As the Ashes approaches and the Women's Ashes, which I've loved watching despite the fact that we've now lost, I've been trying to figure out how to watch some of it albeit a day or so late. Searching around Youtube I found the whole of the Women's games on a BT website. Having found and watched those, I started getting recommended (as happens on Youtube) other full length games and in-depth coverage of previous Ashes series and I've now just found this on the ECB website - Most of 2013 series in England session by session amazing! Link here
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I don't know about anyone else, but I reckon it's a travesty that there's no cricket on terrestrial television here in the UK. England women have played a couple of days now against the Aussie's and there's been virtually nothing - other than a few seconds on the news. I've got BT, so could quite easily get the cricket I guess via BT Sport, but I hate BT as a company generally and now they're restricting access to the viewing of my favorite sport, that's really getting my goat up. One of our main sports in this country and it seems you're expected to pay for it? Moreover, there's an on-going push in this country to get people fit and getting involved in sports. Surely if it's not there to be seen - how the hell are people going to be engaged?
Completely bored with no cricket to watch tonight, I turned to Youtube and watched the Channel 4 documentary on the 2005 Ashes. What struck me about this was how enthused the country was by cricket and how lay-people got involved and found themselves watching it. I spoke to someone today about the fact that I'm currently not able to watch it and they laughed at the idea of wanting to watch it. I conceded that I too had the same view for much of my life until one evening I settled down to watch the high-lights on Channel 4 (Free to air) because I had nothing else to watch. It was the mid-nineties and it was a test match. I watched it for a while and there was nothing new happening - same old story England losing (I knew that from the news) and some bloke walking from the stumps right back to the boundary and then running in and bowling... Nothing happening, same old same. Then a fat bloke turned up with a stupid hair cut, but then he did something odd, he didn't go for a long boring walk, he turned round just a few yards back from the stumps and then turned round - walked in and bowled!!! But, more than that - I thought... this is a result, the England boys are going to smack this bloke out of the park. So I took notice, but then as I watched, what I expected to happen - didn't happen, the England boys were useless! This fat bloke was bowling stupidly slow and they weren't doing anything and I found myself shouting at the television "Hit the f*****g ball you goons - the blokes bowling it so slow I could f*****g hit it"! I watched, as ball after was left, miss-hit or simply missed. I couldn't believe it. The fast bloke came on again and took 15 mins to bowl his over and then Fatso was back on and gone again within a couple of seconds and again totally bamboozling the English batsman. I wanted Fatso back - preferably at both ends, so I could figure out what was going on. I couldn't though, it was a highlights package and the editors seemed to be obsessed with showing you either the ball being hit over the boundary or the fast bowler missing everything. I wanted more of the fat bloke who was spinning the ball. Over the following nights I switched on again looking for the fat bloke, learning that his name was Shane Warne and I was mesmerised by what this bloke was doing - I'd never seen it before, it was engaging and exciting and a type or cricket that was faster paced - none of that time-wasting, tedious walking and running back and forth.
That was it, I'd gone from being a cricket dismissive to someone that wanted more of it and within several more years at the age of 46 I formed a club and started playing it - playing as a wrist-spinner. But that only happened because I'd been able to watch it on the television - free to air. At the moment I can't find anything that indicates that any of the cricket will be on the traditional TV channels here in the UK and that is shocking. Especially shocking given the success of the England Women's team and the potential to ride the wave of success like England cricket did in 2005 - primarily driven by the fact that the 2005 series was all over terrestrial TV as far as I can remember.
Thankfully, tonight digging around, I've found what appears to be a full match on Youtube which seems to have been uploaded by BT. Click on the image to watch.
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7th Nov 2017
Just watched the end of the series in India between NZ and India, with India winning the T20 decider in a rain affected game which involved 8 overs each. With so little time India batting first going after the ball and hitting Ish Sohdi for 23 off of 2 overs and conceding two wickets. India ended up on 67 for 5. It looked as though New Zealand were in with a chance for taking the series, with good bowling performances from Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav along with the seam bowlers NZ were thwarted. But what impressed me was Chahal's bowling and the way he went about it. Knowing that NZ needed to go big - fours and sixes, he bowled back of a length outside of the off-stump, loading the off-side field with plenty of cover and it worked perfectly. These things seem pretty obvious when you have them pointed out to you and it's something I've been gradually noticing, especially with regards the observations and analysis of the batsmen that I faced last summer (See here) in each game I found that I was coming to the same conclusion - bowl on or around the off-stump. Chahal in the interview at the end of the game confirmed that bowling wide of the off-stump, back of a length was the plan as they knew the batsmen were going to be after him.
Click on the image for the video.
Another bowler I've noticed who has a good degree of success bowling back of a length is our own Adil Rashid in the shorter formats of the game where the batsmen have to be pro-active in getting runs. I've always been surprised at the level of success he gets with this length and I don't reckon it's the way to go in longer formats, which is kind of evidenced by the lesser success. It's almost certainly important to have the potential for a good couple of variations... If you watch the video, many of the wickets are from nothing balls - balls that come out of the front of the hand with no spin put on them.
So of the two approaches, the one that would probably work best for me in the situations which I most often find myself in it's the Chahal approach which is potentially the most useful. At my level I find that I beat the bat most frequently on the off-side, suggesting that batsmen are not so adept at playing Leg-Breaks on the off-side, it kind of feels a little defensive in a way, but a loaded off-side with your better fielders makes it more attacking. It made me ponder Peter Philpotts advice and I searched my other blogs and found one of my diagrams based on a Philpott field that would support this off-side approach...
Philpotts says to bowl middle and off, which makes complete sense if you have a straight ball option or are able to bowl with less turn off the wicket. But if you simply bowl leg-breaks, the key is to try and get the ball up and around this area, but most importantly nowhere near the legs. If you don't know the batsman you still need to do the Shane Warne thing where initially you bowl from different points on the crease at different speeds and on differing lines. See here . It may be that they're useless on the leg-side in which case you'll have more options, but as I've noticed this isn't usually the situation you'll find yourself in.The key is - if you can get your line right - middle and off, that's great but if that's too tight - go wider, especially if they're looking to be aggressive - take a leaf out of Chahal's book? Ultimately it's a case of understanding the situation and sussing out the wicket - whether it offers any turn, or bounces and how the batsman plays. Watch the players before you bowl, watch and see where their strengths and weaknesses are and then bowl accordingly.
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29th Oct 2017 Line and length
Surely this was the last practice this year? The clocks went back today, so this afternoon just after 2.30pm the shadows over the paddock were cast long across the grass, it was breezy so the grass was dry and I took the camera over to the paddock and video'd my bowling, which was a bit of a disaster... It seems whenever I video myself I bowl total rubbish and this was the case today. Initially I was hoping to bowl top-spinners combined with straight 'Nothing balls'. I've never video'd these 'Nothing balls' before so it might be interesting to look at what they're like. They're not Flippers or back-spinners and I don't grip the ball like a seam ball, in fact if anything I grip it in a similar way to a finger-spinner and kind of put off-spin on it by rolling my fingers down the side of the ball... cutting it rather than flicking it as a finger spinner might. This lack of action on the ball means that much of the time it goes on straight, so there's a good element of natural variation, which is potentially useful.
In the video (Click on the image)
if I'm honest I'm trying to hit the mat from the outset and almost every ball from the start is outside the leg-stump, in a game against a half decent batsman that's almost certainly going to be four every time it's out there. After about 21 balls where I was trying to bowl with more over-spin, I gave up and tried bowling stock balls, but that wasn't happening either and in the end you'll see I reverted to Flippers and towards the very end the 'Nothing balls' which are as described above. I wasn't overly concerned with how bad it went as there's no cricket now till late April 2018, so there's plenty of time to get back into the groove in the months leading up to the new season. Who knows there might be more good weather yet before the winter sets in?
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28th Oct 2017
A few years back because of problems on the bigcricket forum I set up my own forum and it was active for several months, with many of the BC members coming over to join me. I very rarely look at it these days but noticed that Shivam from BC had recently joined and had sent me messages about linking via Facebook. Shivam if you're reading this - ask me questions on here and you'll probably get a quicker answer, I did try and find you on FB but there's a lot of blokes on there called Shivam!
Anyway, mooching around on the forum I realised that being the Admin I could send an email out to everyone that had ever signed up telling them about this new blog. So that's what I did, so with a bit of luck it'll work and I'll get loads of views? As it is it's not doing too bad, with it only being up and running for a few days it's already had 450 views with the batsman analysis being the most popular. So at the minute things are looking promising and I've already had confirmation that the comments work, so it's all looking good.
Just got to get the adverts up and running and at the moment I can't figure that out, but that may be something to do with how many views the blog gets before Google decide it's viable?
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27th Oct 2017
The weather continues to be summer like, warm and sunny, virtually no wind went for a walk in the woods local to me Thorndon Park...
Once back, realising this may be the last chance to either bowl or have a bat in the Paddock, I went over and had 20 minutes of bowling, it's not easy to see, but a couple of days ago we actually cut the grass in the bowling area as we were batting as well. You can just see it in the shadow. We've already been cutting back the bushes as the council no longer seem to do this and the impression we've got is that they're leaving to grow over and become completely unusable.
"As long as most of the ball is in the right position it will work. A few degrees angle here and there will not matter at all".
This is something I've come to realise over the years especially when it comes to your variations and in particular if you ever get to the point where you bowl Flippers (of which there are many) don't get hung up on the fact that it's not doing what you want it to do absolutely perfectly, all that really matters is that it gives you the option of a variation, the important thing and probably the most difficult thing is being able to bowl it at will amongst your stock ball leg-breaks and that's the difficult bit. Hence whenever I get the opportunity to bowl I go outside somewhere and practice and try and do so as Peter Philpott says with purpose.
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26th Oct 2017
Still no rest from cricket, yeah we've obviously eased off a bit as the season has finished now, but with the weather here in the UK being fine and dry, the paddock is still in a half decent condition and most important - dry. So throughout Sept and October we've been over there, hung up the nets and had a bat and a bowl. Yesterday it was 22 centigrade - light breeze and sunny - unbelievable!
The legend that is Tim Brown joined us for a session in September which was a good laugh and we all had a good bat and bowl. Tim incidentally won 4th XI player of the year this year for his contribution to the team (See the link).
Nothing too serious, but potentially worthwhile as my focus in these situations is batting and I have to face Joe who makes it nigh-on impossible because he bowls all sorts of stuff all mixed up - off-breaks, leg-breaks, straight balls and his usual fast stuff - off-cutters, slow balls - you name it he does it. Because the paddock is such a small area with no fencing we have to play the ball late and hit it along the ground.
Today as I write the weather is predicted to take a turn for the worse and already the temp has dropped to a more normal day time temp of 14 degrees and it's been raining. In the short term the practice will continue and we'll probably start to go to Writtle over November into December and practice in the nets. Usually Christmas sees a complete stop and then nothing till winter nets in March which I think is rumored to be happening at Writtle this year.
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