Benfleet CC v Basildon & Pitsea cc 4th X 26th Aug 2017

Penultimate League game this Saturday away at Benfleet against their 3rd XI. Our team sheet looked ropey all week with very few people ticking to indicate that they were available. Joe's game in the 3's was a home game, so after picking up Tim Brown I dropped him off and Tim and I headed for Benfleet for the 12.30 start.

Weather was fine - blue skies and cumulus clouds and predicted 25 degrees centigrade. Got changed and as we got ready it became apparent that we were a couple of blokes down, but the oppo were saying they were in a similar situation. I made a couple of phone calls to see if I could get a couple of people at short notice, but this was to no avail.

As a result of the toss, we were fielding first. We opened with Jai who was playing tomorrow and was only going to bowl 5 overs. He bowled well as did Tony Keep bowling from the North End (A127 end). Once Jai had finished his spell Joey Keep (Tony's son) bowled, not having bowled for 4 years and it didn't go that well and he asked to finish his spell at the end of the 1st over, but the rest of the team encouraged him to continue. As you can see he did better in the following two overs.
 I then came on bowling from the A13 end see below...

I got the wicket of E.Warwick (Captain), who after having a look at a couple of attempts at my stock Leg-breaks which I wasn't spinning that much... just wasn't coming out of the hand that well, he decided - as they often do, that enough was enough and my bowling was going to be hit back to Tarpots on the A13... A massive swing and a miss at a ball that pitched on off and turned away from the off-stump signalled his intention, so the next ball was one with a lot more over-spin. This one dipped and didn't really turn - cramped him up and he dollied it back to me for a bowled and caught. He looked a little disappointed. I only just caught it - as it was one of those that came straight at me and initially I couldn't tell if it was coming at me fast so I set myself as if it was fast and then realised it was dead slow and it had began to dip so I had to suddenly squat and in doing so twisted my knee.

But, it was the other bloke Joe Owen whose wicket I wanted as he looked more organised and threatening, he'd already hit the ball back past me for 4 with a singular off-drive that evaded both me and the fielder at mid-off. But the majority of his shots came off of pull-shots between fine-leg and mid-wicket region, where with only 9 players, one of whom had already gone down with a bad back from bowling (Joey Keep) wasn't looking too up for it or agile. The other bloke Dave Ayres our chairman - who doesn't play and on very rare occasion come in to help out - but this was the first time in two years - was given the role of sweeper covering the area this bloke saw as his main scoring area. Dave is no athlete, more suited to darts I would imagine - but he pit in a valiant effort, but I leaked runs down there. Not Dave's fault at all, my fault for bowling leg-side where this bloke obviously felt his strength was.

The knee then started to have some impact, along with the fact that I couldn't get the ball out of the hand with any revs on, so I got a bit carted.

I was followed by Al McIver and Frank McLeod who did a good job getting the remaining wickets. Owen was eventually dismissed for 34 caught off of Al's bowling, edging the ball to Tony Keep at a position around Gully/4th slip area. He was their best bat in this game so was a valuable wicket to take. They finished with 128 for 8 all out - off of 38 overs.

Tea was very commendable and we all made our way back satisfied and ready to bat. The openers were Joey Keep who scored a fair few runs in the last game and the reliable Frank McCleod who usually provides the main runs in our innings and any hope of a win. Frank faced the first ball and the opener was Warwick (Capt) with the kid Joe Owen bowling from the A127 end. Not only was Joe Owen their star batsman, but his bowling was very tidy as well...

Owen accounted for Joey Keep for 2, and Tim Brown and Tony Keep for 10 each. Frank McLeod scored 58 with 11 fours primarily scored off of Warwicks bowling.

With Frank batting I'd gone looking for lost cricket balls which looked as though they'd be easily found having been given up on far too easily. Couldn't find any and when I emerged from the trees and got back to Dave who was scoring, found myself 2 wickets away from getting a bat which is very unusual. While I was getting my pads on, one wicket went down and shortly after getting padded up with Owen getting through our batting line-up like a hot knife through butter Tony Keep was caught off of Owen's bowling for his 3rd wicket.

As Tony came off I asked what was happening and he said "Just straight and accurate". I joined Jai and faced the first ball off the other bloke bowling from the A13 end... L.Wheeler. As Tony said - straight and accurate, varying the speed. I was initially very nervous, just not wanting to get out, there were loads of overs on the board and we only needed about 30 runs. I remembered the disastrous game where I joined Lee and played across the line and got bowled when we only needed a similar amount of runs. Within the first few balls off of Wheeler I missed one, that must have just missed the off-stump and noticed where my bat had gone in relation to the ball... I'd played across the line, bringing the bat down diagonally from my back-lift -past the point of impact - mistiming it with the bat swinging through towards mid-on and not the bowler! I stood and re-calibrated my brain - realising that this bloke at least and probably the other one at the other end were bowling straight and accurately and if I didn't rectify this I'd be out.

Joe my younger son has worked with me on this and the solution is to have the bat in my back-lift behind me almost pointing towards fine-leg. I then seem to bring the back down and through the ball - with the bat pointing towards the batsman, so I put that approach into action and it worked. The kid Joe Owen was as described.. accurate with some variations. Most of it was straight, but looked as though it was supposed to be off-breaks, some turned a little and then every now and then he'd try and bowl what looked like leg-break out of the hand. Frank was umpiring and was saying - just get bat on ball and take your time, the runs will come. At the other end Jai was playing with more fluency and was obviously less risk adverse than me so was making runs, so that for me was the basis of a plan. I'll just block, and help see off the threatening Owen The key thing was not to lose a wicket with so many overs to play with. I've previously batted with a bloke in a partnership of 90 +  runs and won a game that had been given up on. In that game I scored no runs, he scored all 90, I just blocked , so I can stick in there and soak up the goading and jibes while the other bloke scores. I figured if Jai lost his wicket G-man and Dave Ayres might then play his role?

It worked okay, at drinks it worked out that we needed a run an over. Owen had run out of overs and another bloke came on and he was nowhere near as threatening. But the bloke at the A13 end (Wheeler) was still a bit tricky, trying all sorts... slow, loopy, faster, all very accurate, but then every couple of overs or so, he pushed one through outside of off, not sure if it was intentional. There were about 3 and each one I played at I missed, with what seemed to me a high chance of the ball being edged through to the keeper, but he didn't see the potential, so went back to bowling at the stumps... A kind of you miss - I win approach. Over by over, the total came down, the batting and the approach taken flattering the bowlers figures, but in between the maidens Jai was hitting singles and 2's and a couple of fours. With only 4 required and the field up around our gills I saw the opportunity to hit the winning runs off of Wheeler, first a couple hit through backward of square leg and then one in the gap between square leg and mid-wicket for 4. I rarely get to bat, so it was nice to get a bat and bring the team home for a win and be the one that scores the winning runs!

Once home writing this up, I looked up Joe Owens stats on Play cricket and found out a little about him...

This year he's bowled 134 overs. That includes 21 Maidens, He's taken 43 wickets!!! with his best being 5 for 20. He's only been playing adult cricket for 2 years and he's had 2 x 5 wicket hauls and his economy is 3.39 and his strike rate is 18.79. His average is 10.63 and his contribution to the team as a bowler is 26.71% of the wickets. So he's no slouch with the ball. But he doesn't look that massively threatening, but he's definitely accurate and if you miss he is going to hit the stumps, he varies what he does, so I'm guessing if you go after him, it's definitely going involve quite a high level of risk as Tony, Joey and Tim Brown discovered.

His batting was okay and on this day he was by far their best playing with the ball and the bat. So I have come up with a cunning plan as I'm bound to play against him again next season, or if don't Joe will. See the plan in the bowling plans blog listed below here.

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

Flipper practice

After Saturdays horrific game against Hadleigh and Thundersley, I came away thinking I need to have a least one variation other than the subtle variations in my leg break. The ball that nearly got the batsman that had me thinking about giving the game up (Keith Klein) was my off-spinning out the front of the hand flipper (Double click image below).

I haven't bowled regular Flippers of any type for years. Most of the ones that I tried and used to use, linked to the video above I've discarded for a number of reasons. One of the main things that I came to realise was that, in trying to develop all of these, you end up with a so many variations, you're never really any good with any of them. The other thing I've come to realise is whilst you think you're doing x or y when you're bowling the reality is more than likely very different, not that this matters that much, because you're still bowling a variation of some sort, although it's possibly not doing what you intended it to do.

I still reckon that if you're interested in bowling a Flipper of some type, it's still worth trying most of the ones that I demonstrate in these videos and just look for the one that suits you. The only ones that I'm able to bowl with a little practice is the basic back-spinning Flipper and this one in the video above - the Off-Spinning Flipper. It's this one that nearly got the bloke that slaughtered me and I've got good batsmen previously with it.

What I've come to realise over the years and is the case with this particular delivery (Off - spinning Flipper) is that you do as much as you can to get your wrist and hand in the correct position when bowling it, but when it comes down to it, unless you're very lucky, to be honest you're unlikely to hold the wrist in the perfect position through the action. I find the basic back-spinner relatively easy to bowl with the seam dead straight and offers one option. The off-spinner, despite all my efforts to control my wrist position doesn't come out with the seam anything like a conventional off-break e.g. angled with over-spin, but, instead comes out of the hand with the seam angled towards the leg-side, but spins backwards which is pretty unusual. The results is the ball holds its line through the air and doesn't dip like balls with over-spin, so it keeps really low and with the angled seam some of them nip in to the right-hander.

So, if you try Flippers, don't get too hung up on whether they work in the way that you want or expect them to, instead be content that they give you simply another variation. The only other thing I'd say about them is that you've probably got to use them sparingly especially against better batsmen.

So the last couple of practice sessions I've been working with the Flipper bowling alternate over-spun leg breaks and the back-spinning off-spinning Flipper. Both of them in my case require a pretty vertical arm, so there's not the obvious give-away in that aspect of the delivery. So far the practice with the Flipper seems to have gone okay and I'll continue with this week. What I want to be able to do is bowl a series of Leg-Breaks and then just pull the Flipper out of the bag and execute it well, so that's what I'll be working on this week, so far it's gone okay.

Wickford 4th XI game 21st May.

Still no game at home for either me or Joe and Joe wasn't playing this week because he was on a Duke of Edinburgh award walk. So I was off to Wickford's memorial park ground...

I had to scam a lift off of Tony Harms and we arrived at dull cloudy day with the wind quite blustery from the top end of this image to the bottom end 'River Crouch end". I'll refer to the north end as 'The Pavilion End'. I was hoping to take some photo's of the team and other players for a photography project that I'm doing, but no knowing this team and where the pavilion was going to be (I'd got in the car not actually knowing we were off to this ground) I've left it till next week when Joe will be able to help me.

Tony and me were the first ones there apart from their players and it soon became apparent that the building in this image which is currently being refurbed was out of bounds and that there was no pavilion other than the one across the other side of another field 400 yards away.

Our players started to show up and it soon became apparent that we were probably going to be 3 men down with some of them not letting Dutton know it seemed, he wasn't that happy. What made it worse all over the ground we were going to play on there seemed to be the wrong team e.g. what looked like a group of athletic 17-20 year olds - 3rd of 2nd XI type players. Then a couple of older blokes turned up. It then began to sink in... this was the opposition... Nine big youths and two older blokes and these were relatively young too 40's? Whereas we had 8 players...Dutton and Tony in their 40's, me wrong end of my 50's then Gopal and Jay in their 20's early 30's. The rest were small boys all 13 years old. So a bit of an ask for us.

We walked over to the pavilion and got changed, talked about the batting order and I volunteered to open with Tony. Dutton had won the toss and oddly had decided to bat first, I think he was annoyed that we'd been let down by the blokes that hadn't shown up - leaving us in a hopeless situation, so opted to get it over and done with?

Their bowling was okay, nothing like facing Joe or spin and as a result I managed to last 10 or more overs and scored 6 including a 4 flicked off my pads down to fine leg. But eventually a straight one got me through the gate. Jay put a few more runs on the board and then there was a bit of a collapse until Dutton and Travis added a few at the end. There were quite a few extras and in the end we ended up with 77. Travis it must be said looked exceptionally confident with the bat, I reckon he's likely to score 50 at some point this season if he puts his mind to it.

With such a reduced team, not only is it difficult to make a game of it, but it then means we're short of umpires and scorers, so we struggled with that as well. Sam Goods Dad helped out with umpiring which saved us a bit, it would have been good if he could have played as well, maybe next time? Next time we play with a full team I'm going to try and get one of the kids to learn how to score, I always have a spare score sheet with me so there's no reason why one of them if not more shouldn't.

Similarly I'm going to see if I can get Joe to do it, he knows a lot of it, but needs to do it more and get better at it.

It ended up with us scoring 77 with extras added. We didn't bother with tea as it was no-where near tea, we'd only just had drinks at 23 overs when the last wicket fell at about 26 overs.

So out come their openers ex B&PCC player Jodie Reynolds and L.Keeley. With massive gaps in the field and only 77 to score, coupled with a team that looked like a 2nd or 3rd XI team V's a bunch of old blokes and small boys it was a lost cause. Dutton gave most of use a bowl, none of us come anywhere near threatening to get a wicket and both of the batsmen came away with not outs. Jodie Reynolds had a good knock dealing in fours primarily... 38 not out and his mate with 24 not out.

I didn't bowl anywhere near as good in comparison with last week. I chose to have the wind behind me which seemed to be a mistake as it meant I ended up bowling a no-ball and a couple of full tosses that went for 4. I bowled from the Pavilion end...

In the last few days it's rained a little and as you can see it's pretty green. The bounce was variable especially at the 'River Crouch' end Which I was bowling to, but this was found on a good length rather than at a full length which I was looking to bowl to. The other end 'Pavilion End' it tended to bounce a lot less and was more consistent. It turned a little, but to be honest I only bowled 3 overs and didn't bowl that well. There was some turn, but only average. I came away with 3-0-19-0.

Spin check. This in my on going tally of spinners that I play with in our team and oppositions. I've been doing it in a particular way so far and from now on I'm just going to name them and identify their teams. Today they only had one spinner a bloke that lives right near the Rec and yet he plays for bloody Wickford!!! Guess what kind of spinner he was? Yep you guessed it he was a finger spinner. In the conversation I had with him and the captain they were trying to tell me about all the spinners in the adjacent game a few hundred yards away... all finger spinners, but I had to say, no they don't count I have to play in the game with them to count them.

Wrist Spinners -

1. Anonymous Chelmsford CC 3rd XI
2. Dave Thompson. Basildon & Pitsea CC 4th XI

Wrist & Finger combined

Chris Debond. Basildon & Pitsea CC 3rd XI

Finger Spinners

1. Lee Dutton. Basildon & Pitsea CC 4th XI
2. Joe Thompson. Basildon & Pitsea CC 4th XI
3. Alistair Hayton. Basildon & Pitsea CC 4th XI
4. Luke Daw. Basildon & Pitsea CC 1st XI
5. Brandon DeBond. Basildon & Pitsea CC 4th XI
6. Farhan Malik. Basildon & Pitsea CC 4th XI
7. Brian Waterman. Basildon & Pitsea CC 4th XI
8. Kalai selven Kali. Basildon & Pitsea CC 4th XI  
9. 'Don' Wickford CC 4th XI
10. J.Elliott - Leigh-On-Sea CC 3rd XI
11. H.Jeddy - Leigh-On-Sea CC 3rd XI
12. Anonymous Bloke. Basildon & Pitsea CC 3rd XI

With Joe not playing today and me not taking any wickets the situation between us is now...

Me 17-0-71-3 Strike Rate 23.7

Joe 26-2-65-4 Strike Rate 16.3

 Another view of the 4th XI Wicket - Wickford CC - Memorial Park

The pavilion at the Wickford Memorial Park. I'll add this to my photography project here which is a typology of cricket pavilions. This one used to be a lot uglier and more interesting with metal security doors, but it's been converted into a community café and doubles up as a pavilion too.

It was massively disappointing to play in a team of 8 players against a far superior team. Next week we'll be at Langdon hills, so I'll be able to shoot the pictures I've been trying to do now for the last 3 weeks and Joe will be back. Additionally over the week I'm going to try and get in touch with my mate Keith who lives over that way and bats a bit. He's had trouble with his knees or hips for years, but recently has had them fixed and has said in the last month or so, he'd be interested in playing. He'd be able to field in the slips, but his strength is he bats, oh yeah he's a finger spinner as well!

New content can be found via the links below. This blog is no longer updated.

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 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

..

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

Pre-season practice and fitness at Mopsies and the Rec

Weather was fine today, a little cold at 10 degrees but dry and bright following a week of cold but generally dry weather. Not wanting to have a weekend with no cricket at all, Joe and I opted to go and have a look at Mopsies as an option for a practice, realising it probably was going to be dry enough. Normally we might have gone over to Gloucester Park, but since the 'Sporting Village' has taken it over they don't let anyone participate in sport unless you're ready to pay a premium for it and they want £70 for something that was free to all of the community a few years ago and had been for decades. Again, something I find incredulous, given that the levels obesity and the fall in sports participation in this country and the fact that the government pays lip service to the idea that it supports sports participation.

Anyway enough of a moan, at least we can drive right across town spewing hydro-carbons into the air and use Mopsies. It's a lot of aggro, but once there and setting all the stuff up it always goes quite well and ends up being worth it.

 Joe getting all the gear out of the car.

 All set up and ready to go. With no wicket keeper we put up a piece of scaffold net to prevent the majority of the balls from ending up on the boundary.

As we were packing up the sun came out, still looks nothing like spring - the trees still bare with no leaves.

We took 50 balls, Joe bowled two lots of 50 and I had one bag of 50 as Joe didn't want to bat the second time (Wanted to get home and watch Youtube or play Black Ops). He bowled really well for the most part, Joe targeted my leg-stump as he knows that's my weak zone. Looking at the video below, this is very different to facing a bowling machine and there's a few obvious things I reckon I need to do. In comparison to batting against the machine, there's very little in the way of forward movement? I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing?

I reckon more work in the nets over the Easter Break trying to get forwards, maybe speed the bowling machine up, we've been working with it at 68mph at the most, maybe we should look to use it at 70mph? Maybe if I'm able to get used to that and still hit the ball, it'll be easier when it's a real bowler? It does seem to be very much a confidence thing, I've been batting so much better in the nets, hitting full tosses and generally just hitting the ball cleaner and this must be a consequence of the work done in the nets over the winter?

Double click the image below for the video.

My bowling...

What happened - The camera was set up behind the batsman and to the side at the other end to record the approach to the crease, action and follow through. I managed to get some footage of both before the battery died in the cold. I bowled 50 balls coming off of a 14’ run-up. I then got home and played the footage back through software that enabled me to view the action in slow motion. In relation to the last action plan (see here) I’ve implemented very little because of the weather and a reluctance to spend money on hiring indoor venues to practice the action. Bowled in the nets on Tuesday night, too a good wicket.

Feelings – The actual bowling seemed to go quite well and I would have had Joe bowled around his legs, caught behind wicket keeper and stumped a number of times. So that seemed okay, but felt wrong. The video once played back and looked at… That made me a little depressed as there seems to have been a big backwards step. But whilst feeling down about the current action I do feel as though it is recoverable if I’m given the chance to correct it. I reckon a couple of tweaks and I’ll be back on track.

What was good/bad – Length was too full on Sunday, took some getting used to in order to pull it back, would have been hit for plenty and in a 40 over game might have been taken off after two overs? Once settled too plenty of wicket especially stumping off of Joe trying to charge me and hit the ball before it bounced. Joe was very successful at this in the nets on Tuesday night – batted really well, but would have fallen eventually. Bad – the action; the bound looks bad, BFC was angled so bowling action was very front on with little pivot. The stride was short and the front leg collapsed at FFC.

Analysis – As alluded to above, I think the whole thing can be recovered given some proper time to practice without the use of a ball, just focusing on the bowling action. Looking at the video footage there are some glaring deficiencies. As I go into the bound there seems to be a lack of setting up in order to facilitate the getting side on aspect. Which means as I land out of the bound BFC is angled and my body is too front on and lacks the side on attributes that I should be aiming for. The stride is then pretty weak e.g. short. The rest of the action looks fairly okay other than occasionally there’s a fade to the left through the follow-through like Mushatq Ahmed. The whole thing looks as though it lacks oomph and dynamism, but I reckon it wouldn’t take a lot of work to correct it. As mentioned previously, fitness is currently an issue, the weather hasn’t been that conducive with getting out and about. In addition the last two weeks I’ve felt as though I’m on the verge of coming down with a cold or something, if you believe in biorhythms I’d say that it may be something to do with that?

All that aside, it is Easter and I’ve got two weeks off now to work on all of these aspects and if the last 2 weeks was the down-side of the biorhythmic pattern, the coming days should see an improvement of all things physical? One note of caution I’ve got to do some digging and labouring in the next few days, so that’s going to kill me unless I’m fitter than think, but at 56 I reckon I’ll be a bit sore after a few days of lugging around paving stones and pebbles.

Conclusion – Fitness needs to be improved, more likely if the weather gets better and enable me to get out in it. Bowling action needs to be worked on – particularly and foremost - getting side-on coming out of the bound.

Action plan – Try and practice with Joe as much as possible over the coming two weeks especially at Mopsies. Set aside specific time to work on the bowling action without the use of the ball. Film the bowling action without the ball. Start to do cardio work and leg work to build up strength and stamina with lower body specificity. Get back on the upper body work too. Reflect on progress mid-week (30^th March)?

Today 28th March after a crappy Easter weekend, the wind and rain stopped for long enough to get out and have a knock about in the street and then do some work on fitness. Joe and I took a 20 minute run/walk over to The Rec which took in the Rec hill which I negotiated with far more ease than I'd expected...

It's not all running especially at this point in the season, power-walking mixed with sprinting and running... getting the heart going and getting some strength back in my legs is the priority for me.

Short rest at the square at Langdon Hills Rec. 

Then up the hill and back home.

Our house to the Rec, up the hill and back... 20 minutes, as I get fitter I may have to go right around the field to make it a 20 minute exercise.

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

.