Rest day today - games start tomorrow...

Worked late tonight so didn't get in till gone 9pm. There's been some shifting around in the 4th XI line up creating an opening for my younger son (13 years old) Joe, which is good news. He's got his own U15's game on Friday night as well at 'Thurrock' which I'm looking forward to, that's my old team 'Grays and Chadwell cricket club' with the legendary Alex 'Wizard' McLellan, so I may get a chance to see him and ask him how his bowling is going. It'll be tight on timing as I don't get out of work till just before 5 and I've got to get all the way to Grays.

The weather for Saturday looks promising...

 Brisk wind 30mph South Westerly.

 Cloudy bright.

About 15 degrees centigrade.

 

I'm looking forward to the game and it's interesting to see that it is made up of a number of kids as it was last year, but this time I'm not the captain. There seems to be a distinct lack of a fast bowler like Ben (My older son) although Joe's getting bigger and stronger and he may start to fulfil that role as the season goes on and potentially because he's slightly more interested in cricket than Ben is, he may approach it in a different manner? I reckon Tim Edmonds will bowl a lot of overs. But this does look like a difficult game.

 

1 :	Lee Dutton
2 :	Charlie Blerkom
3 :	Tim Edmonds
4 :	Luke Edmonds
5 :	Jamie Britton
6 :	Joe Thompson
7 :	Dave Thompson
8 :	Tim Brown
9 :	Tony Harms
10 :	Anthony Joseph
11 :	Mike Blerkom



Rain stopped play

What Happened

Again another crap day at work, came home feeling knackered again and the wind from yesterday hadn't really died down, so there was a very brisk wind and the threat of rain. My older son Ben who's preparing for his GCSE exams hasn't been getting out and doing anything much and Michelle suggested that he went training/nets tonight, so any idea that I might not go was then thwarted. So off we went for a net at our club...

Initially because of the weather and the cold, there was only 4 blokes there training in the middle, so we joined them and bowled at the bloke in the net - one of the first team players, a bloke who holds the highest score for one innings at the club.

Feelings

Prior to actually bowling - knackered and not that optimistic, especially when confronted with bowling at this particular bloke. But that turned around over the session, although I was smacked for a couple of big potential sixes.

Evaluation

Good stuff, the bloke above gave me some good feedback and after last nights debacle, I bowled okay considering.

Analysis

I'd said last night that I was going to bowl Flippers and Top-Spinners, I didn't follow this through entirely because if you think it through, the variations have to be bowled in amongst your stock ball in order to have the surprise aspect. Initially to the good bloke I bowled outside of the off-stump and he was able to cut me through the off-side or just guide the ball through the Gully region with ease. Having thrown up a few of those I then deployed the over-spun Googly and that brought about a potential dot ball, but the two that he was surprised by and later commended me on were the 2 Flippers that I bowled. Both of theses were faster and flatter and he said they skidded on quick almost catching him out both times... "In the 4's you'll take wickets with that ball, I only just got the bat down for 1 of them, whereas your other balls were too loopy and too short".

More blokes turned up shortly and Joe, Ben and I and two other U16's players went to the other nets. My younger son Joe batted and despite bowling fairly well with loads of turn, I was generally a bit short. I'd have had him stumped a few times including with an exceptionally good Googly. Unfortunately it then started to rain lightly and progressively got worse. In the end after an hours worth of bowling we had to quit and come home.

Recently I've been thinking about the field set by a bloke on Bigcricket "Angry Ranga".

I don't know how tongue in cheek this was, but to some extent if you're coming around the wicket to a bloke that only seems to have a leg-side shot it may offer something? This set me thinking about extreme off-side fields of a similar nature, but having a more of an in-out field...

I think I need to put it out there on big cricket and see what people say as this definitely an area of my game I'm not that confident with.

 

http://www.bigcricket.com/community/threads/field-settings-for-leg-spinners.57045/page-8#post-576030

 



Conclusion

Off the back of the commendation of the flippers, this now makes me think I should work on them more, so that I can bring them out in the game with more confidence. It's often the case that when I bowl the Flipper the first one is massively wayward, but not so tonight, so perhaps I should persevere with it? The other thing I need to do is work with the length I bowl, so once the weather clears up I'll get out on the paddock and move the mat around - nearer the stumps.

Action Plan

As above - move the mat around, work with the length and vary it, work with the basic flipper and get it going early on in the practice session, looking for first time accuracy.

Depressing session (Gibbs Refelection)

What happened.

For a start the weather has turned from being pleasant to a very brisk wind making it cold, but I was determined to have a bowl, so went out and bowled about 10 overs worth with Joe.

How did it go/feelings?

Depressing. After yesterdays success I took a camera out and had the intention of videoing it and it started out bad and went downhill until I got rid of the camera. Then the improvements weren't that good either, so overall a very depressing session.

Evaluation -

Not much good to take away from this at all, except that the Top-Spinner and the Googly were the best and most accurate deliveries.

Analysis.

Lack of focus and not relaxed. I had a crap day at work and my wife said that I looked like I had the hump. I did go out with the intention that it might relax me a bit and take my mind off of work. But then I remembered that I'd intended to go out with a plan to video the proceedings and bowl to an accuracy plan. What with the wind and the cold, setting up the camera and tripod depressed me even more and then Joe came over to have a bowl as well when I wasn't expecting him too. I tried to put a positive spin on that by acknowledging the fact that the time between his over and mine would be realistic and therefore re-creating a real bowling scenario.

With the camera running, the first ball was 7' wide of the stumps, possibly helped by the wind, but then so was the 2nd and 3rd ball and by then I was very wound up and not in a good place psychologically - certainly not relaxed. The camera continued to play up and bother me (Wind movement) and pre-occupy me and it wasn't until the SD card was full and the camera eventually taken out of the equation that I was able to focus on the bowling. By now I'd got to the stage where I was thinking the only positive to take out of this is the fact that it is exercise!

Eventually I thought about my grip and bowling with a looser grip and  then things started to come together a bit better, but it was cold and miserable and I never really got into the zone.

Conclusion.

Don't try and film it when it's cold, only try that when the air is still and warm.

Action Plan

Go to training tomorrow night and try and be a little more relaxed. 2 hours or so in the nets, maybe focus on top-spinners, flippers and Googlies when bowling against the batsmen in the nets. Sloggers try and pitch the ball quite wide looking for edges and nicks?

Leg Spin bowling practice - Gibbs Reflective Practice in Sport (4th May)

What Happened.

Had another practice - the equivalent of 12-14 overs. Again only using 6 balls. Venue the paddock. Objective - accuracy and spinning the ball hard.

Feelings.

Yeah, a lot more positive than yesterday, a definite move forwards with some positive observations relating to the things that I tried.

Evaluation. (Good and Bad).

The good thing was with the additional focus on accuracy, it seemed to work really well. In addition my Googly is coming together - very accurate with loads of top spin a lot of the time. Bad stuff - for some reason irrespective of what delivery I chose at the start of the over, a lot of the time it ended up very wide down the legside.

Analysis.

The way I'm practicing this season is to use a mat, we started to do this last year, but since then I've looked at a few things and realised that one of the really important things is the length. In the nets over winter and at training I come up against some very good batsman who are able to read the spin, but if the flight combined with the length come together it leaves them in two minds. So the focus is to land the ball in a specific area. The point of reference for the ideal length comes from information that batsman have suggested 4-5 yards from the stumps and this is confirmed if you watch the IPL when the spinners are bowling their pitch maps have a 'Good length' defined as 4 metres.

The area that I spin into is relatively large, again there's some debate about this, spinners such as Grimmett and Benaud talk about being able to land the ball onto very small areas, but I reckon that if you're pursuing this discipline and you stick to that idea, you're going to get very despondent. It might be a target to aim for in the much longer term e.g. when you've been bowling this stuff for ten years or so, but when you're learning something akin to what I'm doing here I reckon is a good start.

Confirmation of the idea that a big target is acceptable, can be found here (Click on the image) and watch it at about three minutes in. This is Terry Jenner, Shane Warne's mentor.

 



Recently I've noted that when I bowl with loads of balls I don't take it as seriously as I should do, as there's always plenty of balls in the bucket to bowl correctly next time and it seems I get really sloppy. So now I go out with just six balls looking to bowl really well from ball 1 and trying to make every ball count. The fact that I then have to walk down the other end and gather all the balls together almost recreates the time gap that occurs as the other blokes over takes place. We never bowl more than six balls at a time and therefore our rhythm is disrupted and I feel that it's important to recreate this when you're practicing.

 

 

So today I set up the mat initially so that line was as below...

When I do this I pre-allocate points to each strip. So on this occasion I've said that landing the ball on 'A' scores me 3 points, the ball on 'B' scores 2 points and 1 point for 'C'. Hitting the stumps in addition scores an additional point. The mats as mentioned previously is on that 'Good length' the centre of the mat is at 4 yards, so the more I'm able to bowl onto the mat, the more it becomes to feel natural to bowl that length. The drill can obviously be changed in order that you bowl fuller or shorter and this again stretches your abilities.

 

So the first half of this evenings session was with this configuration trying to bowl at the stumps which in theory would draw the batsman forward to defend or drive the ball, or get him skipping down the wicket. So as I'm bowling I'm also trying to change the speed and flight and get more over-spin in order to get the ball to dip more rapidly. All these subtleties, still require the ball to land on the mat.

 

Initially I didn't score that high, the balls were too full and I didn't have any way of recording the points. In addition the amount of spin I was getting with my Leg Breaks meant that all of the balls were missing the off-stump by a mile. So then I changed the mat position to the one below...

With the ball turning so much I was then able to focus on getting the ball on the 'A' line attempting to turn it into the stumps and this was a lot more successful. Hitting the 'A' line coming around the wicket at the other end for some reason was a lot easier. My top-spinners were very accurate too and these look as though will be a key feature of my bowling at the start of the season. If they work as well as I'm envisaging that'll be a big leap forwards. My Googlies again were very accurate tonight landing on 'C' and missing the leg stump by some way as well. Point-wise I scored a couple of 9's and a 10, but to be really honest and brutal I need to take a piece of paper and record my success rates and post these up on the blog maybe?

 

I didn't have the camera tonight and yet I bowled relatively well, it does seem as though if I've got the camera recording me I get the Yips!!!

 

Conclusion -

 

I still need to get the first over bowled well, with good accuracy, so it may be that I should bowl Top-Spinners for the first 2 or 3 balls next time and then see if the 3rd or 4th ball as a leg break produces a better result? The first ball of several of the overs went way down the legside irrespective of whether I bowled around or over the stumps and I need to explore this. It may be that I'm still just be sloppy?

 

Action plan -

 

Bowl tomorrow night using the same approach. Record what I do and the points scored. Position the mat slightly differently and bowl over the stumps. Have the 'A' strip slightly wide of leg and have that as the '3 point' target. Bowl with more over-spin. Bowl some overs with a top-spin priority and adjust and record the target strip.

 

If you're looking for more info and ideas about Wrist Spin Bowling - check my Leg Break bowling page out here. http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/wrist-spin-bowling-leg-break.html

 

 

 





.

2nd match cancelled

There was a sniff of a chance that I might get a game today. Ben was selected for a 3rd XI game, but declined as he's doing GCSE revision at the moment, so I emailed and said I'd play if they needed a replacement. No-one answered the email, but then later on Friday on that Twitter thing someone said the game was cancelled because the other team couldn't get a team together. Desperate to have a game I contacted some mates who play for other teams to see if they were short, but they were okay.

Last night Joe and I made a long journey up to a place called Southwold in Suffolk to pick up a bike I'd won on Ebay. I've had the same type of bike for a few months now and as yet haven't been using it that much, but I thought if Joe had one that'd give me an excuse to use mine more frequently. I might try and get him to cycle to Camber sands when we go next, something I've not done for a while. We'll have to do a bit of training running up to it as it's a fair old stint.

64 miles...

 

This morning when we checked it out there were a couple of small things that needed to be adjusted. Once that was done we went for a ride which included some pretty big hills, so if we do that on a frequent basis that'll help with fitness - stamina and leg strength. Once we had that all done we then went over the paddock and had a bit of a knock about. Both of us tried a number of different things with the batting, Joe batted better than me, but that's because I just find Joe very difficult to bat against - he varies what he does so much.

 

The Paddock



The paddock this year is coming along nicely, we've done quite a bit of work, planted a lot of seed in the autumn and cut a load of bushes and brambles off of the fence on the right. We've mowed it this afternoon as there's rain forecast tomorrow and Wednesday and there's seed on the wicket at the moment, so a drop of rain would be good to see.

 

This afternoon we came up with a nice little accuracy drill which I may start using see here

Practice on the paddock

We've worked on the paddock again this year, rolled it and cut it and so far it's looking pretty good despite the fact that April has been very dry. The dryness has enabled us to get out there and bowl, so Joe and I have been practicing most evenings and then getting 2 or 3 sessions in at the weekend and things are coming along nicely. Joe's the one on the left here. My older son Ben on the right is in the midst of GCSE exam revision so is committed to that at the moment (Plus his girlfriend and his mobile phone). Joe on the other hand is full on cricket at the moment and I'm loving it. He's grown about 6" in the last year as well and is taller than both Ben and me, when I get a picture I'll post one up. As a consequence he's bowling a lot faster and batting with a lot more confidence, so I reckon he's got a good season ahead of him and I'm looking forward to playing in the 4's with him this summer.

The only issue I seem to have is overall cardio fitness and running, I was hoping to go cycling frequently to help with this, but as yet I've not been motivated enough to get out there and do it. So for the moment with a little less than two weeks to the first league match I'd say I was a little short of where I'd like to be.

Bowling - Everything looks promising at the moment with an improvement over last years bowling looking evident. I've been messing around with grips over the winter, flippers and the top spinner. At the end of last summer whilst on holiday in Cornwall mucking about with Ben and Joe I tried bowling finger spin, as they can both do it fairly well, Joe especially. I couldn't do it, but I found that I could still spin the ball like a leg break if I had the ball high up in the hand using a really fingery grip similar to an off-spinners grip. I then tried bowling with over-spin and found that worked and the ball was dead straight, so  over the winter when the weather allowed I bowled this fingery version of the top-spinner and slowly it's come together. It's a wholly different approach in comparison with my over-spinning leg break, but it does give me something very different and it's pretty accurate.

At winter nets I tried it as well and if not over-used it worked really well against batsmen at all levels. Because it's a completely different grip to my leg break I also though that there may be scope to twist my arm and wrist and dip the shoulder and see if I could make it break like an off-break and sure enough it did. I've been working with both these over on the paddock and bit by bit they're coming together.

In addition I've been mucking around with different wrist positions for my leg breaks and this shows real promise in that it enables me to bowl a variety of sub variations. One really obvious variation I'm gradually working with is the use of a lower arm. This produces a very different delivery to my standard 'Stock' Leg break in that the ball might turn more (Not 100% sure), but one big difference is that it skids in low, much lower than my bouncy stock ball that has more over-spin than side spin.

Flipper - Been working with this as well. The difficulty with the Flipper is that I need to bowl it frequently in order that I can suddenly pull it out of nowhere and bowl it on the stumps with accuracy. Of all the things that I'm working with this is the ball that I'd be more  inclined to scrap as it's the one that takes a couple of deliveries to get right and the first ball can end up off the cut strip if I try and get the speed up much higher.

April 2015

An unusual year ahead of us this year. My sons are 16 and 13, Ben's doing GCSE's and has a girlfriend and a mobile phone, so his commitment to cricket has waned a considerable amount which was expected. He's also going to be setting aside time to revise for his GCSE's, so how much cricket he'll play this year remains to be seen. Joe on the other hand at 13 and having now recovered from his RTA and taller than both Ben and me is looking to be a useful bowler this year. He bowls off-spin and medium pace, but his medium pace is getting quicker and quicker and I reckon by the end of this coming season he's going to be a tricky bowler to face especially if he continues to practice on the paddock across the road from me.

In the nets, Joe's been far more successful at dismissing me than Ben has, Ben bowls a length that I find easy to block, whereas Joe bowls on a really difficult length as far as I'm concerned and varies his pace and the way he bowls a great deal. Like Ben he has an off-cutter and unlike Ben Joe bowls with swing occasionally and seems to be more interested in bowling as an art.

Over the Easter break we've been doing some work over on the paddock getting it ready. It's been very wet, but this last couple of days with the sunny weather it's starting to dry out. We've cut back all of the grass, brambles and bushes that were growing along the fence as these were blocking out the light and encouraging drug users to hide behind the bushes and do their stuff. With the increase in light the wicket will grow nicely this year and we'll have some good practice sessions. We've focused on getting the off-stump channel line rolled really well this year so that batting might be possible. But we'll have to see how it dries out and how it plays.

Amelia Kerr Leg Spinner

Amelia Kerr Kiwi Leg Spinner - just 14!

Just found this via http://www.bigcricket.com/community/threads/videos-and-links.50392/page-27#post-571903 and just had to post it. I'm a fan of Women's cricket so when this link was posted I thought this sounded promising and sure enough it was!
Just check this out, a young female Peter Philpott tearing through the back end of the opposition of a televised T20 match in New Zealand. Let's hope she keeps this up and moves on to play for the Kiwi international team... might get to see her here in the UK playing against the English women's team? Definitely one to watch!

English Suburban gardens - can you play cricket in them? Asked an Aussie

 

Discussing with an Aussie on Bigcricket how people get started with spin bowling, I mentioned that kids will often turn up at a club having never 'Bowled' a ball, to be honest, some of them hardly ever have thrown a ball! He then asked about the sizes of our gardens...

So the images here are where I live. It's probably typical of suburban areas around London and other big cities with houses built from the 1960's onwards. Probably earlier?  Any post-war municipal housing projects are likely to have been designed with small gardens. For instance (Post war) one of the biggest municipal housing projects is just up the road from me in Dagenham (see the link). As with my estate where I live in Basildon, Essex... a 1970's 'New Town', the gardens are barely big enough to swing a cat. If you look below you can see the size of the cars in comparison with the gardens. My garden is probably 20' x 20' and this is not unusual here in the UK.

My garden is ringed below in the images. The bigger ring is 'The Paddock' an area of grass at the edge of the estate which is big enough for my sons and I to drag a roller and a mower over to in the Spring and maintain a practice wicket on.

To be honest this is probably the only place and example of anyone in the UK doing such a thing, but I have had the blessing of the council before and they're more than happy that I do it and besides we maintain the hedges and prevent them from growing over the grass and shading it.

This shot is the same area, but a wider shot with the local football pitch. But, yeah if you're an Aussie, just have a look on Google earth/maps and looks at towns like Basildon, Peterborough, Dagenham, Milton Keynes or Harlow, all big new towns and check out the sizes of the garden plots.

So, you can probably see, this factor combined with the fact that from Nov through late march, weather-wise it is pretty bleak. Kids are more likely to play football here in the UK especially kids from these areas as Football is culturally embedded into our society. I think most working class people see cricket as being Middle Class, if they've never been involved in it. So in answer to the blokes question, yeah you're right, it would be very rare for kids to play cricket in their back yards. It's rare for kids to play cricket full stop!

Fielding diagram - Nathan Lyons v Murali Vijay and Rohit Sharma 9th Jan 2015 at the SCG

Fielding diagram - Nathan Lyons v Murali Vijay and Rohit Sharma 9th Jan 2015 at the (4th day) SCG.

Captained by Steve Smith. Most of the runs were scored backward of square leg through the 45 degree 'Man round the corner' position.

 

In the last over at least, there may have been more, but I only saw the highlight package, the field was brought right up for the tail-enders. See the map below, I don't know where the 11th man was, but I guess he may have been in a straight long on or off position?

 

Here's the positions as I saw them with the suggested straight Long-on in place as a guessed position?