Wrist Spin Bowling

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel

The first home game Saturday 14th.

The forecast leading up to the game was one of bright and breezy with the wind being North Easterly and therefore from the Arctic, so the temperature was due to be about 16 degrees, which’ll be fine if the wind is light. Joe and I had a look at the wicket a few nights ago and it looked okay. The outfield looked pretty lush and thick so again any balls along the ground are not going to reach the boundary when we hit them. No doubt the opposition will be well armed with wanna-be Chris Gayles and they’ll take the aerial route! When I last looked it looked as though we’d be pretty short of batting again other than John Bedford and Dutton. Or will 13 year old Travis Singleton have another good day and score some runs for us?

Gutted, 11 o'clock at night I get a call from Luke Daw asking if Joe and I can play at Leigh-On-Sea in the 3rd XI. Having answered the text I then noticed that during the day, Phil had sent a couple of other text messages asking if Ben wanted to play. Ben's not played for two years. Very reluctantly we took a hit and agreed which totally screws up everything for us...

1. Michelle's then stuck at home without a car.

2. I was going to shoot pictures of the 4th XI team for a project at college, that's now screwed.

3. Less of a chance that we'll get a shed load of overs to bowl and we'll bat at 10 and 11.

We weren't happy, we were looking forward to a game at home in the 4's.

When we got there, it turned out there was loads of swapping around done last night and the teams looked nothing like those that were last posted on the website last. We were a man short and had to play with the following players...

1. Phil Murdoch

2. Chris Debond *#

3. Mike Blerkom

4. Dave Thompson #

5. Farhan Malik *

6. Anthony Ayres

7. Joe Thompson

8. Brandon Debond *

9. Josh Debond *

10. Charlie Blerkom

Finger Spinners #Wrist Spinners

As we drove to the same venue as last week Joe said "I hope we bat first today". The outcome of the toss was they won and opted to field.

Batting got off to a decent start, but then faltered (I didn't photograph the batting stats). Chris Debond was rattling along at good pace, but then was caught at extra cover by a fantastic catch by 'Jeddy' - looking over his shoulder watching the ball and running in the direction the ball was going he had to dive at the last second to get to the ball, the dive was a massive full length one with a big impact landing and he still hung onto it. Very impressive.

Around 20 overs or so it wasn't looking that clever and Pat Ayres who was scoring said it looked like 120 was possible, then Mike Blerkom got into gear and started to make a difference after a slow-ish start. Anthony Ayres towards the end of the game made some vital runs riding his luck being put down a couple of times, but at the end of the game with me facing the last ball of the match and hitting it and running 3 with Farhan being run-out in the process we reached 170 which seemed defendable.

Joe who batted at 9 was told the same as me... "Swing at it". Went for 0 - clean bowled and was part of a team hat-trick orchestrated by their bloke Jeddy.

Spinners on their team...

J.Elliott - Left arm orthodox (finger spinner)

H.Jeddy - Right arm finger spinner.

I asked about Leg-Spinners in their team and they said they never had them, I then asked what about in the club? They all looked at each other, one of them then said...

"Er... there's a bloke who's just joined the club and I think someone said he bowled leg-spin... If he does, he's the only bloke in the whole club as far as I'm aware and I'm not 100% sure even if he does".

"What about finger spinners"?

"Yeah we've got loads of them - two in the squad today".

After a half decent tea, we took the field to see what we could do. I didn't have a clue as to how Joe or I would be deployed, I guessed that Joe would be amongst the openers in line with the fact that I'm fairly certain 'The Club' would like to see him playing at a higher level. If that is the case they need to handle him carefully because as with Ben, he's not that fussed on cricket and if you were to give him half a chance for not playing he'd be easily persuaded. He likes the 4th XI, but is reluctant to play in the 3rds. He's only 14 and enjoys the 4th XI games, I personally would advise the club to leave him in the 4th XI for this season and allow him to have the success that this will bring him and therefore grow his confidence. Then when needed as in the case of today, get him into the 3rds.

As you can see he was given the new ball and opened into the wind from the southern end, after being asked what end he wanted to bowl from. He should have bowled from the other end as he swings the ball from leg to off and the wind would have assisted him with this as it would have been with him diagonally, I need to talk to him about this and ask him if he realised that would have been the better option. He went with the opposite end as that's the end he bowled from last week when the wind was in the opposite direction.

As you can see below he bowled well taking two wickets and his first ever bowled and caught.

The fact that Joe was involved in a 3rd XI game and it was one that we won, will help with the integration of Joe into the other teams, but they will need to be careful how they handle him remembering that he is only 14. I think in time he will make the transition and I reckon in the longer term if I and the club can keep him in the game he'll want to move away from playing in the same team as me, it's just the nature of the beast. But, the trick will be to keep him on board and keeping him liking the game and liking the team he plays in, he doesn't take it too seriously and it bothers him when other people do and I think that's down to the fact that he's the age he is. As he gets older he'll naturally get more competitive and will understand other people's desire to win and their passion.

My bowling went well, both spells were spent bowling at the same two players. One an old bloke who’d already introduced himself by way of asking about our older player Wayne Morgan, When I asked him how he knew Wayne he said “Wayne’s our 12^th Man, he normally plays in the Essex Vets 2^nd XI team, but occasionally plays for us”. This bloke was one of the Spinners in their team neither of whom had spun the ball very much at all. The other player was a kid from the SEDCB district team that Joe’s practiced with all winter and will be playing with soon. With such a bad start it was obvious that they’d been put in at 9 and 10 to block out the game for a draw.

I still haven’t got my head around the new rules yet, but I noticed that the overs suddenly appeared on the score board after drinks and were counting up to what I thought was 20 and then someone said ‘Come on lads’ with 10 on the board ‘There’s only 6 more overs to get one of these two out’. I’d bowled tidily in the first spell - the kid had cut a leg-break poorly through backward point where Joe was fielding and it just about evaded him – far more uppish than he’d have hoped for, the ball dropping short and being fielded for two.

The 2^nd spell was better because they’d got a sniff of getting batting points (125) and started to hit the ball more frequently rather than just blocking it. They rotated the strike well frequently hitting singles and had slowly edged their way to about 15 short of the 125 required for the points. As soon as they moved up a gear the chances started to come, the ball was in the air a lot, but luck was on their side as they moved ever closer to the 125, but with it came the sniff of victory for us. The last man who’d been sitting with his pads on now for nearly an hour and a half was visibly nervous even from right out here we could see his leg jigging up and down and he didn’t look as though he fancied his chances. We could sense that if we could either of these two we'd be in with a shout but they were more than competent batsman if left to defend and block for the draw, but greed was there for the batting points and it looked to be their un-doing. Both of them started to make mistakes, my bowling was good - I wanted the old geezer and in the last 12 balls one of the balls broke and must have missed the edge of bat by billimeters! The kid couldn't pick the top spinner and that had him all at sea, but generally both of them being as good as they were dealt with the leg breaks quite well, but as soon as they went looking for runs and started to play their shots it started to fall apart at the seams.

Buzz played his part, him and Blerkom decided that they'd mix the bowling up, after my first spell I though that would be it, but I was brought back on again after Joe and Anthony had been deployed again with the fast stuff, but with the fast stuff brought runs and it was in this phase that they changed their mind set and looked to play their shots. Buzz changed the end that Anthony bowled from and in no time the kid was clean bowled and LOS were still a few runs short of the 125 that they were now looking for. This brought the nervous bloke on and within a few balls it was all over with and we'd won the game. The star of the game for us was Anthony Ayres with his
12-3-32-6...
.

It was really good to be involved in a game where we'd won, but I still don't think one win will win Joe over and encourage him to play in the 3's more regularly. Yeah he enjoyed it, but he is just 14 and he's not obsessed with cricket in the same way that others are.

The on-going tally between Joe and I as far as I can recall (I didn't copy the score sheet for the 1st friendly match).

Me - 14-0-52-3
Joe 26-2-65-4

Spinner count.

3 games down Finger spinners - 15, Wrist Spinners 6

Chris Debond

Mike Blerkon and Buzz

Anthony Ayres

Joe Thompson checking his bowling figures.

Pat Ayres

Joe Thompson happy having won the game.

J.Elliott bowling to Mike Blerkom

Thursday, May 12, 2016

First league match - this coming Saturday 7th May. B&PCC v Leigh-On-Sea CC

It’s Thursday as I type, the squad was posted up on the website on Tuesday and a few of the regulars appeared on the list along with some new names. See below.

If you look there’s a new aspect to the squad list that identifies the ratio of finger-spinners to wrist spinners. I’m under the apparently misguided impression that there is a dearth of Wrist Spinners because it’s so easy to do and there are hardly any finger spinners because that’s so ridiculously difficult to do. So with the teams I play in over this season I’m going to try and identify the ratio between Wrist-Spinners and Finger-Spinners. At the moment I firmly believe that there are far more Finger Spinners than Wrist-Spinners but on Bigcricket.com there’s a bunch of people that are assuring me I’m very wrong, so we’ll see. Last week’s came as far as I’m concerned was packed with ‘Wristies’ as there were two of us one on each team, but in-line with my observations there were at least 4 finger spinners on my team and our team was bowled out cheaply before the finger spinners were deployed on their team, so there may have been more?

The weather has changed massively, the weekend was cold last week, but on Monday when we all went back to work the wind direction changed from northerly to southerly and now we’re into Spring proper with temperatures today in the low 20’s and by the weekend mid 20’s so we’re going from freezing our nuts off with three layers and coats to sun-bathing and shirts off at the weekend.

Leigh-On-Sea are a new team for me and a new venue so hopefully there’ll be opportunities to shoot pavilions and report on whether their wicket is spin-friendly. I’ve not checked yet, but I reckon their ground must be ‘Belfairs’. We’ve gone down a league too, so we should do okay this season.

Injuries – I twisted my knee and pulled something last weekend, but this week I’ve not bowled or done anything to stress it any further, so have rested it, so hopefully with a knee support I’ll come through if I take it easy. As proved last week if I have to, I can bowl off of a Terry Jenner-esque two step walk in and still take wickets and that was against a 3^rd XI team described as being strong, so hopefully it’ll come good this weekend.

Fitness – I’m not feeling it at the moment because of the crap weather at the start of spring, so if the knees recovered enough and I come through this weekend unscathed I’ll have to start working on fitness. My back has nearly fully recovered from a lifting/carrying injury, but thankfully doesn’t seem to be affected by my bowling, so hopefully I’ll get to bowl for more than 2 overs this weekend? Having said that there’s loads of names in the initial squad sheet that I don’t recognise and for all I know they may all be bowlers?

New rules – Aside from the 45 overs rule, I heard at the weekend that there’s a maximum bowling allowance. No-one is allowed to bowl any-more than 14 overs and this apparently is designed to stop ‘Old blokes’ from bowling the whole game from one end, which I’ve seen happen once before with a Southend EMT game at Langdon Hills, this they’re hoping will give kids a chance to bowl. With only 45 overs it looks as though I’d be dead lucky to get 14 overs in the future, our team usually has people queuing up to bowl and I reckon if you get 5 blokes bowling 9 overs each you’re going to be counting yourself lucky. My son Joe is usually given his full allocation of 12 because of his ability, and if he’s supported by another seam bowler doing a similar job, that’ll leave 21 overs for the rest of us to fight over, it doesn’t sound good at all especially if there’s more than 5 ‘Bowlers’ in the team.

http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/cricket-pitches-in-south-essex-district.html

First league game of the season and the good news is that we fielded 11 players…

Weather – Warm -22-23 degrees Centigrade, south easterly breeze 15-20 mph, with hazy cloud varying between 40%-60% cover. (We played on the wicket top left) Double click the image for an assessment of whether it was a spinning wicket

Lee Dutton* – Captain
Jamie Britton – Wicket Keeper.
Joe Thompson*
Dave Thompson@
Farhan Malik*
Abhinanadan Bidari
Gopal Viswanathan
Jayanand Shivapujimath
Steve Bonnett
Josh Debond*
Travis Singleton

* - Finger Spinners

@ - Wrist Spinners

I asked the opposition about their spin options and they said they had one finger spinner, no Leg-Spinners, when I was talking about this Lee and another bloke joined in and said “You got a lot of kids a few years back trying Leg-Spin, but once they all got up to adult cricket they tended to disappear… it’s too hard, that’s why you get so many finger spinners, Leg-Spin is so much harder to bowl”.

The team had a very different look to it, with a lot of new blokes including two kids Josh and Travis who are only 13 years old. Tony and Liam Harms were not there and the word is because of Tony’s new job we wont be seeing him for a minimum of 5 weeks, whether that’s the same for Liam or not I’m not sure? Farhan has played in the 4’s before and possibly Gopal, but the other two blokes were new-comers.

Dutton won the toss and with all the new blokes being unknown quantities opted to field. Before we went out I marked out my run-up from the end I wanted to bowl from (Southern end) and had a practice next to the wicket to see how my knee twist injury from last week was feeling and it was obvious that the new energetic run-up was a no-go, so there and then I decided to play it safe and come in off of a Terry Jenner two step approach to the crease if I was asked to bowl.

Joe - was asked to open and I was at the other end with spin. Joe as always got off to a good start bowling seam up, he continued to do so all the way through both his spells, but he did say at the end he was at one point considering bowling some finger-spin, but opted not to.

Joe’s 2^nd spell was the better of the two with two wickets being taken, the first wicket on the scorecard was a run-out by Jayanand. But the two wickets in the last over with the very last 2 balls were very good, as was the bowling around it, excellent length, getting the ball to swing away and go away off the seam. He was also unlucky in the first spell as a ball was hit straight to Steve Bonnett at Gully, a high ball that Steve jumped up to and parried upwards off the top of his fingers and not being able to gather, but he stopped it going for a certain four despite the state of the outfield.

My first spell went okay. One of the two first balls, possibly the first ball hit the bloke on the legs plumb as far as I was concerned - nice and full, but I didn't go up initially and then did so half heartedly and was turned down. Ball number three was exactly the same, but this time I went up for it and the batsman was on his way back to the sheds. With all the new blokes, Dutton was looking to give everyone a go, so I was off after 4 despite looking quite threatening. The 4's unfortunately were both wrong-uns that were a little short, and again the same in the 2nd spell, so that needs some work. Other than the handful of Wrong-Uns I kept it quite simple, there was very little on offer for spinner on this wicket and Lee was of the same opinion, so the order of the day was to pitch it up. No wides as you can see, which was pretty good, there were a few leg-side balls, which because they were pretty full, none of the blokes played that well. I had one ball that got through the gate, can't remember whether it was a wrong-un or a Leg-Break, but it hit the inside edge or something and deflected missing the leg-stump by a gnats breath.

The other thing I noticed when I was bowling was that one of the balls drifted a lot, drift isn't something I see with my bowling much, as I have very vertical arm normally, so I can only assume with this different two step 'Run-in' my arm must have come down a little or maybe it was the head wind which was blowing slightly left to right.

I found this drift aspect quite interesting, as last week the Leg-spinner at the Chelmsford game was getting loads of drift and it was obviously as a result of the Malinga style arm. In the past I've practiced with a much lower arm and done so with a good level of success, the ball turns more and drift as I recall was more evident. Along with that the ball turned more too. The thing I'd have to work on is getting it so that I could switch from a high arm and gradually bring it down and then go from high to low and still maintain accuracy. It's something I might work on Wednesday at nets next week.

Considering my knees knackered, it was an okay performance and with the wicket. The opposition were very complimentary about my bowling with a number of them commending me for bowling so well!

2-0-13-2 (last week)

This week 6-0-23-1

Grand Total - 8-0-36-3 plus this week I took a catch off of Lee Dutton's bowling.

Dutton came on a little later and bowled well, he was happy as he's starting to suffer from arthritis in his fingers and was saying that it hurt to bowl, plus last week he was involved in a car incident and suffered whiplash. When he was bowling he had me at Mid-on, and one of the better batsman hit a ball straight at me and I did virtually the same thing as I did last week and dropped it again. But I redeemed myself in the same spell where one of the blokes T.Bull who looked like a steady batsman hit one right up in the sky in my general direction. For a moment I'd written it off and then realised it was going up more than it was going along, so changed my mind and went after it and got myself in position. Lee was watching and said to himself Oh crap, this is going down as well (I'm not known for my success rate with high catches like this), but I caught it... not perfectly, but it stuck and the geezer was out... Nice.

5-0-15-1 Lee Dutton

Another surprisingly good bowling performance came from Travis Singleton, who's only 13 he bowled as per below...

Batting Yeah this didn't go so well as you can see from the sorry looking scores below. 2 new blokes top scored Jayanand below and one of the new kids Travis. The rest of us were a bit of a shambles, which was a shame as the bowling (see the bowling stats for their team) was a little ropey at times, but then as one of my mentors used to say to me ***t bowling gets wickets. Having said that some of our bowling was a bit off the mark too.

My dismissal was crap. After all the net sessions and that carrying through to club nets and despite last weeks 4th ball dismissal, I was hoping to make some runs with the support of Jayanand. It seemed that one of their better bowlers was saved for this part of the game and he was on when I went out after Jamie. I kept him at bay for a couple of balls and then had the prospect of facing one of the kids (Wrobel) that seemed to be bowling at an innocuous pace. The first ball he served up was short and legside... A gift in most people's eyes and I thought the same... whoa that's short and it's safe and then I knocked it straight into the hands of Barton at head height at square leg. Gutted - out for 0 again off of about 4 balls faced, same as last week. Note to self Hit the ball into the ground - roll the wrists.

Jayanand Shivapujimath here was our best bat of the game followed very closely by the 13 year old Travis Singleton.

Image below left to right Lee Dutton, Josh Debond, Travis Singleton and Steve Bonnett.

The wicket looking north

The 2 captains at the toss.

Joe Thompson medium fast today. 10-1-22-2 He bowled well today, getting the ball to swing away and move off the seam away from the bat and deployed his knuckle ball.

Below Left to right... Lee Dutton, Jayanand Shivapujimath, Abhinanadan Bidari and Steve Bonnett.

Mobile phone hell... Abhi looking a bit left out.

Lee said to Joe - play with a straight bat, get on the front foot... Joe nicks an edge for a spectacular dive off of the wicket keeper and like so many of us out for 0.

Some of the lads said they'd be back next week...

Hello what's Bob Willis doing at Leigh On Sea? The opposition start to pack up.

Dutton gathering the cash...

The drainage ruts...

The drainage ruts run at regular intervals across the outfield.

Joe and Jamie Britton trying to jam the bags into the back of out Astra.

The next game is at home against Horndon-On-The-Hill, who are a team I don't recall playing before, but I think they're going to be quite strong because their team was bolstered by the demise of Pegasus.

Joe my younger son was saying that we've not gone down a league, because there was a big shift around in the organisation of the what teams played against who, making it so that we play teams that are more local to us, rather than go miles to play, which I don't mind myself even though it's me that has to stump up for the diesel! Joe was saying we're pretty much playing at the same level again this year, which if it's true is a shame because it'll be a season of getting beaten virtually every game. I guess we'll see as we go through the season?

It was a disappointing loss especially as the opposition captain was saying that his team was weak. I don't know what it is that we do wrong, I came away from this thinking, maybe it's nothing to do with the batsmen, maybe it's the way we field? When we field, the positions are always pretty conventional, but for some reason when the opposition hit the ball they get it in the gaps? Then I thought is it the bowling? There were shed loads of extras in this game, in fact I don't think I've ever seen as many extras in game ever - other than kids cricket.

We bowled the 45 overs and bowled 23 wides and 1 x No-Ball. This was down to the fact that some of the players were totally new to the 4th XI and Dutton gave everyone a go, possibly to see who does what? Hopefully this next match he'll take a slightly different approach, now he's got some idea of people's strengths and weaknesses?

They bowled 23 overs and bowled one more extra than us. So perhaps they were doing a similar thing? I did ask their players about who bowled what, trying to find all these wrist spinners that people are talking about on the internet, but there was only one...me. A handful of finger-spinners, but just the one leg-spinner.

It's a funny old game this cricket, difficult to make sense of? Or was it they just had far superior batsmen? We lost so badly and they didn't even have to use Bob Willis ;-)

2 games down. Spin count

Finger spinners 10, Wrist Spinners 4

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Saturday, April 30, 2016

First match of the season v Chelmsford CC 3rd XI

After weeks of arctic wind freezing us to death, the weekend came good despite loads of people declining to play across three teams. The club didn't even attempt to get the 4th XI team out knowing full well that the cross-over with the end of the football season would mean it would never happen. It turned out that only two teams played this weekend the 1st and 2nd XI's.

Weather was bright and sunny, bit of a breeze and 13 degrees on the thermometer in the car. Although during our innings a squally April shower passed by, potentially threatening the game, but it missed us. But as it passed by the wind increased, the sun went in and the temperature dropped by several degrees.

Wayne freezing to death with several layers. I had two pairs of trousers on, a long t-shirt, a cricket shirt and a jumper and then a coat and was still cold when scoring.

We were fielded first and in the first few overs I dropped a ball that was hit at me whilst at mid wicket -looked like a ball that would have been one of those that rockets for a 6 at head height. I managed to parry it and bounced up and forwards a bit and I thought 'I've got this' only to then fumble it and it went to ground. But, somewhere in the process I twisted on my knee and something went awry. This then meant that I couldn't run around without limping. We had an extra player and the other team what with it being a friendly said that we could swap over players pretty as and when we felt like. I persevered and knowing there was a bloke on the boundary I came off for a while.

Joe bowled well, taking our first wicket - a bloke that was doing okay and the lead scorer at that point in their team. It was at that point I left the field.

I then took the opportunity to go and take some pictures for my Typology project see here. At this ground there were 4 pitches, one of which is Galleywood CC and that had a really nice traditional style pavilion. The only thing is I had a crap camera, but I still got the shots.

Walking around my knee didn't feel any better, but as I came back to the match I was called back on and asked to bowl. I tried to come off of the new run-up and bowled, but it wasn't good and then decided to come off the Terry Jenner style run-up which is a lot slower, but more accurate and gives me the options of a Wrong-un and a Top-Spinner. I took me 4 balls to get it right, but in the first over against a left-hander one turned nice and bounced well, cramped him up and the ball came off the top edge and he was caught at Mid-wicket by Luke Daw. That over with the messy start I went for 10. The next over was better - another wicket... A right hander having seen a couple leg breaks wasn't ready for a big turning wrong-un - again virtually the same thing, cramped him up and came off the top edge and went straight up in the air for Mike Blerkom (Wicket keeper) to safely catch. 2-0-13-2. Somewhere in there I'd bowled another 2 wrong-uns and they'd both turned a lot and none of the batsmen had played a successful shot to them.

Batting didn't go well for any of us. I didn't get a shot of the score book, but I think we took 8 wickets for 192 off of 40 overs and batting we fell short of 100. Chris Debond and Luke Daw making the biggest contribution with the bat. I batted at 8 with Luke and was bowled by a slow ball, played through it about 30 seconds to early. Luke at the other end said as I walked off, I was just thinking, I need to tell you about this blokes slower ball...

We lost by having all been bowled out for 93.

Spinner check

Our team... 2 x wrist-spinners, 5 x finger spinners
Their team... 1 x Wrist Spinner. We were bowled out cheaply so we probably didn't get to see any of the finger spinners.

Their spinner was interesting, he was getting the ball to drift miles. Watching him it was apparent that he had a very low arm at the release point. Those that faced him said he was relatively easy to play because of this - you knew he wasn't going to bowl anything in the way of variations. He had a long run-up which he came in at an angle from.

As he went through his action he seemed to be really low - either a massive delivery stride or his front leg was collapsing. He also veered all over the shop as he ran in and then over-rotated in the action and stopped abruptly in the follow through. That aside he seemed to be bowling pretty well. Unfortunately I didn't photograph their scorebook, so can't say how well he did do or whether he took any wickets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7QF6_Z5Mww

Click the image above for a video of the bloke bowling

Some photos from the match...

Chelmsford CC pavilion

Galleywood CC pavilion

Joe dispensing the drinks to the Wrist Spinner

Joe waiting to bat alongside the scoreboard and a cherry tree in blossom

Spring cherry blossom

G-man all wrapped up for an early season cricket game.

G-Man on his way to bat with warm headgear.

Mike Blerkom scoring.

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Sunday, April 03, 2016

Joe's leg update.

I haven't posted anything about this for a while as it was going through the process of a court case. If you know about it and have been a follower for some years you'll remember it was around this time 4 years ago my younger son was run down on a pelican crossing by a young girl in a Ford KA. See the link below for the horrific injuries he sustained along with the Xrays.

http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/joes-progress-5-pictures.html

Joe was 10 at the time.

This is the side of the leg that wasn't hit. The big scar at the bottom is where his leg bent so much before snapping, that the skin at this point stretched to the point where it split open. This was the gaping great hole in Joe's leg you'll see in the post above. The 2nd scar mid way up his lower leg is where the bone once it had snapped came through his skin was scraped along the road. The two small scars up near his knee are where the metal pins where put in and removed. The bulge on his shin may be due to the additional calcium growing where the bone grew back.

Remarkably this is the impact side, the scar is barley visible in this light, but it's there at the base of his calf muscle. Again the small scar at the top is where the pins came in and were taken out.

Friday, April 01, 2016

Pre-season bowling development.

Bowling development. 5 weeks to go till the first proper game of the season, 3 weeks till the chance of a friendly match. Not long to work on the new bowling action that I've been developing since last September. Quick re-cap, last season went really well at the start because of the input and feedback from a wicket keeper we had play with us for a number of weeks (Mike Blerkom). He made some observations about my bowling in that I had a couple of basic run-ups... (1) A Terry Jenner-esque walk to the crease and bowl off of 2 steps or (2). A longer run-up albeit all over the place and inconsistent. He advised me to stick with the longer version and I took notice as he's a current 2nd XI player and has in the past played in the 1st XI and knows a bit about cricket.

Up until I strained my Achilles tendon batting I'd bowled better than I have done for years and on reflection at the end of the season made the decision to work on the longer run-up. This was also influenced by watching a video featuring Glenn McGrath on how to work out your optimum run-up. See here.

So, in September I made a start... see my Youtube channel here. A big turning point came when Tony M a coach and contributor on Big Cricket contacted me directly and gave me some pointers and advice. My bowling then started to come together and by the end of November when winter set in properly it was looking very promising. Winter put a stop to the development and now I'm trying to play catch-up a little, slightly thwarted by the fact that so far the Easter break here in the UK has been crap as its a lot earlier in the year than usual. Fingers crossed the forecast from tomorrow onwards is for an improvement and I'll be able to work on some of the things I've made observations of in the video below. Double click on the image below to watch the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uopI5PETHI0

In my usual lecturer style and advocating what I teach, I'll reflect on the bowling using the Gibbs reflective method...

What Happened. Primarily we were at Writtle to work on our batting see here but with three of us it meant while two were in the batting net there was an opportunity to have a bowl so I spent 10 minutes or so bowling. I mixed up bowling with and without a ball.

Feeelings. Initially I didn't think it went that well, it felt as though there were a number of problems with the bowling action and the outcome at the other end wasn't that special either.

Evaluation (Good and bad). Good was the fact that I actually took the time out to bowl when that wasn't the key objective of the Writtle visit and the fact that I had the camera to record myself. Other good things included the speed that I was bowling and my overall fitness. It was commented at the last net session at the club that my bowling speed has gone up and this was one of the key things that Mike Blerkom thought was a key thing I needed to work on. Bad stuff, despite the fact that it looked fast it didn't feel as correct as it had been back in November when I was spending more time working on the action. Also the percentage of good balls versus bad balls at the business end wasn't good.

Analysis. Without going into to technical stuff straight away, watching the video back there's obvious things going on. One that I noticed is that I kind of waver as I approach the crease. The other thing which is a throwback to the old days, is the observed over-rotation. Other key observations are the hip and knee thrust aspect, the hip and knee don't drive through properly in most of the footage in the original 10 minute version of the video. When bowling without the ball it's a lot better, but in this session I wasn't able to bring that aspect of the action with the ball in my hand, so that needs some work.

I think the main thing is the lack of time at the moment given over to bowling practice. Conventional club nets sessions are useless because of the period of time between balls, so I need to set aside bowling time amongst all of the being put into developing my batting. I think if the time is given over to bowling, the changes will come along with improvements quite quickly. Looking at the video, there's a couple of things I know I should work on straight away... (1). The hip-drive and (2). The over rotation. I think with the hip drive, the over-rotation might come together as a consequence of working on the hip-drive.

At the start of the bowling action in the first phase PDS, I note in the video that my head turns to the side during the gather, I'm not sure if this is an issue or not, but it's something I'll keep an eye on though in the next sequence of videos which hopefully I'll shoot tomorrow. There are other issues such as not getting right up on the toes at FFC, but I'll leave that for the end of the coming week.

Conclusion. It seems okay, the few problems I think will be fairly easy to iron out, and possibly the key thing to do is bowl more so that the action is grooved and increases in consistency.

Action plan. Work on the hip drive tomorrow and the over-rotation.

My other active blogs include…

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel

Readers Windballs

Reader Windballs We were down to our last one of these, so needed to get some more of them. We use these all the time for training and practice and they're great; a decent weight, good bounce properties, hard-wearing and because of the colour easy to find if they get lost in the bush/trees. Buy them in bulk and you'll get them at a decent price. Look out for the postage as that normally hikes up the price loads.

Double click on the image for video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2zy7mBlmig

I got these from http://www.notonlybowls.com/ and paid £17.94 with free postage as long as I picked them up from my local Argos. Once they were ready I got a text/email with a code that I then presented to the staff at Argos and they handed them over.

This blog is no longer updated and new content can be found via the blogs below.

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel

More pre-season nets

As the start of the season approaches... 2 potential friendlies on 23rd and 30th April, we're looking to have a few nets sessions with the bowling machine and today saw the first of three we've got planned. If you're a regular on the blog or the big cricket forum you'll know that I can't bat and that my highest score ever is 16 against Orsett two years ago. There's been no improvement, as that year we were promoted up to a far better league and our team struggled. I had a couple of promising starts with scores of 11 and 14 that came far more fluently than my 16, but I was always let down by the bloke at the other end as I bat at either 10 or 11.

With those two double figure scores being thwarted in the usual no.10/11 way I sensed that the more positive approach to my batting that I'd adopted seemed to be paying off. It seemed to have come about by virtue of more practice with a more positive mind-set. The practice aspect was interesting as coming to the game so late in life, the chances to practice for instance with a bowling machine was non-existent and I figured that if I was able to have someone or something to put the ball in a specific area consistently I might have the chance to improve? I can't remember how it happened, but looking around I found a venue with a bowling machine that in late October was (1) empty and (2) relatively cheap and decided that I'd give it a go. In the worst case scenario, I might come away from a handful of sessions being less fearful of the ball I figured?

Better, still what I wanted was to move up the order a little... (8)? so that I had the chance to make a contribution with the bat. So back in October and through November and December Joe and I started to go to Writtle Cricket centre for an hour or two every fortnight with specific aims. On the first visit it soon became very apparent that this was the potential answer to the problem, the more balls you face the more likely you're going to be able to figure things out and make a fist of staying in and scoring a few runs. So over that period we've been working on playing with a straight bat and I've definitely made some advances which numerous people at the club have commented on having either seen the videos or my batting at pre-season nets at the club.

Recently I videoed my batting over at Mopsies and posted it on Youtube (Double click the image).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP5vveQsZhg

Off the back of that, one of the coaches on Bigcricket commented on it privately, pointing out the fact that I'm jumping away from the ball when it's on my leg and offered me some drills and guidance. Yesterday I spent 3 x 20 minute sessions working specifically on this aspect of my batting and the results are here (Double click the image for the video).

Although there seems to be a significant improvement whilst I know the balls coming into the legs, I found it a lot harder to maintain the discipline when the bowling was mixed up - different lengths, offside. legside and on the stumps, so there's still some work to do.

My other active blogs include…

This is an example of some of the bowling vids on my Youtube channel