Orsett & Thurrock cc v Basildon & Pitsea CC 12th July

The majority of this blog is being deleted as it's no longer being used. All my new content is to be found here...

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

An away game today at Corringham, captain Dutton has retired for the season to focus on his business as he's had an upturn in work/clients. So in his place for the rest of the season is G-Man AKA Graham Davies. Still loads of movement within the team and this weeks team consisted of the blokes you see here on the batting card.

The opposition was made up of some of my team mates from what was Grays and Chadwell CC... Chris Buckley, Terry Hills and Alex 'Wizard' McClellan the Wrist Spinner and some familiar faces from the previous games in the season.

We batted first, not sure if we chose to or we were put in (Most likely). It didn't go that well on a difficult wicket with no real batsmen other than Frank McCleod. Wickets fell at regular intervals around Frank and we ended up scoring 74, with Frank McLeod scoring 41. The next best were two 9's - Asif Patel and Michael Wilson and the rest of us made contributions of 0 and 1's with 4 people scoring 0. Extras accounted for an additional 12 runs.

It was pitiful and I expected to heading home after about 45 minutes once we resumed after tea, but it didn't pan out that way...

For some reason we all bowled well and the batsmen for the most part showed some respect and batted with real caution. Perhaps as this is their local ground they knew how sketchy the wicket was and that maybe the score of 74 was reasonable? This appeared to be the case as Chris Buckley came out and was gone for 0. Chris's records go back to 2000 and in nearly 300 games he averages 23.

With Dutton and Joe my younger son now gone and no longer a part of the 4th XI set-up I was in the field looking around thinking who the hell is going to bowl next. It seemed like it might be me and given how poorly I bowl on occasions and what with no runs of the board it looked as though once Jai and Michael had done there bit the game could be over and done with very quickly! What was making it worse was that Michael and Jai were bowling superbly and going for next to no runs!!!

So, at 16 overs when they'd both been bowled out I was thrown the ball and had to try and maintain the economy and get wickets. Paul Howlett was at the crease having come in during the 11th over. Paul Howlett is one of the blokes that I've suffered at the hands off during the season and so have done some homework on him and have come up with a plan. See here.
The key thing as with most aggressive batsmen, is to keep the ball away from the leg-side and bowl to your field.

Before I came on he'd already hit three 4's through the leg-side in his favoured zone. I knew that as a basic plan I just needed to starve him of that option, so all of the deliveries were outside of off, where as far as I can make out he struggles to get the ball away. In the short time that I bowled at him he was looking to be aggressive - no doubt with the "Don't let the spinner settle" mantra going through his head. He looked to be waiting to see where the ball pitched and looking to then fetch the ball from outside of off getting it over his favoured leg-side. I think it was him although I'm not 100% sure, but during the phase I bowled at him I had two balls go to hand. One at backward square leg that was hit hard and put down and one that was totally miss-hit that I thought G-man (Wicket Keeper) was going to take easily as it was in the air for about 30 seconds, but one of the other players called it, running in from fine- leg or a short long stop position who then dived and dropped it! Never mind as a few balls later he hit the ball to deep mid-wicket and Josh Debond caught it without having to move.

That brought Carter to the crease who I don't know, but maybe I should do some homework on him as he looked pretty handy and him and the opener then seemed to take the decision to up the aggression and little and finish the game off. Despite the fact that we lost it was a really good game. It was good to see Terry Hills bowling - years of experience evident and good to face my old mate Alex McClellan's leg-spin. When we finished we had a chat and bowled some balls to each other and talked leg-spin and flippers and that ball that doesn't exist.

 Alex McClellan bowling leg-breaks to Jaidev Charan - Corringham Rec wicket.

Alex McClellan - Wrist Spinner.

Joe's progress

I've got two sons - Ben who's now almost 19 and off to Reading Uni to study Geography, he's almost certainly been lost to cricket for the foreseeable future, he played a couple of games last season and enjoyed it, but this season hasn't played any despite being asked several times if he'd play. Joe though the younger son (Only just 16) is still hanging in there despite frequent threats of not wanting to play and having an air of complete indifference. But three weeks ago, because of how badly all of the teams in the club are doing he was more or less forced to move up to the 3rd XI and therefore no longer plays with me in the 4th XI. Going on what he was saying about the prospects of moving up, this seemed like a make or break moment, but the club and the 3rd XI captain handled it well and it seems he's enjoying it. It might help that since moving up they've won as many games than they've lost and this has been in part down to his bowling. Prior to that they'd hardly won any games at all.

This week Joe took 3 wickets for 13 runs off of 6.

This puts him in the position of 2nd highest wicket taker at the club at the moment along with Rob Brooks (Off-break bowler).

I played with him this week as I was moved up, I had a good game, fielded at Mid wicket, Mid-on and silly mid-wicket where I took a good catch off of Alastair Hayton's bowling (Off-break bowler). But Joe bowled really well as you can see. The wickets were all key players amongst their top four batsmen.

At the end of the game the 3rd XI boys were all saying that they were more than happy to have him, but were fully aware that it wouldn't be for long and that he'd be going up to the 2nd XI pretty soon e.g. next season. Dutton (4th XI captain) and many others reckon that he should be straight in the 2nd XI based on his bowling, but he is only just 16 and I personally think that should be kept for next season or perhaps a game before the end of this season to see what he reckons to it and how he gets on. One of the blokes Alastair Hayton said that he's never seen anyone bowl at Joe's pace at this level. Again reinforcing the comments of a Southend 2nd XI batsman a couple of weeks back that Joe clean bowled.

In the 4th XI we're really missing him now, we've had two games where all of us are looking around asking where's all the bowling gone? In part as our Captain has had to bail out of the team for this season as well.

First league match - this coming Saturday 7th May. B&PCC v Leigh-On-Sea CC

It’s Thursday as I type, the squad was posted up on the website on Tuesday and a few of the regulars appeared on the list along with some new names. See below.

 If you look there’s a new aspect to the squad list that identifies the ratio of finger-spinners to wrist spinners. I’m under the apparently misguided impression that there is a dearth of Wrist Spinners because it’s so easy to do and there are hardly any finger spinners because that’s so ridiculously difficult to do. So with the teams I play in over this season I’m going to try and identify the ratio between Wrist-Spinners and Finger-Spinners. At the moment I firmly believe that there are far more Finger Spinners than Wrist-Spinners but on Bigcricket.com there’s a bunch of people that are assuring me I’m very wrong, so we’ll see. Last week’s came as far as I’m concerned was packed with ‘Wristies’ as there were two of us one on each team, but in-line with my observations there were at least 4 finger spinners on my team and our team was bowled out cheaply before the finger spinners were deployed on their team, so there may have been more?

The weather has changed massively, the weekend was cold last week, but on Monday when we all went back to work the wind direction changed from northerly to southerly and now we’re into Spring proper with temperatures today in the low 20’s and by the weekend mid 20’s so we’re going from freezing our nuts off with three layers and coats to sun-bathing and shirts off at the weekend.

 Leigh-On-Sea are a new team for me and a new venue so hopefully there’ll be opportunities to shoot pavilions and report on whether their wicket is spin-friendly. I’ve not checked yet, but I reckon their ground must be ‘Belfairs’. We’ve gone down a league too, so we should do okay this season.

Injuries – I twisted my knee and pulled something last weekend, but this week I’ve not bowled or done anything to stress it any further, so have rested it, so hopefully with a knee support I’ll come through if I take it easy. As proved last week if I have to, I can bowl off of a Terry Jenner-esque two step walk in and still take wickets and that was against a 3^rd XI team described as being strong, so hopefully it’ll come good this weekend.

Fitness – I’m not feeling it at the moment because of the crap weather at the start of spring, so if the knees recovered enough and I come through this weekend unscathed I’ll have to start working on fitness. My back has nearly fully recovered from a lifting/carrying injury, but thankfully doesn’t seem to be affected by my bowling, so hopefully I’ll get to bowl for more than 2 overs this weekend? Having said that there’s loads of names in the initial squad sheet that I don’t recognise and for all I know they may all be bowlers?

New rules – Aside from the 45 overs rule, I heard at the weekend that there’s a maximum bowling allowance. No-one is allowed to bowl any-more than 14 overs and this apparently is designed to stop ‘Old blokes’ from bowling the whole game from one end, which I’ve seen happen once before with a Southend EMT game at Langdon Hills, this they’re hoping will give kids a chance to bowl. With only 45 overs it looks as though I’d be dead lucky to get 14 overs in the future, our team usually has people queuing up to bowl and I reckon if you get 5 blokes bowling 9 overs each you’re going to be counting yourself lucky. My son Joe is usually given his full allocation of 12 because of his ability, and if he’s supported by another seam bowler doing a similar job, that’ll leave 21 overs for the rest of us to fight over, it doesn’t sound good at all especially if there’s more than 5 ‘Bowlers’ in the team.

 

First league game of the season and the good news is that we fielded 11 players…

Weather – Warm -22-23 degrees Centigrade, south easterly breeze 15-20 mph, with hazy cloud varying between 40%-60% cover. (We played on the wicket top left) Double click the image for an assessment of whether it was a spinning wicket

Lee Dutton* – Captain
Jamie Britton – Wicket Keeper.
Joe Thompson*
Dave Thompson@
Farhan Malik*
Abhinanadan Bidari
Gopal Viswanathan
Jayanand Shivapujimath
Steve Bonnett
Josh Debond*
Travis Singleton

* - Finger Spinners

@ - Wrist Spinners

 I asked the opposition about their spin options and they said they had one finger spinner, no Leg-Spinners, when I was talking about this Lee and another bloke joined in and said “You got a lot of kids a few years back trying Leg-Spin, but once they all got up to adult cricket they tended to disappear… it’s too hard, that’s why you get so many finger spinners, Leg-Spin is so much harder to bowl”.

The team had a very different look to it, with a lot of new blokes including two kids Josh and Travis who are only 13 years old. Tony and Liam Harms were not there and the word is because of Tony’s new job we wont be seeing him for a minimum of 5 weeks, whether that’s the same for Liam or not I’m not sure? Farhan has played in the 4’s before and possibly Gopal, but the other two blokes were new-comers.

 Dutton won the toss and with all the new blokes being unknown quantities opted to field. Before we went out I marked out my run-up from the end I wanted to bowl from (Southern end) and had a practice next to the wicket to see how my knee twist injury from last week was feeling and it was obvious that the new energetic run-up was a no-go, so there and then I decided to play it safe and come in off of a Terry Jenner two step approach to the crease if I was asked to bowl.

 Joe - was asked to open and I was at the other end with spin. Joe as always got off to a good start bowling seam up, he continued to do so all the way through both his spells, but he did say at the end he was at one point considering bowling some finger-spin, but opted not to.

Joe’s 2^nd spell was the better of the two with two wickets being taken, the first wicket on the scorecard was a run-out by Jayanand. But the two wickets in the last over with the very last 2 balls were very good, as was the bowling around it, excellent length, getting the ball to swing away and go away off the seam. He was also unlucky in the first spell as a ball was hit straight to Steve Bonnett at Gully, a high ball that Steve jumped up to and parried upwards off the top of his fingers and not being able to gather, but he stopped it going for a certain four despite the state of the outfield.

My first spell went okay. One of the two first balls, possibly the first ball hit the bloke on the legs plumb as far as I was concerned - nice and full, but I didn't go up initially and then did so half heartedly and was turned down. Ball number three was exactly the same, but this time I went up for it and the batsman was on his way back to the sheds. With all the new blokes, Dutton was looking to give everyone a go, so I was off after 4 despite looking quite threatening. The 4's unfortunately were both wrong-uns that were a little short, and again the same in the 2nd spell, so that needs some work. Other than the handful of Wrong-Uns I kept it quite simple, there was very little on offer for spinner on this wicket and Lee was of the same opinion, so the order of the day was to pitch it up. No wides as you can see, which was pretty good, there were a few leg-side balls, which because they were pretty full, none of the blokes played that well. I had one ball that got through the gate, can't remember whether it was a wrong-un or a Leg-Break, but it hit the inside edge or something and deflected missing the leg-stump by a gnats breath.

The other thing I noticed when I was bowling was that one of the balls drifted a lot, drift isn't something I see with my bowling much, as I have very vertical arm normally, so I can only assume with this different two step 'Run-in' my arm must have come down a little or maybe it was the head wind which was blowing slightly left to right.

I found this drift aspect quite interesting, as last week the Leg-spinner at the Chelmsford game was getting loads of drift and it was obviously as a result of the Malinga style arm. In the past I've practiced with a much lower arm and done so with a good level of success, the ball turns more and drift as I recall was more evident. Along with that the ball turned more too. The thing I'd have to work on is getting it so that I could switch from a high arm and gradually bring it down and then go from high to low and still maintain accuracy. It's something I might work on Wednesday at nets next week.

Considering my knees knackered, it was an okay performance and with the wicket. The opposition were very complimentary about my bowling with a number of them commending me for bowling so well!

2-0-13-2 (last week)

This week 6-0-23-1

Grand Total - 8-0-36-3 plus this week I took a catch off of Lee Dutton's bowling.

Dutton came on a little later and bowled well, he was happy as he's starting to suffer from arthritis in his fingers and was saying that it hurt to bowl, plus last week he was involved in a car incident and suffered whiplash. When he was bowling he had me at Mid-on, and one of the better batsman hit a ball straight at me and I did virtually the same thing as I did last week and dropped it again. But I redeemed myself in the same spell where one of the blokes T.Bull who looked like a steady batsman hit one right up in the sky in my general direction. For a moment I'd written it off and then realised it was going up more than it was going along, so changed my mind and went after it and got myself in position. Lee was watching and said to himself Oh crap, this is going down as well (I'm not known for my success rate with high catches like this), but I caught it... not perfectly, but it stuck and the geezer was out... Nice.

5-0-15-1 Lee Dutton

Another surprisingly good bowling performance came from Travis Singleton, who's only 13 he bowled as per below...

Batting Yeah this didn't go so well as you can see from the sorry looking scores below. 2 new blokes top scored Jayanand below and one of the new kids Travis. The rest of us were a bit of a shambles, which was a shame as the bowling (see the bowling stats for their team) was a little ropey at times, but then as one of my mentors used to say to me ***t bowling gets wickets. Having said that some of our bowling was a bit off the mark too.

My dismissal was crap. After all the net sessions and that carrying through to club nets and despite last weeks 4th ball dismissal, I was hoping to make some runs with the support of Jayanand. It seemed that one of their better bowlers was saved for this part of the game and he was on when I went out after Jamie. I kept him at bay for a couple of balls and then had the prospect of facing one of the kids (Wrobel) that seemed to be bowling at an innocuous pace. The first ball he served up was short and legside... A gift in most people's eyes and I thought the same... whoa that's short and it's safe and then I knocked it straight into the hands of Barton at head height at square leg. Gutted - out for 0 again off of about 4 balls faced, same as last week. Note to self Hit the ball into the ground - roll the wrists.

 Jayanand Shivapujimath here was our best bat of the game followed very closely by the 13 year old Travis Singleton.

Image below left to right Lee Dutton, Josh Debond, Travis Singleton and Steve Bonnett.

 The wicket looking north

 The 2 captains at the toss.

 Joe Thompson medium fast today. 10-1-22-2 He bowled well today, getting the ball to swing away and move off the seam away from the bat and deployed his knuckle ball.

 Below Left to right... Lee Dutton, Jayanand Shivapujimath, Abhinanadan Bidari and Steve Bonnett.

 Mobile phone hell... Abhi looking a bit left out.

 Lee said to Joe - play with a straight bat, get on the front foot... Joe nicks an edge for a spectacular dive off of the wicket keeper and like so many of us out for 0.

 Some of the lads said they'd be back next week...

 Hello what's Bob Willis doing at Leigh On Sea? The opposition start to pack up.

 Dutton gathering the cash...

 The drainage ruts...

 The drainage ruts run at regular intervals across the outfield.

 Joe and Jamie Britton trying to jam the bags into the back of out Astra.

The next game is at home against Horndon-On-The-Hill, who are a team I don't recall playing before, but I think they're going to be quite strong because their team was bolstered by the demise of Pegasus.

Joe my younger son was saying that we've not gone down a league, because there was a big shift around in the organisation of the what teams played against who, making it so that we play teams that are more local to us, rather than go miles to play, which I don't mind myself even though it's me that has to stump up for the diesel! Joe was saying we're pretty much playing at the same level again this year, which if it's true is a shame because it'll be a season of getting beaten virtually every game. I guess we'll see as we go through the season?

It was a disappointing loss especially as the opposition captain was saying that his team was weak. I don't know what it is that we do wrong, I came away from this thinking, maybe it's nothing to do with the batsmen, maybe it's the way we field? When we field, the positions are always pretty conventional, but for some reason when the opposition hit the ball they get it in the gaps? Then I thought is it the bowling? There were shed loads of extras in this game, in fact I don't think I've ever seen as many extras in game ever - other than kids cricket.

We bowled the 45 overs and bowled 23 wides and 1 x No-Ball. This was down to the fact that some of the players were totally new to the 4th XI and Dutton gave everyone a go, possibly to see who does what? Hopefully this next match he'll take a slightly different approach, now he's got some idea of people's strengths and weaknesses?

They bowled 23 overs and bowled one more extra than us. So perhaps they were doing a similar thing? I did ask their players about who bowled what, trying to find all these wrist spinners that people are talking about on the internet, but there was only one...me. A handful of finger-spinners, but just the one leg-spinner.

It's a funny old game this cricket, difficult to make sense of? Or was it they just had far superior batsmen? We lost so badly and they didn't even have to use Bob Willis ;-)

2 games down. Spin count

Finger spinners 10, Wrist Spinners 4

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

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

..

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

Training SEDCB - Joe Thompson

Another good session tonight at the freezing cold Fitzwymarc school sports hall. Again another very low turn out. Tonight they set the boys another one of those scenarios in the nets. T20 game; six of the boys were batting and six were bowling. They had two nets and the bowlers were being used in spells with one boy acting as the captain. The spare bowlers were in a third net doing throw-downs with the 'Yet to go in batsmen'. When you were out you rotated with batsmen in the 3rd net.

Captain kid chose Joe to open and Joe bowled well from the outset bowling an off-stump line or in the corridor or uncertainty area. Joe set a field with fine leg and no third man and after a couple of balls, the batsmen were guiding the ball through the 3rd man region so the coach suggested a re-think on his field positions and they came up with the field setting below...

The idea being that he was looking to get the batsman to drive through the space between point and extra cover and get an edge through to 2,3,4 or 5 with the protection of 3rd man at 6 for balls that get through. He bowled well and came away with 3 wickets, all of them going through to slips or the wicket keeper as planned.

At the end the trainers spoke to the boys as a collective. The bats had all been aware of the field positions and were asked why their batting figures were so low and they admitted that the bowling was good "They bowled a good line and length", the coach came back with 'Who bowled a good line and length and bowled to their plan'? A number of the bats nodded towards and said "Joe". Which is really helpful, as that would have massively encouraged Joe, that they had acknowledged his bowling with little encouragement and that'll now make Joe feel as though he has some function in the team, as the group dynamic is still a little cliquey and fractured as far as I can make out. So bit by bit I reckon Joe is feeling a part of the team and as though people are recognising his contribution, which is essential if he's going to do well, he needs to feel as though people believe in his abilities and want him to do well and expect him to do well. So again, another really good session for Joe. 

 Joe discussing the field settings with one of the Essex coaches (Scott).

Joe Thompson U15's bowler Basildon & Pitsea CC

Joe Thompson U15's bowler Basildon & Pitsea CC best bowling figures. (SEDCB)

Younger son Joe, has just had some good news, he's been selected to represent the South Essex District based on his recent bowling performances including the 10.4 - 2- 15 - 6 against Belhus in a 4th XI game (Adults).

He'd previously been trialled in the winter but was ill, so his performance at the trial was affected. The bloke who ran the trials was aware of this and said that despite what had happened at the trial, his name was in the frame and that they'd keep an eye on him over this season and he'd be offered games in the summer if he performed well at Basildon.

I don't know how this all happens, I think the club uploads the data on-line and forwards the info to SEDCB . With the Belhus performance one the clubs officials let me know that there's a process of letting Essex Cricket know about it and it's looked at in terms of being 'Performance of the week' or something and if it is, we win tickets to an Essex game. I did that and we're off to see Essex on the 29th playing Warwickshire in a one day game as an award for the performance.

 

He then followed that up with another good performance in the 4's playing against Hornchurch. Taking two key wickets - one bloke LBW that was well set and looking for a long innings and only playing loose balls and another younger bloke - 2nd XI player (Allegedly), who was smacking the ball out of the park for six as and when he wanted to. Joe got them both clean bowled. The 2nd XI player especially was a good wicket - Joe got hit for six off of a good ball and then bowled off-spin, running in off of his seam-up run up, the ball gripped and the bloke missed it completely hitting him in the body. He then followed that up with a leg-cutter on middle and leg that turned and hit the top of off.

 

 

In the following week I then got a call from a bloke at SEDCB saying that Joe's bowling hadn't gone un-noticed and that they had some fixtures for him to represent the South Essex District. Then checking back through my emails Michelle, my wife noticed with the email from Essex County Cricket Club there was an attachment...

 

 

A nice certificate from Essex Cricket commending Joe's 6-fer signed by Alastair Cook England captain and James Foster another Essex player!

 

Back to the district fixtures - he had three games offered, one of which he's not going to be able to make, but the other two he can. So, on Monday 27th he's at Harlow for a 40 over game and then on the Tuesday he's at Garon's Park in Southend which is a splendid venue used by the county teams for matches. Again another 40 over game. What with a game on Saturday as well and the game we're going to watch on 29th at Chelmsford it's going to be a busy cricket week for Joe!

 

This means in the clubs running totals for all wicket takers in adults games Joe is now 12th

 

 All this and he's only just turned 14 on the 9th of July! Well done Joe!

 

Check out my other blog here - this is all about Leg-spin bowling and nothing else. Double click on the image below.