Had a bowl - Top-Spinner

What with the rain having stopped now for more than 4 days, and the weather being mild, Joe and I went out and had a bowl and a bat in the street using Readers Wind Balls.

Last year I was hoping to get my Top-Spinner going and struggled with it all season opting to bowl it with a fingery action rather than my basic Leg-Spinner action. The only thing useful about it last season was that quite often it came out as a wrong-un rather than a top-spinner, but my accuracy with it was useless. Towards the end of the season my bowling was pretty good on occasions and in one match I bowled so well I was able to bowl with varying degrees of side spin with less and more amounts of spin and it was probably one of my better bowling spells with loads of opportunities put down and got to bowl 8 or more overs, which is unheard of!

So keeping that in mind, I had a go at bowling a Top-Spinner with the conventional grip and it went quite well – accurate, fast-ish with Joe saying that it did dip sometimes quite well, but mixed in with the stock ball leg-breaks it looks promising and it’s something I’ll work on I reckon. It still had a little bit of “Leg” about it some of the time, but probably 60% of the time it was dead straight on the middle stump, when Joe was looking to play a spinning ball and most of the time he’d have been out stumped (Possibly due to the late dip)?

With the possibility of a small wrong-un being there with a slightly more twisted wrist I did give that a go, but to no avail. I’m not that interested in the wrong-un at the moment and I’m happy to have the option of the Top-Spinner if I can convert the same performance today into bowling with a real cricket ball. Hopefully I’ll go into the season with a variable Leg Break, a top spinner and a Flipper?

One thing I did notice was that my run up was lacking getting side on, so I need to work with that as well running up to the new season.

Nets at Essex County Ground

This year I've not attended the net sessions at my club because they've over-lapped with Ben and Joe's training/net sessions and I'm not a massive fan of the process, although I seem to be warming to it recently. So I was pleased and surprised to hear that we had four weeks at The Graham Gooch Centre at the Essex County ground in Chelmsford. It's a bit of a trek at 20 miles away and 9pm at night start was a little odd as well, but do-able. Initially I wasn't that interested, but at the last youth training session one of the better bats (If not the best) Sony Downes asked if I was going and whether I'd be taking Joe and Ben. I hadn't realisd that Joe and Ben could potentially go and when I asked about it, both Sonny and Dave Ayres said it was fine. It turned out that later that Michelle didn't think it was such a good idea this week as it was Wednesday and they've got two school days after and they'd not be coming in till nearly 11 by the time I got back, so eventually when I did go they weren't with me.

There were a few emails and some stuff on Facebook saying the club wanted as many people as possible to turn up so I was surprised in the end when there was only about 10 of us in two nets and none of them, the blokes that I played with in the 4th XI. In fact most of them were the younger blokes who played in the first and second XI's.

I had meant to take my Canon G9 because there was the prospect of Dave Bonnett turning up and he's the clubs Wrist Spinner who plays in the first or second XI's. From what I've seen of him and heard of him (Most wickets in the district 2 seasons ago) and a really smooth (and to my eyes) and near perfect bowling action and therefore I wanted to video his bowling action in order to see if Stuart Macgill would have a look at it for me and comment on it. Reason is, I'm still not that versed in what is a good action and what is not and what to be looking for when analysising other people's and my own bowling action. Dave was there, but I didn't have the camera, so I cant post up any videos or even show you what the facilities are like, so I'll try and get that done next week. But I did get to see what Dave's bowling was like and later on I got to face it, I'll come back to that later...

As far as I'm aware, the rest of the sessions this year have been at Fitzwymarc school, which as I recall has a slight cushioned fabric floor rather than a concrete/wood floor which tend to be slippery, but it's very dark in there with poor lighting exacerbated by the fact that the walls are dark. The Graham Gooch centre has the fabric surface, but far better light and a lot bigger as you'd exepct from a county cricket clubs facilities, but having said, that I've seen council facilities up North that are far better Ilkeston in Derbyshire is phenomenal. The facilities for cricket in Derbyshire as far as I've seen are generally far better than we have down here in the south. Anyway, so I got to have a bowl. Last weekend at the youth training session I had a bowl and did fairly well, took a few wickets over three overs for virtually nothing - 2 stumpings and a catch and a nick where the kid didn't walk and a plump LBW that I didn't go up for, so on the basis of that performance I was kind of looking forward to this session.

I didn't do too bad considering it was a net against better level players, my fitness needs working on which is an issue in view of the fact that as far as the weather is concerned we're still in the midsts of winter, you just can't get out anywhere to have a practice or run around because it's freezing cold or the fields are just sodden. So as the session went on I started to bowl wides every now and then, but generally I was quite happy with it. Tactically it was the Top-Spinners mixed in with the Leg Breaks that seemed to be the winning ball, they all know I'm a 'Leggie' and I think they assume the balls going to be be going away from the edge of the bat if I get the line right (Off-stump). So to then bowl a Top-Spinner that causes some upsets. My Flippers initially were coming out well, but I can't disguise them that well as it's obvious that the way I bowl them includes far more effort, and that gives away the fact that it's a different delivery. I guess they see that it's flatter and faster and therefore realise it's not going to turn and they treat it as a seam up (Which it is) medium pace ball and they'll generally put it away with a high degree of ease. So, how useful it is at the moment as a delivery is subject to some reflection. I think I need to lob them up maybe, but with the back-spin they are going to stall and almost stop, it's something I'll have to work on once the weather clears up. My Wrong-un wasn't working that well and was coming out as a Top-Spinner. Overall I was happy with the session from a bowling perspective, as I was using my faster run-up. I'd also taken note of something someone had said with regards to the last video I posted up on Youtube about the fact that I was over-thinking everything and trying to change too much and said, just relax and bowl, so that's what I tried to do.

Batting

I did the usual thing, whereby I batted last, I bat last in matches or at 10 so it reflects the match situation to some extent in that the bowlers are not 100%. I didn't fancy it, but once there it didn't look as bad as I'd imagined. I used Ben's bat as well which has more meat in the middle of the bat rather than nearer the toe of the bat which is the case for my own bats which are also heavier. That aspect went well - it felt okay and I did manage to get the bat on the ball and block almost everything. I had Dave Bonnett bowling at me, Rusty and some other geezer who I don't know and another bloke who came in and had one or two. Incidentally the bloke who only bowed one or two balls kind of strolled in with "What's the issue here lads, he's an old bloke and a No.11 at that - just bowl him out". And he did, well, he forced a nick off the edge, the faintest nick that I guess the wicket keeper would have gloved. But the others were far more interesting as they all obviously wanted to do the same thing, but I managed to keep them out. I was mostly just blocking, but the odd loose ball I may have got away for singles or two's, but the high-light was a Paddle Sweep off of Dave Bonnetts leg-spin which brought some laughs, no-one expected to see that! But the fun part was they were all trying to figure out what they needed to do to get rid of me and I kept them at bay for ages. Then the bloke who I don't know came over the wicket and eventually forced a top-edge that would have been caught by the bloke running in from Mid - wicket. I was trying to just steer the ball down the leg-side and it didn't come off, so that's something I need to adapt to.

Dave Bonnett

I've noticed before that Dave has a tendency to bowl accidental Wrong Uns, and I reckon he may have a litte Googly Syndrome. But this is early in the season and may not be a reflection of his abilities generally. But he goes for a really flighty approach that is similar to Frank Farringtons bowling, getting the ball right up above the eye-line. Again because it is early in the season, he was getting the length wrong and many of the balls initially were full-tosses. But his bowling action looks very good, he pivots and gets right up on his toe and because he bowls relatively slow, the whole thing looks very balletic and smooth. Tonight he didn't seem to be getting many revs on the ball, so the ball wasn't turning that much, but with variation of speed, length and flight you can see why and how he is effective, so hopefully I'll be able to video him and get some vid on-line for comments and analysis. I'd love to be able to do this with loads of different Leggies in this area and make a database and biography of spinners of Essex.
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Cricket update

Me

Nothing doing at the moment as I've got this issue with my arm which feels as though it'sa  rotator cuff. issue. Although having said that the symptoms are different to the previous RC episode in that the area that is affected this time round is my Deltoid muscle. When bowling with any real effort, this twinges and becomes sore and later on - usually in the mornings, there's the sensation that the area is weak making it feel as though initially it's difficult to raise my arm at a 90 degree angle. Reading about it, the advice is that you rest it and don't repeat the actions (Bowling) that lead to the discomfort, so that's what I've been doing, so I've been turning down games in the last couple of weeks which I'm quite happy to be doing because my bowling with this injury has been awful.

With the bad bowling I've also decided that when I've recovered and my arm is back in action I'm going to look at the Top-Spinner and it's potential to be my stock ball. Three or so years ago I played four games in succession where I took loads of wickets 3 of the games there were 4 fers. In these games I bowled an off-stump line with straight balls (Flippers) and small leg breaks, but the key component was the fact that I bowled accurately. It seems that since I've been focusing on bowling with more spin I've lost out on the accuracy which is the way with Wrist-Spinning and bowling bigger versions of the Leg Break.

In the last match I played a girl bowled 11 or more overs, bowling very slow and she ended up with exceptionally good figures and a wicket. Talking to her trainer who was scoring with me, she said that the girl didn't spin the ball at all and all that she was doing was bowling line and length. The bowling was seemingly causing the bats real problems and yet it looked so innocious. I bowled later - turning the ball and came out with the opposite outcome. On reflection comparing the two approaches and having seen very similar approaches to the girl executed by older blokes and kids (Callum at Grays & Chadwell) over the last few years, the sensible thing seems to be to go back to a style of bowing similar to mine a few years ago. So as mentioned above the Top-Spinner seems to offer a solution. Because of the way that the ball is spun, there's increased potential to bowl more accurately and with  bowling directly at the stumps and the ball not turning, the batsmans approach then has to consider the 'You miss, I hit' potential? Variation then will come in speed, flight, increased spin (Dip) and natural variance e.g. turning very slightly. There's also the  fact that by only adjusting the wrist position a small bit you can increase the turn either way considerably and  it may be harder to pick the variation if you're bowling Top-Spinners consistently. In theory it all sounds like a plan that may work, so it's very frustrating to not be able to bowl at all at the moment and try this out. Saying that, I've bowled it a bit to various people leading up to my self imposed period of rest and it produced quite good results.

Ben + B&PCC v Horndon CC (U13's)

He's been bowling quite well, playing in the U13's and the U15's. The coaches say that as a potential all-rounder, there is some promise and he's been batting further up the order 6 and 7. He had one good partnership with Stevie Wyatt which he really enjoyed and vice versa, (Belhus U13's game) but he still is pretty negative about the idea that he could ever be half decent at it, but like the coaches, if the desire was there, I reckon he'd be okay at it with some coaching.

On the subject of other players in the team, there was a good match recently at The Rec Langdon Hills, just round the corner from us. Unfortunately my G9 was in for repairs at Ilesley camera repairs so I haven't captured any of the action on Video, which is a real shame. Stevie Wyatt was given his last chance to bowl during the aforementioned game against Belhus and he took 2 wickets consecutively and had his hat-trick ball dropped by Tim off of a dolly, so when it came to this game Stevie hadn't bowled for weeks and weeks. So out of nowhere the captain (Anthony Ayres)  threw the ball the Stevie denying one of the more regular bowlers the chance who was protesting in the field for being over-looked. But I think Stevie bowled one ropey ball first up and then the wickets began to tumble... Four in all - plus a run-out that he executed off his own bowling - so five wickets in total!

Stevie Wyatt checking the rules and his figures looking for a 5 fer. Turns out that the rules mean because he took a stumping this doesn't add to his 4 fer. But, nonetheless very good cricket all round by Stevie and a good case made across these two matches to give him a go at bowling in the future?

 This sequence above is Stevie Wyatt taking a catch off of his own bowling. Plenty of his balls were in the air creating opportunities, he could have come away with 6 wickets with a little more luck.

 Again another one in the air just over Connors head at Cover.

The B&PCC U13's leaving the pitch after a good win.