Will I play this season?

Will I play this season? My knee is not 100% so I'm not sure... I've done none of things I would normally have done - nets at Writtle, bowling and batting. Instead, I've tried to take it easy, I've been doing self directed physio and been trying to use the knee as much as possible in an attempt to slowly recover. To be honest I never got a proper diagnosis and should really follow that up and try and establish what I actually did do. From everything I've read and watched it sounds like I might have damaged my PCL, but I've got so few of the symptoms associated with knee injuries I'm left a bit confused. 

Generally it's fine, it feels vulnerable, but I've got full mobility, I'm able to do deep squats with a little discomfort (Not pain) and it fully extends. The little running that I've been doing recently doesn't result in any massive relapse and so generally things look fairly positive. 

With 3 months or so till the first game, I'm going to try and slowly build up the strength and increase the amount of physio I do and hopefully be in a position where I might be able to get through a spell without suffering the next day and the following week. If it does happen, I'm kind of ready for it and will back off for a year and see what happens. I'll go and watch Joe (My son play) and record the oppositions batsman's wagon wheels... https://bowlingplans.blogspot.com/ which if I'm honest I'm kind of looking forward to doing and enjoying, the last time I did it, I video's the outcomes as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCcqLCaXzY&t=9s  

Tomorrow's a big day though in the scheme of things as it's the first net session at the club and I'll be going along. The idea is that I will have a go, but at the moment I don't know whether I'll bowl all night, a part of me says hold back and perhaps only bowl about 24 balls over the evening and see what the outcome is the next day. If it comes off and there's no real issue the next day, I'll continue with the physio and bowl a few more balls the next week and build up slowly. 

Great Berry Open Space cricket - The Pavilion

Great Berry Open Space - Cricket Ground history.


Looking toward Nightingales.

Great Berry Open Space is a recreation ground on the outskirts of Basildon in Essex, just a stones throw away from 'The Rec', which has been a cricket ground for several decades and is still used for cricket by teams from as far as East London.

I shot a load of pictures for Friends of the Earth in this area back in the early 1990's just after the trees had all been chopped down in the Highview Ave and Aylesbury Drive area. The images were primarily of the trees that had been designated to be left. I had the idea that I'd go back later and do before and after images. At the time I didn't wander as far as Great Berry Open Space, so unfortunately have no images or recollection of the space. There seems to be very little on-line about the area...

Great Berry Open space has never been built on and was part of Great Berry Farm. During the areas history when the Plotland buildings were erected, none of the plotland buildings appear to have been constructed in that area on any of the maps I have access to. The 'Open Space' piece of land has changed very little with regards its size and shape since before the 1840's perhaps earlier?

 For much of its recent history it's had trees around the edges, certainly since the 1860's. The avenue of larger trees running along the eastern side of the field follow the line of what was the original Berry Lane. The cycle path looks as though it was the original Berry Lane. Originally it ran from the Railway line and it then turned at right-angles across what is now Nightingales and followed what we now know of as Berry Lane. The Pond down the hill in the far corner diagonally opposite has been there since the 1840's and earlier.

Cricket Field

Despite my efforts, I can't find any mention of cricket in conjunction with this field. It seems that perhaps when the new estate was built, the planners might have imagined that because of the size and nature of the houses and the expected prices they'd command, the demographic might have been different and a cricket pitch more in keeping with the new influx of residents? The dimensions of the field are suitable, the surroundings with the Oak trees typical and so it seems the field was leveled and laid with the option of cricket being played there. The pub on the corner of the field is called the Pavilion; There's a water main in the middle of the field for watering the square and years ago there was an all-weather artificial strip. If you venture into the trees on the Nightingales side of the field, about 10'-15' in from where the grass finishes and dig around in the leaves and under-growth, you'll find a chicken-wire fence. Thirteen years ago when the images above were taken the posts were still evident and in some places the fence still very obvious. 

Anecdotally, I've been told by locals that the local 'footballers' poured petrol onto the all-weather strip and burned it to ensure that the field was never used for cricket. 

It has been used for cricket as you can see from my images. In 2007 I took to practicing there simply because I noticed that the surface was in really good condition in between the 2 football fields. I practiced there so frequently that a couple of local lads started to talk to me and eventually joined in that summer. We were then joined by 2 other blokes Suhail and Nakul who lived on the estate and we used to have a knock about most evenings in the summer. More people joined in and eventually there was about 6 or 7 of us most nights. It got to the point where the bowling was so fast we needed to do something about the surface as it was a H&S issue and I said that I'd get a roller and a mower and I'd cut the grass. One thing led to another and the strip ended up in the middle of the field with the lines being painted and more people got involved. Eventually it got to the point where there was almost 2 teams and we marked out a boundary and played a T20 game one Saturday in 2006/7.

One morning I was cutting the wicket and the Council turned up in a van and 3 blokes got out. I was expecting to be told that I was contravening some bye-law, but I'd read the bye-laws and was in the clear as far as I could make out. But the opposite was the case. The main bloke in the van was the one of the heads of Parks and Gardens and he commended me on my initiative and offered all kinds of support. He there and then tried to get the heavy roller used at The Rec brought over on a low loader to roll the wicket properly, but they couldn't get access to the low-loader. Instead he allowed us access to the Rec ground to practice on for free on Sunday mornings which we took up and accepted.

I continued to cut the wicket on Great Berry Open Space for a several weeks with the councils blessings, until one day I was mowing the wicket and was accosted by a bloke wearing a West Ham football shirt who'd come down from the Pav. This bloke made it very clear that he felt that I had no place mowing his field. He was tanked up and wasn't having any of it from me, telling me he was some big cheese at the Pav in charge of the football club and so on. Diplomacy wasn't his strong point so I left and found somewhere else to practice, never to return.

But, there might be a resurrection! This afternoon another bloke I know who is very much involved in the Pav and its social side has rang me, with no knowledge of my previous endeavors, suggesting that I get involved with him, in trying to get some cricket going in some form based at The Pav. From this first phone call I kind of get the impression that he wants to form a friendly/social team and for them to be based at The Pav. It sounds as though he's got the numbers to get a team together and he now wants to get a wicket cut in between the two football pitches. He's going to contact the council and sound them out with regards how they might be able to help and I'm going to meet up with him some time soon and have a wander over there to see what condition the field is in. Maybe after all these years the field is going to be used in a way that the planners envisaged as below...

Recovery

Still not had a date for the MRI scan on my knee, but generally it's feeling better. The weather was fine tonight and I went out to the Paddock  and had a bowl. A couple of nights ago I bowled 7 deliveries off of a 9 x step run-up and suffered no consequences. Tonight I was over there for about 30 mins bowling as in the video link above, but I also bowled 21 consecutive deliveries off of the 9 x step run-up and again no consequence. I'll have another go in a few days time. I might even get the video out.

12/9/19 A couple of nights later I had another bowl and this time I bowled 28 balls consecutively and that's gone okay as well. So the prospect for recovery does look hopeful. I did notice the following morning a slight soreness - sense of being used. I'll need to watch that and see if that's significant in anyway.

15/9/19 - Good day to day - eventually drew the Ashes with a good game. The weather is fantastic - hot 26 degrees and sunny and I've bowled 48 balls back to back today with no ill affect. Looks and feels promising. Double click on the image below to see the progress...

End of season 2019

It's the end of the season and its been pretty miserable for me as I seem to be reaching the age where my body is not up to it. The worst thing is it seems to have happened when I have had a epiphany moment with the use of Flippers.

The start of the season was marred by issues with my hips and core strength which I put down to the fact that I'd done some building work on my house and nearly killed myself physically. As a result I thought I'd completely rest over the winter in order to recuperate.

By January I was still feeling the affects of the building work and added to that I'd lost all my usual fitness. So I started to work on my fitness and flexibility. That's the point where it transpired that my hips and butt were weak and everything below that point was out of sync. So a lot of work was done trying to get all that sorted. Meanwhile I had the opportunity to net a lot over Jan and February and I bowled my usual Leg-Breaks exceptionally well and looked to be starting the season on a high.

First game went okay with 2 wickets in a pre-season friendly, but thereafter it went down-hill very quickly and my new captain started to leave me out of the attack. Being a bowler I was now turning up basically just to field. The club had changed leagues and we'd lost our fourth XI where I normally resided and basically had moved up a level and I was being left behind. I concluded I needed to join a bigger club with a 4th,5th or 6th XI that played at my level. I started to look around and found a club and my intentions became clear to my own club and they rang me and virtually pleaded with me to stay.

Meanwhile, having been carted around the park by these blokes here I'd already started to explore how I might address the fact that my bowling was so ineffective. It had  been noted in the first game of the season that I'd have done so much better than my 2 wickets if I had a straight ball. So I started to look at my use of the Flipper combined with my leg-breaks. Practicing with my son Joe he said one of the biggest issues was the lack of pace with my leg-breaks. So I started to adopt a run up of about 9-10 steps. The Flippers immediately looked promising with consistency of line and length being markedly better than the Leg-Breaks, so I committed to working almost exclusively with the Flippers as it seemed to be very obvious that I could bowl these with good accuracy.

The red dots went on to hit the stumps

I then bowled the Flippers in a game and was kept on to bowl all 9 overs and went for very few runs. The runs that I did go for were down to attempting to bowl leg-breaks off the new run-up and was easily hit for 4 each time. At one point towards the end of my spell, the bloke that had been freely scoring before my spell ran a single and ended up at my end and commented... "Mate what are you bowling.... I can't get you off the square"! So that then provided the incentive to continue with the Flipper experiment.

But, the run-up was taking its toll on my body particularly my hips it seemed. I then had what seemed like a really innocuous minor accident walking along a dark corridor in my sons flat at Uni. I didn't realise that his dark corridor had a drop down to a new level equivalent of 1 stair step. I stepped down it and jarred my knee with a sensation of a strain in the back of my knee. It hurt slightly, but I didn't think much of it.

I then bowled in a couple more games and the Flippers went well again and I got carted when I tried the Leg-breaks. But I was noticing that I was struggling with my legs - seemingly with regards strength. I then started training with Sumo squats on a wobble (balance board) but going right down to an Asian squat and then one session I sensed a strain in the back of my knee and some subsequent swelling and soreness. This seemed more significant and happened just before my holiday in Cornwall, so I committed to taking things easy whilst away and stuck to it.

Once back in Essex and looking forward to a game of cricket I discovered that this week there was no game because of the uneven numbers in our league and everyone in the league at some point missed a game and it was our turn. So I contacted Orsett and Thurrock who I nearly defected to earlier in the year and got a Friendly game on Sunday.

I bowled superbly - probably the - if not the most controlled and consistent spell I've ever bowled. I got one wicket, that of a significant batsman and bowled my full allocation of 10 overs. Again the only time I was hit was the 2-3 times I bowled leg-breaks and both times I was hit for 4. Again the batsmen came up to me at the end of the game and asked "What the hell was you bowling"?

I realised that I was onto something here, as if it wasn't for the leg-breaks I'd have gone for about 2 an over and realised that in the short term I needed to cut the leg-breaks out totally and work on them in practice. But, that was never to happen.

By the time I'd packed my bag and got in the car my knees were feeling as though they were now suffering from the pounding of the run-up. I'd extended the run up in this game as it seemed a lot more rhythmic, previous games I'd been suffering from stuttering in the run-up, but extending it to about 14-15 steps had resolved that and added more pace. But having driven for about 10 minutes I got home and basically staggered to the front door with my right knee really suffering.

I iced it as best I could and then got it up above my head (Elevation). The next morning it wasn't any better and over the next 4 or 5 days I was in bad way and had even been to the Doctors. The doctors were fairly inconclusive. Xrays indicated that it wasn't arthritis and the doctor recommended I see a specialist and have a MRI scan. This was way back in mid August and I'm still waiting for the MRI scan appointment to come through.

In the meantime I've been taking it easy - no cricket, no running, no bowling and its been slowly improving. I get twinges in the back of the knee and it feels 'Delicate' generally. But I've been doing physio - strengthening the muscles above and around the knee and today I went over the paddock and bowled 7 balls off of a 9 step run-up with a decent bound. I bowled 100 or so balls off of a 2-3 step walk-in as well and I seem to have come away from that un-scathed. The plan is to carry on with the physio and to cycle through the winter and resume light bowling at winter nets. I'm hoping that come May I'll be able to run-in off of a 12-14 step run-up and bowl my Flipper variations and get some wickets.

Short spells strategy

A few years back I was watching the IPL and watched with interest the strategy of changing up the bowling almost every over. In 10 overs, 6 or 7 bowlers were used and in some cases they had bowlers changing ends. The intention was that, at no point was the batsman able to settle and get used to what the bowlers were doing.

I thought this was an interesting strategy and anecdotally at club level it seemed to make complete sense. It seemed to me that the majority of the wickets in all the games I played in, fell in the bowlers first few overs. I asked a few people initially about the idea, other bowlers, my captain and people with a lot more experience than me and they were sceptical. Bowlers especially, seemed to be in denial arguing that once they got settled they were more effective. I wasn't convinced, so I started to photograph as many score-books as possible at my own and other clubs and in the end gathered together data for 565 wickets taken.

I then counted all those that were taken in the first 10 overs and here's the results from my sample...

By quite some way, wickets are taken most frequently in the first 2 overs when the batsman is trying to figure out how he's going to play the bowler. Whether the bowler bowls better in the those overs is a moot point and it maybe in part down to relatively poor bowling that the wickets fall? Once a bowler settles he/she potentially settles into a pattern - but that might also play into the batsman's hands because it then becomes predictable?

Could we adopt an approach whereby the bowlers are rotated every two overs as well as being deployed from different ends. The bowlers might argue that they don't get into a rhythm, but if we're trying to win who cares - just look at the data! We might make a concession and meet the bowler part of the way by giving him/her additional overs say if they bowl an over that returns 2 or less runs? But as soon as they've gone for more than two we're looking for wickets and if they've not got wickets in the next 2 overs they're out of the attack and its in with the next bloke. You could also as a concession to your bowlers adopt an approach where 1 or more wickets in an over buys another over.

The Flipper as your stock ball part II

After May 15th I continued bowling Flippers. I tested the change of shoes idea (See previous post) and it seemed inconclusive. That following Friday I bowled 200 + balls wearing my cricket shoes and there didn't seem to be any significant difference in whether I bowled well or not.

I've been trying to get my son Joe to bat and face the new bowling, but as yet he's turned me down every time. So it looks like the proof will have to come in the game this weekend.

Tonight the first over or two were a bit scratchy, some wides, but once I got going it got better. Tomorrow I'm just going to practice hitting the stumps or hitting the target length consecutively and see how that goes. What I'll do is set a target of doing either 40 times in the session and see how long or how many balls it takes to do it.

Follow up
_______________________________________________________

On Saturday 25th we played against Great Waltham and I deployed the Flipper as my stock ball see the account here and it went well. So at the moment I'm enthused by the situation and I'm going to keep working with it looking to improve further.

Over this last week I've continued to practice every night bowling 150 + deliveries and I've started to mark out the wicket with markers so that I can monitor the consistency of line and length  as well as calculate the percentage of wides. Interestingly, I read last week in the Guardian that Jofra Archer wanting to get into the England team realised that one solution might be to practice on his own and he cut his own strip somewhere across the road from his house, just as I have.

“He went away and trained incredibly hard, to the point where he rolled his own wicket in the yard across the road and put a net around it and did all his drills into that. He came back nine months later and he was a different-looking athlete – pretty much the bowler you see today with that speed and accuracy".

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/19/jofra-acher-england-bowling-cricket

Once back indoors the rough diagrams that I mark while I'm practicing I then digitize using Photoshop. 

This is the result... 

Pitch map - SomeblokecalledDave practice with Flippers 27.5.19

The coloured balls represent the following -

Red - Are balls that go on to hit the stumps.

Blue - Are deliveries that are decent, these vary quite a bit, as the Flippers I bowl vary in a number of ways. 90% of them are cross-seam flippers, so they have the potential to break either left or right especially if its a diagonal seamed release. There's also the bounce variation potential - if the ball lands on the seam it can rear-up dramatically and if it lands on the smooth surface it does what a Flippers does - stays low. The back-spin that is imparted on the ball makes it act differently through the air and when it hits the surface it actually stalls noticeably. So even if the ball goes down when it hits the surface its anyone's guess where it'll deviate to.

Yellow - These are wides. You'll see from the pitch map below and to some extent the two above I have this proclivity to bowl yorkers right onto the bowling crease out-side of the leg-stump. Not so clever if it's right-hander, but might be useful against a left-hander? The only issue is, its not something I have control over at this point. That's something I'm working on at the moment.

Black - These are the Leg-Breaks (below) which at the moment I'm still bowling few and far between, but as this week goes on I'll introduce more of them. So far almost all of them turn much more than the Flippers that break to leg and in practice my control of them is pretty good.

The measurements are imperial - No.s across the bottom are yards and the grids are 1' (12"x12"). The green rectangle at 4 yards is my target mat that I use which is 20" x 39". At the moment you can see that my bowling seems to vary without too much intervention from being really full to a good length. 

The batsman in the last game  said that he was unable to get me off the square and if it wasn't for trying to bowl two leg-breaks which went wrong and were hit for a 4 and a 2 my figures would have been decent. I'd like to think that it's the back-spin that makes the Flippers difficult to hit. I'm not tall, so they're going to come in from a low starting point and if the physics of the back-spinning  ball holds up they're going to hold their line through the air despite the relatively slow speed (Bernoulli affect)? They then vary in the way they come off the surface dependent on what delivery I use!

So at the moment I'm quite pleased with how they're working.

 I haven't bowled Flippers so consistently in a game since the days when I was bowling Googlies as my stock ball and then I used them as the variation to the Googly and this was one of the most effective periods of my bowling. So the plan is to carry on with the Flippers and hone them further and then start to introduce Leg-breaks off this faster approach to the crease. Initial experiments apart from the two in this game at Waltham show real promise.

28.5.19

Today 28.5.19 I've bowled two session both around about an hour with a 3 hour break in between. The 2nd session below was about 80 balls so I guess the one above was similar?

You might have noticed the weird cluster of balls on the leg-side right up on the bowling crease. If I could somehow get my radar right these would be bottom of the stump yorkers, so this is something I need to look into and rectify as mentioned earlier.

I've started to introduce more frequent Leg-Breaks and these seem to be working well with this run-up and as you can see in the middle pitch map, I'm landing them on the mat. 

What I might do in the next day or so is cut the mat down in size so that it's 3' x 1.5' so that it fits into the grids more accurately and I can an even more accurate assessment of what I'm doing when practicing. 

If you're looking to do this yourself I'll post a picture in the next few days of the set up showing how I manage to figure out the length and width.

Update September 13th 2019

After years of bowling primarily leg-breaks and Googlies and doing so with a lack of control much of the time, this summer has been a revelation. As the summer went on I bowled more and more Flippers and as I did so my economy went down and down and I got to bowl more and more overs. In the last game at the end of August, I played a friendly game for another team and got to bowl 10 overs back to back. I only bowled 3 leg-breaks, the first being a good-un and the two follow-up leg-breaks got tonked for 4 through the leg-side. Other than that I reckon I went for 2 an over on risky runs. The conclusion at the end of the game was that next season I'll bowl exclusively Flippers and work on combining the leg-breaks as a variation in practice. Then, and only then - when I can land the leg-breaks consistently on, or about the off-stump I bring the leg-breaks back and see how it works. (Providing I'm fit enough to play next season).

The Flipper as your stock Ball

Originally drafted May 15th 2019

If you’ve read the post about the game with Rainham, you’ll see that I wasn’t happy with my bowling and the fact that I primarily have to rely on people taking catches... I was dropped 3 times. Any of the 3 if they'd been snaffled would have won us the game with the final wicket required. At the end of the analysis of the game I concluded that this week I’d focus on bowling exclusively Flippers.

Years ago, I spent 2 or 3 seasons bowling loads of flippers coupled with Googlies as I had Googly syndrome and couldn’t get the ball to break to off. As a part of re-learning the Leg-Break I had to scrap bowling Flippers and lost them. Since then and more recently, I’ve started bowling them in practice, but have rarely brought them to the game scenario. After the Rainham game and on reflection I made the decision to only bowl Flippers this week with the idea that, if I got it right and it looked like it might be a delivery I could execute with more consistency, I might bowl them in the next game?

I started on Saturday as soon as I got home from the game because I wanted to look at whether my poor bowling was a fitness and stamina issue, it wasn’t. I got through 240 balls that evening and went back to the 20’ run-up and bowled with far more pace.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I did the same thing 200 - balls at least each session. Thinking about why I bowl so badly in the game scenario compared to the practice, I made the following observations. In practice you generally bowl ball after ball – up to 200 and you get a general sense of consistency over the 200 deliveries. What if you focus on the first 6 deliveries in isolation as in a game? In a game it matters – those 1^st six deliveries are judged by you, your captain, your team and the batsman and if you get it wrong it’s a long psychological haul back that you might not make or you may not get the chance to pull back because you could be taken out of the attack.

So, in the practice situation I started focusing on the first 6 balls and the subsequent 36 or 42 that followed as in a spell. I then thought that there may be an argument to replicate the game scenario further still and by tonight I was doing the following...

(1). Before I even started, I did some vigorous exercise to replicate the faster heart rate that I get as a result of being nervous about bowling the first delivery. I then bowled in that ‘Excited’ condition.

(2). I then did further exercise – throwing a ball and catching it, in doing so, delaying the time between each delivery, trying to replicate the delay between each delivery you see in a game scenario. Thus, not bowling one ball after another developing a rhythm as I do in a usual practice situation.

(3). Once the ‘Over’ was bowled, I then did fielding drills for several minutes -run and pick up a static ball and throw down the stumps for the amount of time that would constitute the other blokes over from the other end and then repeat form stage (1).

I did this for 6 or 7 overs before going back to general practice where I bowl one ball after another. Overall it went well, and it has been going really well as a rule. Coming off a 7-metre run-up, my movement through the crease is far more dynamic and my bowling is considerably faster than my usual 2-3 steps to the crease.

There have been leg-side balls that would need a bloke at fine leg and some might evade the keeper and go for byes, so I was thinking about what I might do to reduce the frequency of those as it was about 1 in every 6 balls which could easily spoil a decent over. I then recalled some advice from Stuart MacGill about bringing your leg through towards the batsman up and over your front foot – Not around your front foot. As soon as I implemented this, there was a marked improvement in both accuracy and speed, so tonight was a good session.

The only other aspect that I’ve not explored is whether there’s any impact with regards what I wear on my feet. When I practice, I wear trainers, so there’s difference in the grip compared to cricket shoes with their studs. There’s an analogy that says you can’t fire a canon-ball off a rowing boat as there’s an obvious stability issue. Theoretically with cricket shoes and their studs when I bowl there’s a potential difference in the torque that is generated compared to when I bowl in Adidas Sambas. Might it be that my bowling is honed to work effectively wearing trainers, but then once I don the cricket shoes, the additional grip suddenly increases the torque so creates all the issues?

So, this might be the next step in trying to ascertain what the issues are. Can I bowl as well wearing cricket shoes or is this a part of the problem?

That aside though, the way it’s going at the moment I’m looking at bowling Flippers primarily in the next game off this 7-metre run-up. With the Flippers there’s sub-variation – the ball I’ve been bowling the most is either a cross-seamed or scrambled seam ball. That’s mixed with the off-spinning version which does come in like an off-cutter. I then also have bastardised version of Grimmett’s Wrong-Wrong Un which just seems to do what it wants it goes either way. But all of them bring LBW into the game and more pace and… I can bring in the occasional Leg-Break with this extra speed as a variation and so far it’s looked useful.