LBW umpiring

I found this on the Westcliff CC website...

It seems to be (as we're aware) that getting a neutral umpire isn't that easy especially when you're not playing in a league and you're not the first XI. We were talking about the idea that we umpire ourselves, the umpire being the 11th batsman or similar maybe the 12th man and just do it on an honesty basis? Have a read and see what they say and how they resolve it - http://www.essexcricket.com/clubs/clubviews.htm


I am not sure what happens in 2nd & 3rd X1s who also use players as umpires but in the 4th team premier league we are now virtually playing without the LBW law. It would be an interesting comparison to take all the matches in a 1st X1 league controlled by independent umpires and compare that to what’s happening in our league this year and see the difference in the number of LBW decisions.It is getting worse each season and in some cases there must be instructions to players before they go out to “keep their fingers in their pockets”. This is making it worse because the side fielding first often set the agenda on these decisions and on wides. The aggrieved side batting second will often react in a similar vein.I am not sure what the answer is and some sides are better than others but unless the captains take control of this situation then what next, only catches off the middle of the bat are out!! The problem is, it’s the Captains that are giving the instructions in the first place.Nick Watsons’ personal view.Hutton Cricket Club.

Ref. 8.
In reply to Nick ref 7........
I must be unlucky 'cos I was given out LBW twice this season, once by Nick!
I have to say that I think this season was better than last in respect to LBWs and catches behind. Several batsmen have walked this year and I can only think of one occasion when a "plumb" LBW wasn't given. Even then this was a cock-up by an inexperienced player and the Ardleigh Green skipper has the decency to apologise - in fact, he nearly walked!
I think the introduction of statistics on decisions given by each team would help as would an effort by players to learn the laws. How often have people being given out LBW, come back and complained "but I was playing shot" as if this makes them immune.
In addition, it's up to us older players to help by not putting youngsters in the position of having to umpire in pressure situations.
Other than that I think we have to accept that bowlers will get fewer LBWs in the lower leagues than with neutral umpires.
Jim Lynch
Hutton CC
4th XI Captain 2006

13 days to go........

Lots of things to plan and get ready for, but the most pressing thing at the moment that may scupper all our plans is the weather...

Check out http://magicseaweed.com/UK-Ireland-Surf-Tools/1/

For up todate weather maps - real ones like back in the day when the BBC assumed you were intelligent.

The map left is for next Saturday - our last and final practice as a team and it's not looking good and neither is the weather as you can see. The only good thing is if the weather that is coming in off the Atlantic does include a lot of rain it might mean that I may be able to get out on the wicket at Great Berry with the roller? Having said that I've just been over there today at 5pm and had a look and the ground is pretty solid and is going to need a lot more rain if the roller is going to have any real effect. But who knows - we'll have to wait and see what happens over the next 7 -10 days?

Whilst over there I did do some repair work - softened up the earth where the stumps go in and tried to get rid of that dip that's at the North End of the wicket where the ball jumps up if it hits it.

Later returned and had a knock about with Nakul, Ian and his son (Who's pretty good at bowling and batting). Nakul was a bit worse for wear and is suffering a bit with aches and pains and I've got to be honest my shoulder's a bit sore so I may give it a rest for a couple of days - hopefully the rain will force me to do so.

Thomas was out and about at the weekend and spoke to some cricketers and has passed on the details to me. I rang the bloke this morning and he's given me the details of the "Club Cricket Conference" http://www.club-cricket.co.uk/pages/fixtures.htm whereby if we pay a joining fee we'd be able to link up with other clubs that have fixture gaps in their season. To be honest with the amount of commitments everyone else seems to have the chances of us playing more games than we've already got lined up seems very unlikely - we struggle to get people to practice let alone play games as well. I think we'd have to have a lot more people in the team practicing regularly showing more commitment before we were able to take advantage of the CCC.

Talking to the bloke on the phone though he had loads of useful things to say and in some respects opened a can of worms with regards cricket etiquette. I some ways in our enthusiasm to get these games off the ground we've stitched ourselves up as it means we're the hosts to most of the games and therefore we have obligations to our visitors.

As the hosts we have to lay on the food and the basic guidelines for this are that we make a decent effort at it as the visitors pay for the food (Approx £30)? But reading between the lines it seems that you lay on over and above that and the more effort you put into putting out a good spread the more it's appreciated by the visiting team and they then will invite you to their ground for a return match and put your name about as being a team to do business with?

As the hosts we also supply the balls for the match and as some of these blokes are going to be turning up with £200 + bats they're not going to be wanting to use them on £2.50 Davidson balls. Therefore as a guide price we should be looking at the best quality club balls we can get for £15.00 each up to about £25 and we'd have to supply new ones with each match and always have 4 to use in the event that we lose some and we'd normally play with 2 balls minimum each game.

So with that in mind can I have the subs from the week when I didn't collect them (Last time we were out on Great Berry together) and be ready to pay a tenner this coming Saturday as we'll be in the nets this week. What I'll try and do is get the time changed to a 10.00 oclock start in the nets and then we'll go over to Great Berry.

Food

So - who's gonna do the food then? Any volunteers? My wifes made it explicitly clear she's not so what do we do? Answers on a post card or in an email to me please.

Club Cricket Conference

Talking to the bloke on the phone he also mentioned the catergorising of teams. He asked who we played and I mentioned our first match had yet to be played and I said it was against a bunch of Aussie and Kiwi teachers and he chuckled and said "You like to have you faces rubbed in it good and proper then"? Hmmm - he seems pretty convinced that all Aussies and Kiwis are brought up on a diet of cricket and more cricket and all have attained a level equivalent to pro county level by the time they're 16. He asked about how good we were and said that Thomas had alluded to the fact that we weren't that good. He said to have a look at the CCC website and look at the grading descriptions on there and said that we'd be best off starting at the bottom and seeing how we get on. I was inclined to agree with him. See below.........

Team Strengths:
Bureau staff can only arrange fixtures which reflect the information supplied by clubs. If a Fixtures Secretary says his XI is ‘Strong Medium’ we have to accept his word and register accordingly. If, during the season, it becomes obvious that club officials are regularly misrepresenting a team’s strength, Bureau staff will try and exercise some judgement, having first drawn the club’s attention to the problem.
To help us arrange the best possible matches, please define strengths as follows:

‘Strong’ - First XIs in higher league cricket fielding their top sides. This strength could also apply to clubs with only one XI who also play league cricket at a high level and are a genuine match for bigger clubs first XIs. Similarly a Sunday side containing a large number of Saturday first team players should be classified as ‘Strong’. The definition would not apply to a big club’s 4th XI.

‘Strong Medium’ - This definition applies to a first XI which may be fielding a slightly weaker side from normal, or to a club’s 2nd X1 whose playing strength is only marginally below their first team’s. Again clubs operating only one side can be described as ‘Strong Medium’ provided they are a genuine match for bigger clubs’ first or second X1’s as described earlier. Equally, a Sunday side with some first X1 representation can be ‘Strong Medium’.

‘Medium’ - The catch-all category. In this section clubs would have to field sides containing specialist players in all categories - bowlers, batsmen and a wicket-keeper. It is unlikely that a medium side would contain more than one colt or one vet. Clubs 2nd and bigger clubs 3rd X1’s would usually be covered by this category.

‘Weak Medium’ - This would apply to clubs either fielding severely depleted 2nd teams or clubs putting out 3rds and 4ths containing vets and colts. It would also apply to clubs fielding only one side whose players are either not regulars or whose fixtures are occasional rather than regular.

‘Weak’ - Probably a one-off side with very occasional players or sides with four or more
vets/colts or a club’s 3rd or 4th X1 with a ‘give everyone a game policy’. All the data is entered into the computer following which the Bureau Assistant will impart details of other clubs with similar or matching profiles. Once the call is completed, the data stored will be imparted to subsequent callers until such time as the Bureau receives confirmation of a fixture made.

I reckon if we sign up to this we should start out weak. Looking at the description we might get away with weak medium but going on the fact that in 20 odd overs we scored 25 runs and the fact that our batsmen rarely practice we might be better off pitching in at the bottom? You never know we might win.

How old do reckon you have to be to be designated as veteran? Oooh me bones are aching - I can feel a designation coming on! Gutted!

13 Days to go..........

I've had an almost cricket free 48 hours and I'm beginning to suffer psychologically! It got so desperate today along with the knowledge that over the coming week it is likely to pour with rain that I ventured out onto 'My wicket' just across the road from my house. Last night I was at a party and didn't get in till late so I'm going to be blaming the increase in wides on that.

Anyway - managed to throw 138 balls with a result of ........

22% wides
11.5% Strikes
34% Good balls

Despite the wides I think I was bowling quite well. I was aiming to bowl really short to leg 5-6 yards in front of stumps and 2'-3' wide of the leg stump and generally was getting the ball to turn, sometime so much so that it was going wide of off but most of the time it was very threatening both sides of the stumps hence the 34% good balls tally. See this Warne Video - this is what I manage to do on concrete and on my wicket - (See the example 6 minutes 19 secs into the clip) on a consistent basis http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8735581696703543175&q=cricket+shane+warne But for the life of me I can't seem to do over at Great Berry Open Space.

For some reason it just seemed that I was able to get a lot more turn off the ball on this wicket 'My Wicket'. Looking at the surface (This is the field I rolled over the winter) it did appear to be much harder (Clay) than the surface at Great Berry which appears to be more loamy and that may have helped? The surface of the football pitch is criss-crossed with enormous cracks where the field has dried up and it just appears to be much harder. So maybe this is what's helping me to get the ball to turn. A lot of the strikes came off the much faster straight balls, which are pitched full toss or much fuller length - yorkers. This seems to be a good tactic and very accurate, so they're something I'll be trying on Nakul or anyone else that gets over there when we practice next.

What I might try and do is get Badger to video me doing the equivalent of Warne Bowling around the back of the batsmans legs and see if there's some way I can get it on Utube or the google video website so that you can link to it as proof. In the meantime if this expected rain happens and the ground softens up at Great Berry I'm probably going to roll the wicket and see if I can compact the ground more and get some spin off it like the other places. If I can - it will seem to be that it's the hardness of the surface that helps to enable the spin, if this is the case you are all going to be stuffed because man can I make my flippers turn! Lets hope the wicket at Welstead is rock hard!

Lasith Malinga - World Cup Classic
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1779541781890831292&q=cricket

Equipment

It's time to start sorting your equipment. If you're going to be playing you need to get your own bats and helmets and Dark Blue shorts/tracksuit bottoms and tops (polo shirts). We don't know anything about these Aussies and Kiwi's for all we know they spend night after night trying to throw the ball at head level at 80mph and they're all 25 years old and just fresh out of the antipodes having played cricket for the last 20 years? In which case it might be an idea to buy yourself a box and a helmet? Also if you're going to wear a helmet you need to get used to wearing it.

15 Days to go..

Gavin the captian of sports science is in the process of ordering the balls for the match and we're going for Orange coloured balls because we're wearing Dark Blue and I think they're wearing white or light blue and they want to be able to see the ball (All very professional). These balls are £15 each approx so we may have to stump up 50% of the cash for them and he's looking at buying 4 of them. We'll either take it out of the subs or do as I said on the day we'll all pay £5.00 to play anyway and pay for them that way and the remainder goes in the subs.

He did also mention not to park in the car park unless of course you want your windows put through, so keep that in mind when you turn up.

Again Nakul and me had a bit of a practice with the emphasis being Nakul batting and I'm able to report that I got a few times which was nice. I'm not going to go into any detail from now on as I'm in the process of fine tuning my bowling and I'm now beginning to get results by varying the balls between the Flipper, Over-spinner, Slider and Wrong Un.

Towards the end of the session Nakul bowled against me and bowled me three or four times in quick succession, once I got into the swing of it I did better. But it's a case of as soon as you get to the crease you've got to be ready as far as he's concerned otherwise he has you with the first or second ball! Nakul has got to be a part of our bowling strategy which means we've got almost a team of bowlers!

Badger - Medium Pace swing/seamer
Rod - Medium Pace swing/seamer
Simon - Medium/Fast
Alex - Fast
Thomas - Fast (left arm)
Dave - Leg Spin
Nakul - 'Fast Spin bowler'

The Flipper - Leg Spin Bowling

Have a look at this....
http://www.cricinfo.com/link_to_database/ABOUT_CRICKET/EXPLANATION/LEGSPIN_PHYSICS.html
Look particularly at the description of the flipper. The flipper is my stock ball and I don't quite understand what this blokes is going on about and why he's confused about the legitimacy of the ball.

The Flipper
There are times when I have been convinced that the flipper is the commentator's 'excuse' ball, the word used to describe a ball the commentator couldn't read that bamboozled the batsman. Interestingly, Richie Benaud and Terry Jenner (Warne's friend and coach) describe it completely differently.
What Benaud describes is spun with the seam horizontal, with the same grip as a legbreak. He asserts that the ball 'skids' on pitching. What Jenner describes, and most people seem to have agreed on, is a ball which as far as I can tell is spun with backspin and a very different action to the legspinner's other weapons.
The behaviour of the ball Jenner describes would be to 'float' a little, pitching longer than expected, and then to 'sit up' when it pitches. The desired effect, one would assume is to catch a batsman playing back for what he thinks is a shorter ball, and trap him lbw playing over the top or outside the line.
I'd love to supply an example of the flipper to discuss, but it's somewhat complicated by the cries of 'flipper' from every side whenever Warne pulls out a ball that does something special. Both the legbreak and topspinner examples I quote above were called flippers by the TV commentators at the time. I'm reasonably convinced the ball is not just an exercise in mind-games, but I've yet to be convinced I've seen one.

Warne describes the flipper as being difficult to bowl as does Jenner -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/sol/newsid_4730000/newsid_4739300/4739313.stm?bw=bb&mp=rm

http://ninemsn.video.msn.com/v/en-au/v.htm?f=39&g=f5fadaf4-dd52-4085-800d-5306c2ceb6e7&p=ausport_aucricketshow&t=m170&mediaid=30076

I've been throwing flippers as my stock ball for months now and as far as I'm concerned it's the easier of all the variations I throw (Slider, Over-spinner, Wrong Un & Flipper). I've found that if you practice with balls other than a cricket ball you're more able to see what it potentially does on the field. I've got a ball that's made of low density rubber and is quite a bit larger than a cricket ball but not so large that I can't flip it. This ball I can throw forward using the flipper motion and because of the reverse spin the flipper creates - the ball when it hits the ground actually bounces backwards and comes back towards me! If you then throw it forwards with more speed it stalls and sits up. If I throw it faster still I find that it stays low like a slider but also deviates off it's expected line and turns towards off.

Try this - buy a Grays training hockey ball - they're the same size as a cricket ball and the same weight. Find a flat piece of tarmac or concrete with a wall and pratice the flipper. Using this ball with no seam I find I can pitch the ball 5 or 6 yards in front of the stumps 2-3 foot to leg and get it to turn into the middle stump like a leg break.

Richie Benaud on channel 4's website says........ Don't even think about learning the 'flipper' before you have mastered the leg-break, top-spinner and wrong'un.

Warne says on practicing Leg Spin.....

"The most important thing for a spin bowling is having patience, and being able to work and to make sure you practice the right thing. That is the technique. My idea of practice is the first 15-20 minutes I'll bowl leg-breaks, 15 minutes of variations but then always finish off on the leg-breaks. The leg-break is the most important delivery so keep practicing that one," said Warne.

My Flipper

As I alluded to at the start this is my stock ball, this is the one that relates to all the stats I've posted here. Currently I'm throwing it really consistently with less than 10% wide balls at the moment. I throw it at varying lengths depending on what I'm trying to get the batsman to do, sometimes ridiculously slow looping balls other times it's my fastest option - depending on how confident the batsman thinks he is. Generally I'll pitch it short to leg giving the impression that it's gone well wide, if the batsman leaves it - he's in trouble as I'll have his stumps which is very satisfying. Other than that the bolder more confident types give it the Kevin Peterson approach and come bounding down the wicket trying to knock it into the next county. Yeah I let em do that a few times and they think they're on a roll and then I chuck a slider or fast straight flipper and the change in pace generally catches them off guard and I either get the stumps or they miss hit it and it gets caught. It's a good ball.

16 Days..........

It seems Sports Science are practicing a bit and there's some video footage going around of them bowling. I spoke to them and they're keeping their cards close to their chests, but they're obviously up for a game and I've got a feeling they're going to give us a run for our money. It's going to be interesting.

Nakul and me had an hour out on Great Berry tonight with me batting tonight. My batting's coming along especially if I remain disciplined and stick to defending the straight balls. He's a wily bowler Nakul and he had me bolwed and LBW'd several times in the session. But saying that I was hitting him for fours as well in between - which was nice.

I'm liking the current practice format that Nakul and me seemed to be developing - one night I bowl and he bats and then we swap the next night. So tomorrow night I'll be mostly throwing sliders and see if they work for me or at least pin him down. The following night I'll go for playing defensively - I now have a sense of his tactics he deploys to get me out, so I've got to come up with a strategy to either play those balls or defend them. It's all looking very promising.

Stuff to sort

Team Sheet This needs to be confirmed and the players need to commit to being there on the day. It's Sunday 12.30 20th May at Welstead Gardens http://www.southend.ac.uk/wellsteadgardens/



We need to have players confirming that they are going to be there. The team as far as I'm aware is - Thomas Slater, Mark Soye, Rod Jeanes, Badger Keeble, Richard Stainsbury (W), Alex Wood (C), Simon Grainge, Dave Thompson, 'Trevor', Nick 'Naughty' Oconnor and Nakul Handa. We also need a few more people on standby in the event that someone lets us down or we have injuries - 'Customs Paul', Darren Hart, Tom Dick, Steve Bone, Carl Hodgson, Alex's brother and anyone else that has shown an interest in the last 6 months.

So those on the team sheet first eleven - can you all get back to me and confirm that you will be playing on the day please and start to get your stuff organised. Be prepared to be there till it gets dark (More than likely it'll be over within a few hours or at least by 6pm).

Umpire - Tony Sweeney - Richard needs to talk to the other team and see if they're okay with that.

Scorers - This'll have to be down to trust as the fielding side will probably be changing the score board and keeping scores, hopefully a couple of the opposing team will be on had to watch as well. I've also got small Walkie Talkies so that the umpire can communicate with the scorers and vice versa in the event of anything being unclear.

Balls - Ettiquette it seems dictates that the host side (us) supply the balls - should we provide good balls for the match or stick with the £5.00 jobs - again Richard needs to talk to the Aussies & Kiwi's.

Cucumber Sandwiches and refreshments (Tea and stuff) is down to us as the hosts, but the visiting side pay for it?

Arrival times - 12.30 - (or earlier if we're going to practice a bit).

Match starting time 13.00 hrs

Kit - Seems as though we're wearing Dark/navy blue polo tops or Dark Navy blue and the same for shorts or track suit bottoms. (Personally I think we should go for whites).

Overs counter Do we need to buy one for Tony?

Helmets - I'd advise you get yourself one along with your own bat and box

17 Days to go

Another hour and half out on the field tonight with Nakul. He batted I bowled.

18 overs and I only got him out twice! Although saying that he hit a few skyers that with fielders in close he'd have probably been caught 4 or five times and in a more competitive mode I may have also caught him once or twice off my bowling, so overall not so bad from my point of view.

Wides - 9.9%
Good balls - 13.6%
Strikes 1.8%

So the wides are coming down and Nakul said that the bowling was pretty good. I varied it quite a bit and threw in some Under-spinners which were interesting and the Wrong Uns were a bit tricky as well. The under-spinners look like they've got some potential and mya spend a whole session soon trying them out as they are accurate and very tricky forcing the batsman to defend.

Nakuls batting was good, anything wide or short he was skipping around and knocking them for 4's on a very regular basis, so I had to tighten up the bowling and go for the faster balls and vary it a lot.

Tomorrow night it'll be my turn to bat and I'll report how I do.........

Sports Science Match 29 days away.......

18 Days to go.........

Not much news today. Saw the students that want to give us a game of cricket, they're up for it.... "We'll give you a good thrashing at that as well"........ Blah, blah, blah. I told him to check his email and get back to me. We'll see what happens.



I emailed David Hinchcliffe the bloke that runs the Harrowdrive website asking him about the tactics I saw being depolyed over at the Recreation Ground, Langdon Hills by the wicket keeper. He said yes some wicket keepers take a very aggressive approach in that being so close to the batsman and talking to your own players and looking to have the bails off at the slightest sign of the batsman coming out of his crease puts the batsman under a lot of pressure and helps break their concentration. It might be something Richard might want to try with their openers? He'll probably need some kind of body armour though and a helmet.

On that point I'm surprised no-one else has bought a helmet?

Tonight over at Great Berry I adopted some new approaches to see if I could vary my bowling some more. I bowled a lot of balls (70%) much faster than I would normally do to see if I could maintain the accuracy. Overall I did quite well keeping the wides below 15%. It looked as though it might be something I should try out on Thomas or Nakul and see how they deal with it. What I was tending to do though was bowl much longer lengths - yorkers. It seemed difficult to bowl shorter lengths, but when I did they did seem to turn slightly and looked to be more tricky to bat? I'll have to practice them more to see if I can bowl consistent lengths as and when required. The last 13 balls I threw I changed tactics completely and bowled short 'Wrong un's' and these turned very nicely and very consistently (75%). So over the next few days I'm going to mix up the wrong Uns and the fast flippers, aiming to bowl them short and see how the batsmen cope with them and see if they produce more wickets and catches.

Tonight overall...

Wides 12.9%
Good Uns - 24%
Strikes - 4.3%

Overall I was quite pleased with the way it went.

30 Days till the Sports Science Match. I spoke to Gavin today and he says they'll be wearing Light Blue, so we'll stick with Dark blue polo tops and tracksuits bottoms/shorts.