Another session in the nets last night, another hour so we (Joe and I) had about half an hour each and it does feel like it is making a difference. Looking at my batting from the videos in Sept/October I feel that there's been a significant improvement, but I am tempering that with some caution as I do realise that the way the machine operates it might be a lot more consistent than someone bowling at you on a pitch along with all of the variations that the pitch produces? But I think the biggest move forwards is that I just feel more confident and possibly less scared of the ball which are needless to say key factors.
This is me back in September prior to ever batting in the nets against a machine.
Then this below is last night after 3 half hour sessions... Double click the image for the video.
With regards facing real bowlers and the natural inconsistencies they have as an intrinsic aspect of their bowling, when facing my younger son Joe (Bloke in the video above) now, I'm a lot more confident and able to play him with far more finesse and ease, so the prospects going forwards do seem to be positive.
I'm still struggling with balls targeted at the leg-stump area, but increasingly despite the awkward approach and technique I am hitting the ball and for the most part keeping it along the ground, but there's more work to do.
In conjunction with my other recent blogs and the experiments with the Kashmir bats, the bad news for Kashmir bats is that it's not going that well have a look here.
When we practice currently we do so on a cricket ground with an all weather strip. It's usually my younger son and I we're primarily bowlers, so we're tail-enders. In order to make the practice more worthy we set out a field using cones, so if the balls in the air and it goes anywhere near the cones it's deemed as being caught. Bowling today I noticed with my initial field which was split 50-50 legside and offside I was carted primarily over the legside. Realising that my son is far better hitting the ball through the legside I then considered 'Angry Ranga's' field posted on Big Cricket here and then came up with my only slightly less radical approach below... Using this field below I managed to get my younger son out 12 times in 46 balls only going for 20 runs or so, most of the dismissals would have been catches.
So this field may be an option against a tail ender like myself or my son who struggle to hit the ball easily through the off-side and rely on scoring runs on the leg-side.
Check out my other blog here - this is all about Leg-spin bowling and nothing else. Double click on the image below.
