Here in the UK we're in the depths of winter, it's nowhere near as cold as it was last year and todays been relatively mild at 11 degrees. With winter nets approaching at the end of this month I've been out and had a bit of a bowl, probably did the equivalent of about 10 - 12 overs. It went okay considering how unfit I've got in the last 6-8 weeks. Having said that, all my niggles seem to have repaired themselves, the knee feels pretty good - no soreness from that, my plantar fasciitis is pretty much under control and non existent, so as long as I get a good warm up regime in place I'm looking forward to a better year this year, as the last two, what with the root and branch changes to my bowling action along with the recovery from the Googly syndrome, meant that I've had a bad couple of years.
At the moment my focus is going to be on what's happening bodily, out of the bound I'm looking to get nicely side on, looking over the leading arm shoulder. I'm going to try and extend the length of my stride a little into the pivot and there I'll be looking to get nice and tall and up on to the ball of the foot, the final bit will be the arm speed factor. I bumped into my protoge Frank Farrington today with his Dad as I was finishing up and he grabbed a ball saying that it was the first time he'd thrown a ball since late Oct and the thing I noticed straight away was his fast arm speed, he really whips his arms over and I reckon this has a lot to do with his success as a wrist spinner. So this is another key area I'll be looking at. The objective between now an April when the season starts will be to tie all these things together and get the action through the crease nice and smooth and consistent. Some upper body fitness work is going to be required as that seems to be the weak point tied in with some core strength work. So it'll planks and rotational press ups for me and as from tomorrow I'll be attending Yoga classes as well.
Oh yeah yesterdays post re Frank on Google - i had a look tonight and he was in the 3rd place slot!
