Backyard Cricket and knockabouts

Had a knock about yesterday over at the Rec in the disused tennis courts. Some of the others couldn't join us so there was only Ben, Joe and I and we took the camera along and video'd the action. Again as usual as far as the bowling was concerned Ben was the pick of the bunch taking the most wickets, but Joe was pretty close this week as well with 3 wickets compared to Ben's 4.

Hopefully the resulting clips which have been edited and uploaded to youtube will serve as an example of how not to bat to my younger son Joe! Have a look and you'll see what I mean

So yesterdays knock about puts Ben miles in the lead with 10 wickets. No-one was focusing on their batting, as you may have seen on the video, Joe is still trying his approach where he walks across his stumps to the off-side so that he can hit the ball legside. He just doesn't account for the fact that if the ball is bowled straight he has an increased chance of it hitting the stumps. Maybe next week I'll bowl straight at him and try and prove the point?

Backyard Cricket in the square

No real cricket this weekend despite the fact that I had two options - a Sunday game with B&PCC and then just before going up to Derby for the weekend I had a call from Neil at B&PCC asking if I wanted to play on Saturday, which I'd have loved to but was going to be away first thing Saturday morning. All these offers when at the moment my bowing seems to be coming out well.

Backyard cricket in the square

This is our set up, as you can see it's pretty tight for space with houses and glass windows in close proximity. The rules are that any ball that comes directly off the bat that hits the areas coloured red are out, so balls going to square leg or point are out. Any balls going through the Off-side where the house are over 3' above the gound are out. Anything hit through the legside that goes over the wall or straight back past the bowler over the wall are also out.

The only real option for scoring runs are to hit the ball hard along the gound through the red zone below and get it past the bowler - they get you 2's and 4's depending on how well you hit them if there's just a couple of you playing. When there's a few players, the only way 4's are scored are if you hit the ball through the off-side between the bowler and Mid-Off as there's a pathway there and the ball will go 30 or 40 metres down the pathway.

The other thing we're focusing on as mentioned yesterday is building partnerships, so that the emphasis is not on the individuals score, but the combined score or any 2 batsmen and this is working as I said yesterday. Normally Ben and Joe are loathed to play together but yesterday they formed the best partnership and both seemed quite proud that they had done so and looked determined to better it and maintain that record, so that's very promising and something I'm quite pleased at achieving with them.

Backyard cricket

In recent weeks we've begun to use a little play area outside our house for backyard cricket. We've used it before, but we've kind of taken things a step further in order to hone some of our skills. The area is quite small so the wicket as such is very short, but the reason I've started to utilise it more is that it is surrounded by a fairly low wall on three sides and houses with windows on the Off-side. So the order of the day is that you've got to hit the ball along the ground and play shots straight down the wicket in between Mid-On and Mid Off. Anything that's more than 1.3 metres off the ground and you're either hitting windows or putting it over the wall in which case your out. Either side of where you bat in sillly positions are walls, so again, if the ball ends up in those areas in flight you're out too.

Instead of pictures here's a video clip from October (2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc6jGGwSuhQ

Tonight there were 4 or 5 of us out there playing at different times, so we had 2 bats a bowler and a wicket keeper and the objective was to form partnerships and get as many runs with your partner and we ended up with Joe and Ben (My sons) batting together the longest in a very sensible and measured manner getting singles and two's to win. Normally they're sworn enemies and simply refuse to bat together as it descends into confrontation and retribution when one or the other runs the other out. So it was good to see them keeping the ball on the ground, batting it into spaces where they'd pick up runs and communicating effectively in order to get the runs ticking over to go past the previous record held by my older son and me.

The other good thing is we're getting other non-cricket boys involved and maybe it might stick with a little more playing and work on them?

I'll try and get some pictures of the area and post them up and explain our rules, but they're pretty standard - one hand one bounce catches are allowed and then all the rules with regards going over walls and getting stuck in places that they can't be fielded. What I want to do is get some video clips going like these as I reckon these are good fun and a bit of a laugh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhCmw6nPMEM&feature=related