Luke Daw. That over with the messy start I went for 10. The next over was better - another wicket... A right hander having seen a couple leg breaks wasn't ready for a big turning wrong-un - again virtually the same thing, cramped him up and came off the top edge and went straight up in the air for Mike Blerkom (Wicket keeper) to safely catch. 2-0-13-2. Somewhere in there I'd bowled another 2 wrong-uns and they'd both turned a lot and none of the batsmen had played a successful shot to them.

Batting didn't go well for any of us. I didn't get a shot of the score book, but I think we took 8 wickets for 192 off of 40 overs and batting we fell short of 100. Chris Debond and Luke Daw making the biggest contribution with the bat. I batted at 8 with Luke and was bowled by a slow ball, played through it about 30 seconds to early. Luke at the other end said as I walked off,  I was just thinking, I need to tell you about this blokes slower ball...

We lost by having all been bowled out for 93.

Spinner check

Our team... 2 x wrist-spinners, 5 x finger spinners
Their team... 1 x Wrist Spinner. We were bowled out cheaply so we probably didn't get to see any of the finger spinners.

Their spinner was interesting, he was getting the ball to drift miles. Watching him it was apparent that he had a very low arm at the release point. Those that faced him said he was relatively easy to play because of this - you knew he wasn't going to bowl anything in the way of variations. He had a long run-up which he came in at an angle from.

As he went through his action he seemed to be really low - either a massive delivery stride or his front leg was collapsing. He also veered all over the shop as he ran in and then over-rotated in the action and stopped abruptly in the follow through. That aside he seemed to be bowling pretty well. Unfortunately I didn't photograph their scorebook, so can't say how well he did do or whether he took any wickets.

Click the image above for a video of the bloke bowling

Some photos from the match...

 Chelmsford CC pavilion

 Galleywood CC pavilion

 Joe dispensing the drinks to the Wrist Spinner

 Joe waiting to bat alongside the scoreboard and a cherry tree in blossom

 Spring cherry blossom

 G-man all wrapped up for an early season cricket game.

 G-Man on his way to bat with warm headgear.

 Mike Blerkom scoring.

This blog is no longer updated. New content can be found on the blogs listed here below...

https://bowlingplans.blogspot.com/

http://theoldwristspinner.blogspot.com/

http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.com/

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBodRls5i80&t=21s

Joe's leg update.

I haven't posted anything about this for a while as it was going through the process of a court case. If you know about it and have been a follower for some years you'll remember it was around this time 4 years ago my younger son was run down on a pelican crossing by a young girl in a Ford KA. See the link below for the horrific injuries he sustained along with the Xrays.

http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/joes-progress-5-pictures.html

Joe was 10 at the time.

 This is the side of the leg that wasn't hit. The big scar at the bottom is where his leg bent so much before snapping, that the skin at this point stretched to the point where it split open. This was the gaping great hole in Joe's leg you'll see in the post above. The 2nd scar mid way up his lower leg is where the bone once it had snapped came through his skin was scraped along the road. The two small scars up near his knee are where the metal pins where put in and removed. The bulge on his shin may be due to the additional calcium growing where the bone grew back.

Remarkably this is the impact side, the scar is barley visible in this light, but it's there at the base of his calf muscle. Again the small scar at the top is where the pins came in and were taken out. 

Pre-season bowling development.

Bowling development. 5 weeks to go till the first proper game of the season, 3 weeks till the chance of a friendly match. Not long to work on the new bowling action that I've been developing since last September. Quick re-cap, last season went really well at the start because of the input and feedback from a wicket keeper we had play with us for a number of weeks (Mike Blerkom). He made some observations about my bowling in that I had a couple of basic run-ups... (1) A Terry Jenner-esque walk to the crease and bowl off of 2 steps or (2).  A longer run-up albeit all over the place and inconsistent. He advised me to stick with the longer version and I took notice as he's a current 2nd XI player and has in the past played in the 1st XI and knows a bit about cricket.

Up until I strained my Achilles tendon batting I'd bowled better than I have done for years and on reflection at the end of the season made the decision to work on the longer run-up. This was also influenced by watching a video featuring Glenn McGrath on how to work out your optimum run-up. See here.

So, in September I made a start... see my Youtube channel here. A big turning point came when Tony M a coach and contributor on Big Cricket contacted me directly and gave me some pointers and advice. My bowling then started to come together and by the end of November when winter set in properly it was looking very promising. Winter put a stop to the development and now I'm trying to play catch-up a little, slightly thwarted by the fact that so far the Easter break here in the UK has been crap as its a lot earlier in the year than usual. Fingers crossed the forecast from tomorrow onwards is for an improvement and I'll be able to work on some of the things I've made observations of in the video below. Double click on the image below to watch the video.

In my usual lecturer style and advocating what I teach, I'll reflect on the bowling using the Gibbs reflective method...

What Happened. Primarily we were at Writtle to work on our batting see here but with three of us it meant while two were in the batting net there was an opportunity to have a bowl so I spent 10 minutes or so bowling. I mixed up bowling with and without a ball.

Feeelings. Initially I didn't think it went that well, it felt as though there were a number of problems with the bowling action and the outcome at the other end wasn't that special either.

Evaluation (Good and  bad). Good was the fact that I actually took the time out to bowl when that wasn't the key objective of the Writtle visit and the fact that I had the camera to record myself. Other good things included the speed that I was bowling and my overall fitness. It was commented at the last net session at the club that my bowling speed has gone up and this was one of the key things that Mike Blerkom thought was a key thing I needed to work on. Bad stuff, despite the fact that it looked fast it didn't feel as correct as it had been back in November when I was spending more time working on the action. Also the percentage of good balls versus bad balls at the business end wasn't good.

Analysis. Without going into to technical stuff straight away, watching the video back there's obvious things going on. One that I noticed is that I kind of waver as I approach the crease. The other thing which is a throwback to the old days, is the observed over-rotation. Other key observations are the hip and knee thrust aspect, the hip and knee don't drive through properly in most of the footage in the original 10 minute version of the video. When bowling without the ball it's a lot better, but in this session I wasn't able to bring that aspect of the action with the ball in my hand, so that needs some work.

I think  the main thing is the lack of time at the moment given over to bowling practice. Conventional club nets sessions are useless because of the period of time between balls, so I need to set aside bowling time amongst all of the being put into developing my batting. I think if the time is given over to bowling, the changes will come along with improvements quite quickly. Looking at the video, there's a couple of things I know I should work on straight away... (1). The hip-drive and (2). The over rotation. I think with the hip drive, the over-rotation might come together as a consequence of working on the hip-drive.

At the start of the bowling action in the first phase PDS, I note in the video that my head turns to the side during the gather, I'm not sure if this is an issue or not, but it's something I'll keep an eye on though in the next sequence of videos which hopefully I'll shoot tomorrow. There are other issues such as not getting right up on the toes at FFC, but I'll leave that for the end of the coming week.

Conclusion. It seems okay, the few problems I think will be fairly easy to iron out, and possibly the key thing to do is bowl more so that the action is grooved and increases in consistency.

Action plan. Work on the hip drive tomorrow and the over-rotation.

My other active blogs include…

https://bowlingplans.blogspot.com/

http://theoldwristspinner.blogspot.com/

http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.com/

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBodRls5i80&t=21s

Readers Windballs

Reader Windballs We were down to our last one of these, so needed to get some more of them. We use these all the time for training and practice and they're great; a decent weight, good bounce properties, hard-wearing and because of the colour easy to find if they get lost in the bush/trees. Buy them in bulk and you'll get them at a decent price. Look out for the postage as that normally hikes up the price loads.

Double click on the image for video

I got these from   http://www.notonlybowls.com/ and paid £17.94 with free postage as long as I picked them up from my local Argos. Once they were ready I got a text/email with a code that I then presented to the staff at Argos and they handed them over.

This blog is no longer updated and new content can be found via the blogs below.

https://bowlingplans.blogspot.com/

http://theoldwristspinner.blogspot.com/

http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.com/

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBodRls5i80&t=21s

More pre-season nets

As the start of the season approaches... 2 potential friendlies on 23rd and 30th April, we're looking to have a few nets sessions with the bowling machine and today saw the first of three we've got planned. If you're a regular on the blog or the big cricket forum you'll know that I can't bat and that my highest score ever is 16 against Orsett two years ago. There's been no improvement, as that year we were promoted up to a far better league and our team struggled. I had a couple of promising starts with scores of 11 and 14 that came far more fluently than my 16, but I was always let down by the bloke at the other end as I bat at either 10 or 11.

With those two double figure scores being thwarted in the usual no.10/11 way I sensed that the more positive approach to my batting that I'd adopted seemed to be paying off. It seemed to have come about by virtue of more practice with a more positive mind-set. The practice aspect was interesting as coming to the game so late in life, the chances to practice for instance with a bowling machine was non-existent and I figured that if I was able to have someone or something to put the ball in a specific area consistently I might have the chance to improve? I can't remember how it happened, but looking around I found a venue with a bowling machine that in late October was (1) empty and (2) relatively cheap and decided that I'd give it a go. In the worst case scenario, I might come away from a handful of sessions being less fearful of the ball I figured?

Better, still what I wanted was to move up the order a little... (8)? so that I had the chance to make a contribution with the bat. So back in October and through November and December Joe and I started to go to Writtle Cricket centre for an hour or two every fortnight with specific aims. On the first visit it soon became very apparent that this was the potential answer to the problem, the more balls you face the more likely you're going to be able to figure things out and make a fist of staying in and scoring a few runs. So over that period we've been working on playing with a straight bat and I've definitely made some advances which numerous people at the club have commented on having either seen the videos or my batting at pre-season nets at the club.

Recently I videoed my batting over at Mopsies and posted it on Youtube (Double click the image).

Off the back of that, one of the coaches on Bigcricket commented on it privately, pointing out the fact that I'm jumping away from the ball when it's on my leg and offered me some drills and guidance. Yesterday I spent 3 x 20 minute sessions working specifically on this aspect of my batting and the results are here (Double click the image for the video).

Although there seems to be a significant improvement whilst I know the balls coming into the legs, I found it a lot harder to maintain the discipline when the bowling was mixed up - different lengths, offside. legside and on the stumps, so there's still some work to do.

My other active blogs include…

https://bowlingplans.blogspot.com/

http://theoldwristspinner.blogspot.com/

http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.com/

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBodRls5i80&t=21s