Spring arrived at last

The sun came out today and in the sun trap in our garden it was warm enough to get your shirt off and get some much needed vitamin D. My mind turned to the fact that the first game is about 5 weeks away. It's a home game on May 12th against Horndon on the Hill, I was hoping that I might have some analysis on some of their batsmen in my on-line database of local batsmen which I started last year. Unfortunately I've got nothing on any of the Horndon players, so will have to resort to doing some on-field analysis prior to bowling if I have the opportunity. 

One of the blokes from big cricket has commented on that page suggesting that the degree of analysis is possibly too much and that the approach might be better if you categorise the batsmen into types? This'll be the approach I'll be using on-field, looking for strengths and weaknesses of the batsman and then hopefully bowling to exploit the weakness and avoid the strengths and then backing the bowling approach up with an appropriate field.

I bowled a lot from the Graveyard end last year...

Which you can see has more field behind the bowlers arm, whereas the other end is backed by big trees. As I only play 4th XI cricket we don't have screens and I didn't realise how difficult it is to see the ball when bowled out of the trees. In one of the last games I played last season I bowled against an old bloke who was an 'England over 70's' player or something and he opened and walked off holding his bat, having won the game for his team. After the game where I'd only bowled 4 overs - mostly at him and had managed to keep it really tight he said to me "Why did they take you off, I was really struggling against you - you were giving it so much air, I couldn't pick it out of the trees and it was a nightmare". So, tactic change number one for this season will be to bowl from the Estate End where possible. Funnily enough my captain who bowls right-arm finger spin always bowls from that end...

Other things - happening cricket related, If you follow the blog I've delayed the start of my get fit regime this year, because I always seem to fall ill in the midst of it and then get put back months and generally start the season on the back foot. This year I've rested up fully through the really cold months and it's only now that I'm thinking about getting it going. So at the moment I'm sporadically cycling around a circuit to increase cardio and I think I'll now move into doing that at least once a day now. The cycling is a 15 minute stint with a couple of hefty hills on a single speed bike...

At home indoors I'm doing terra-band exercises, working on upper body - shoulders, arms, triceps and forearms. Loads of planks for core strength and I'm starting to do foot raises to strengthen my Achilles tendon. I'll also start to do a load of Yoga style stretches as well in the coming days. Hopefully with this approach I wont over-do the exercise and weaken my resistance to falling ill which someone had suggested might be happening in previous years. We'll have to see how it goes.

Another warm day tomorrow.

Working on our practice wicket in the Paddock

This morning I heard the familiar sound of the council mowing the grass verges and potentially the paddock. So after breakfast I wandered across the road to check to see if they'd cut the grass on our wicket. I've been holding back on seeding it because I guessed that they'd churn up all the grass.  Sure enough what with the wet and cold start to Spring this year and the use of a dirty great sit-on tractor mower like this here...

The paddock got pretty churned up including the bit I worked on a couple of weeks ago. So this morning it looked like this...

This shot here would be the view from the batsman.

This view here is almost side on - we bat at the end here on the extreme right of this image.

Looking at it more closely, it was obvious that the damage wasn't that severe and that with a little rolling it was going to easily rectified. 

The soil is very wet and the temp today was 13 centigrade, so idea for sowing the seeds. I've bought 2 types, one for under the trees in the shady area and a general hard-wearing grass for the bit that has the sun on it all day. So I've mixed them together, with more of the shady version under the trees.

 Here's all my gear ready to go.

 This is with the seed put down prior to a proper roll, you can see on one side where I've started.

 Here I've covered the seed with fine grade dressing made up of general compost and clay.

 Then before rolling I've covered the cut strip/wicket area with scaffold netting, so that the clay doesn't stick to the roller lifting all of the seeds.

This is it once it was rolled and some additional loose top-dressing in areas that needed to be filled because of shallow dents. You can see in the distance the roller at the bowlers end as some work was done in the bowlers foot-marks. Usually we only cut the batting end, but looking at it today I might cut a full 22 yards this summer as it look pretty flat.

Hopefully, no-one will vandalise it and the grass will establish quickly. Rains expected in the next 24 hours mixed with sunshine in between (April showers). The latter part of the week it's going to get warmer and the following week traditional April showers so wet and warm. The prospect therefore looks good. As the grass establishes, I'll get some grass food of some sort to help it flourish and hopefully we'll get some good use out of it through the summer. 

First roll of the season in the Paddock

Here in Jacob Rees Moggs Little England the Weather continues to be pretty rubbish with a forecast of potentially more snow. But in the lull today after a couple of dry-ish days, with the threat that the ground might soon dry out too much, I went over to the paddock and did some work. In the last post I'd raked the moss off and in the meantime the weather hasn't been conducive for any kind of recovery of the grass, so it looked pretty muddy and rough. The priority though for us is just to get it pretty flat for the most part and then in the next couple of weeks top dress it and plant new seed. The other thing I wanted to do was fill in the tread holes at the bowlers end ready to be rolled and seeded.

Here's the situation at the start of the work...

From the other end...

Over the years we've cut a full strip in the paddock prior to the council taking down the perimeter fences, but the last couple of years we've just worked on one end so that we can bowl and bat. You can see in the middle there are marks where people get in the space and do doughnuts on motorbikes, thankfully this is a rare occurrence. In fact more damage is done if the council cut the grass when it's too wet using their sit on type tractor 'Flymo' lawnmower.

Today, I marked out where the stumps will be set and then rolled the surface either side of an imaginary line between the stumps with more space on the off-side. 

Above the foot-marks filled.


The playing area after the rolling, it's never going to be Lords, but it'll do us for a bit of practice just outside our backdoor.

 View from the side.

Looking at the weather forecast, it's predicted to get down to -3 or 4 degrees by this coming Tuesday and Wednesday with the chance of some snow. Once that's gone, I'm going to have to assume that as we're nearly into April I can get some top-dressing on it - a mixture of clay and compost. Try and get the surface more even and then seed and feed it and leave it to see how it goes. You can bet we'll then have bloody heatwave and no rain or the council will drive all over with their mower and tear it all up!

The Paddock 2nd of March 2018

It was supposed to be the first day of spring yesterday and I may have had a wander over to the paddock to have a look at what I should do by way of getting ready for the summer. Instead I was over there taking pictures of the snow.

It's around this time of year I start to think about whether I'll be bothered to make use of the space. If you don't know the background story here, I'll go over it quickly.

This is a piece of un-designated land about 70 metres from my house. There's nothing there except for a patch of rough grass. There used to be a chain link fence and two goal posts, but they were all removed about 2 years ago and the 'Anti traveler' fence was erected to keep them from parking their caravans on the site I'm guessing. Thankfully, the cowboys that were contracted to remove all the fencing didn't do all of it so there was some fencing left behind albeit covered in brambles, bushes and Ivy. As well as not taking all of the fencing down, they didn't take all of the wire, posts and concrete bases away either - instead they dragged them into the woods and dumped them in there.

The local council do very little with the space by way of maintaining it - they mow it about 5-6 times a year and keep the grass relatively short. I've contacted the council in the past and asked them to replace the fence when it was still there albeit with sections missing or vandalised. They came along and had a look and deemed it wasn't worth it saying that it wasn't a designated space for recreation. That aside, people have played football in there since the 1970's as well as other games and when my kids were small we started to use it to play cricket in and practice in and still do - helped by the fact that some of the fencing - about 65% of it was intact so that we were able to play without the ball disappearing into the woods. Why the fencing was taken down - still alludes me and almost feels like an attempt to stop kids from using the space?

So for the last 8 years or so I and my sons have cut and rolled a wicket in the space and utilised it, going so far as putting nets up

Click on the image to see the video.

In the image/video above you can see the fence on the off-side and there's a good piece of fence directly behind where I'm shooting the video from, both these sections were removed and dumped in the woods by the contractors.

We now have to put the blue scaffold fencing stuff up any time we want to bat. Thankfully the contractors left behind some sections of fence and we're able to at least bowl in the space up against the fence. This wicket you can see here was also ruined by the contractors they parked their transit on the wicket area in October when the grass was wet and left enormous indents on a length for fast bowlers - Joe the kid batting is now a fast bowler and is 16.

Back to this season 2018...

The other thing the council don't do and I'm not sure if they've ever done it is - prune the bushes back. I noticed a few years back when the bushes hung low enough, the bloke on the mower drove around the bushes and therefore left the perimeter grass uncut and over a period of a couple of summers the grass area was noticeably being reduced by virtue of the trees being left to grow into the space. Just down the road there was a similar open space that wasn't fenced off but was still mowed and over the last 8 years the grass has given way to bushes and now there's almost no grass at all - but a hand full of bushes and this I reckon is what would happen to this space if no-one maintained it.

So in the Autumn and spring I maintain it, cutting the brambles and bushes back to stop them encroaching on the space and cutting the light out so that the grass doesn't grow and the bushes and weeds take over. Each year I ponder whether to continue and so far I have done as it's one of the things I still do with Joe and it's also one of the ways I keep fit and it makes me feel a bit like Clarrie Grimmet who bowled in his back yard into his 80's every day that he could. (he obviously liked his cricket) 

So, this year will I be doing it again? Yeah I reckon so, last year we used it quite a bit for batting and it got very worn. I'm even contemplating trying to get this wicket you see here back in action, so once the snow has gone and while the ground is still soaking wet we'll get over there with the roller and see if we can flatten out the areas we'll be bowling into.

It make no sense to me

I don't know about you, but as a kid and even now when I do something I like, I want to do it a lot. If I go on holiday, I want to be there for at least two weeks. The idea that someone might suggest - You know what, you should consider just going for 3 days, it'd be so much better. Strikes me as being daft.

As a kid at scouts, the scout leaders might have taken us to the local woods and said... "Okay lads, the last few weeks we've been coming over here and playing run-outs for an hour and half, from now on we're going to make it so much better we're going to play run-outs for 15 mins and then go back to the scout hut. Does that make sense?

What about changing the format of football to make it better? Let's play it so that as soon as there's a goal, the games finished - first goal wins with a maximum of 15 minutes, that would be so much better wouldn't it? Can you see where I'm going with this?

It baffles me that if you like something you'd do less of it. I love cricket, for me 50 overs games at the weekend is fine, 60 would be an improvement, any more than that would probably be limited to the very middle of summer for a few weeks? But hey more cricket, even just for those 2 weeks either side of mid-summer - I'm up for it! 70 overs anyone?

But the idea that it needs to be reduced to encourage kids to play is bizarre. Do you think that kids would agree with a proposal to have their time spent on mobile phones and XBOX games reduced to improve the experience would go down well with them?

Do you know what - instead of playing PUBG for next 8 hours, just play it for half an hour - you'll be so much better at it.

Or - Get off your phone, your life will be so much better for it. What kid is going to buy into that, or most adults for that matter! If you like it, you're going to want to do more of it, in the same way that I believe the more I play cricket the better I'll be at it. I'm sure there are many a cricket expert who will agree to that same principle providing it is done in a way that is productive and beneficial. People say things like "You need more time at the crease in order that your batting improves". Everything seems to point towards the fact that if you enjoy something - football, run-outs, holidays, gawping at your phone living your life vicariously through others experiences, on-line games like PUBG, the more you do, the better you'll be. So the idea that by doing less of it - that's somehow preferable and more attractive?

I surf, and when I was younger I was likely to give it a go most times of the year. March was the worst - south coast UK in march the water bitterly cold with a biting northerly wind - wholly unpleasant, but the intention was to be in the water as long as you could and catch as many waves as possible till the point you became so cold it was physically impossible to do so any longer. At no point did I think the whole thing could be enhanced by being shorter - it completely negates the point of surfing - the more you do in all sorts of conditions, the better you'll be. The key thing here you have to understand is I liked  surfing (Still do), so no matter what the weather or the conditions threw at me, it wouldn't stop me, because it was something I wanted to do. So how the hell does the argument in cricket at the moment - that the shorter a cricket match is, the likely it is going to attract kids and keep people playing the game? The only conclusion you can draw is they just don't like cricket that much. 

Pre-season

Our pre-season nets has been announced at last, disappointing though as there's only going to be four sessions, but it is at a venue that is 20 or so miles away, so I expect that take up of the opportunity will be relatively low - hence only 4 sessions have been booked. Not sure how many people will turn up though as we're having a bit of weather at the moment...

This is the paddock where me and Joe practice in the summer.

The snow's about 4" deep (10cm) and the country seems to have ground to a halt which is mental. I've not been to work now for 2 days and was sent home at midday on the first day of the snow. Makes you wonder what would happen if we had a repeat of the kind weather we saw back in 1987. It snowed off and on over two weeks, there was one day or night where it snowed seriously for a prolonged period and it ended up about a foot or so deep, the most snow I've ever seen. The snow then stayed because the temperature was held pretty low at sub-zero temperatures during the day and at night it was frequently -10 to -18 degrees. See here You'll have seen that 1963 was pretty cold as well, that year it snowed on Christmas Eve and snow then laid on the ground till march with the average temp over that period being 0.5 centigrade. So what all the fuss at the moment is about I don't know? I'm guessing it's the fear of being sued if someone falls over? 

Needless to say Joe and I will make a big effort to get there as it's £5.00 for a couple of hours. I can't wait having been cooped up indoors for the best part of 4 months now. 

I need to go with a bit of a plan though. Batting - I'm going to try and be a little more positive with the batting - look to score runs more rather than defend all the time.

Bowling... I'm looking to develop a couple of straight balls having watched a fair bit of Adil Rashid and seen how successful he is with them...

I like the fact that Sky have called these deliveries "Straight balls" and none of those daft names given to these ambiguous deliveries that many Wrist-Spinners bowl. I'll be working with a top-spinner and another which is more like a poorly executed off-break delivery and because this it what it basically is, it has a tendency to either (a) not spin at all and just go on straight - quite a bit faster than my leg-breaks. Or (b) I get something on it and it comes in a little to the RH batsman - again still slightly faster and flatter than my leg-breaks.

The other thing I want to work on is getting my arm lower for the leg-breaks as that helps with dip and drift. 

If we get there I might post something up after Sunday.

January waffling

It's mid January and I've got my head around the idea of having high blood pressure now and everything feels pretty normal. I'm on Amlodipine pills 10mg for the moment and I'm hoping to get off of them if possible. I've got a blood pressure machine that straps to my wrist and measures my blood pressure and the measurements have steadily declined right from the outset. In addition I've changed my diet dramatically in accordance with the suggestions that the British Heart Foundation suggest, so with a bit of luck if the dosage is reduced the other changes that I've made might sustain the normal blood pressure readings? Who knows, but I've got an appointment with the nurse this coming Wednesday and she's going to look at my data that I've been recording and do some blood tests for things like Cholesterol as far as I can recall.

The only thing that I have been neglecting which doesn't help is the exercise component, but in the last day or so I've been making a start to get ready for the new season. I ate so much less than I would normally do over Christmas and people at work have been saying that I look like I've lost weight, so that's probably a good sign. I've now just to get some muscles, strength, stamina and agility back.

Another good thing that I've noticed is that my Plantar Fasciitis seems to have eased of after over two years of it and this has happened with no intervention. About a year or so ago I found a website, forum and a bunch of videos on Youtube by an Australian Podiatrist, who's qualifications put him at the top of his game. This bloke was in his late 50's pretty much the same as me and was still participating in sport of some sort - running possibly, I don't remember exactly, but he also had PF and he and his Podiatrist mates had pages and pages of info and discussions on the matter - what they were recommending for different patients and how much success was to be had with the different approaches for these patients. But, the bottom line seemed to be that there was no sure fire cure, there were recommendations that were made because there was potential for some increase in comfort, but the overall sense was that there was a placebo effect in recommending treatment (a) or (b) more than an actual proven medical benefit. 

The main bloke writing the article was massively dismissive of all the stuff on Youtube, making the point that there was no all-singing all dancing cure for PF, because when it came down to it, PF in many instances if left alone suddenly (like mine has) dissipates and disappears. He went on to make the point that in my case for instance, if I'd seen a video on Youtube that has recommended rubbing brown sauce on my feet for 15 minutes a month ago and decided to try it, I might now be tempted to post stuff on Youtube about brown sauce being a miracle cure for PF, when in fact it had just gone away of it's own accord. I'm just happy that mine seems to have almost gone for the moment and fingers crossed I'll be able to bowl this season without that at the back of mind.

That'll do for now, I might waffle on about plans for variations for this coming season in the next couple of days.