Practice and game this coming weekend

Had an email tonight from Dave Ayres tonight saying that there's a Friendly game at the weekend Joe and I can play in (2nd XI). Joe was offered a place in a game next weekend as well in the Presidents XI, but he can't make that one as we've got commitments Saturday morning. To be honest Joe as a cricket player at the moment is a situation in a state of flux. This Saturday prior to the match he's going to be doing a trial at KFC for a part time job while he's at college. So far, it's panning out okay, when he made the initial inquiry he made it clear that he wouldn't be able to work on Saturdays because he plays cricket and the bloke seemed fine with the idea. Perhaps he plays sport and understands the situation? What it does mean though is I'll have to pick him up at 12.00 sharp and then get the match north of Chelmsford by 1pm which'll be a tight call.

Just before posting I've been doing some Photoshop work ready for the analysis of the batsmen which hopefully I'll be posting in my 'Batsmen and how to get them out' blog page here Whether I'll get to bowl or not is another matter and whether I get any wickets remains to be seen. Looking at the weather prospects though I doubt if the game will happen to be honest.

In the meantime I've been getting out and practicing for the last two weeks or so and it's coming together okay. Initially I was really rusty - bowling very slowly, but I'm back to my usual pace. I was hoping to work on an off-spinner of some sort, but my attempts at Wrong uns come out as really good leg breaks, which I'm not worried about. The wrong un is always a sketchy delivery, so I'm never going to do loads of work on it for fear of losing my Leg-Break. That aside I've been trying to get a good top-spinner together as well as a Flipper and both these seem to be going okay. The way I'm feeling at the moment I might be tempted to try the Flipper out in the match this Saturday.

Hopefully if your following the blog, you'll have seen the posts about the preparation of the wicket that I practice on across the road from where I live. We've had some really warm and dry weather of late and only in the last few days has it cooled down and become more akin to April in England. That said it's still been dry and because of the dryness the grass seed on the wicket hasn't taken. So, a couple of nights ago because of the prospect of some light showers I put down some more seed and covered it over with some top soil.

Coming home tonight I noticed that all the verges in our area had been cut again, see here for what happened last time. So went over and had a look and was pleased to see that this time the bloke on the mower had noticed all the work I'd done and had cut around the wicket and not gone across it once. Good man!

100 ball cricket format

From the Guardian...

And that’s the audience the ECB is after, the many more who know nothing about the sport. This is an attempt to fix the mess it made when it sold the TV rights to Sky back in the 2000s. English cricket has never been more popular than it was in 2005, when 22.65m people watched at least 30 minutes of the Ashes series, and never been less popular than it is in 2018. The ECB’s own survey of schoolchildren showed that three in five didn’t even rank cricket in their top-10 favourite sports, and adult participation in club cricket dropped by 64,000.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/apr/24/100-reasons-ecb-new-cricket-the-spin

Some rain for the Paddock

Easter has been cold and grey and thankfully I've been up to my neck in DIY, so the weather has been good for doing DIY. It would have really p*****d me off if had been sunny!

It's rained a bit so the paddock preparation is coming along okay. I went over and had another roll today as we had a dry day today. Despite the rain - I think because there's been so little in the way of warmth and sunshine the grass shoots have yet to come through. There's a small patch that's been repaired in the middle of the space and that's got a few shoots, but that's in area that sees the most light.

.Not getting out has mean that I've been able to do some work on the Leg-Break page of my blog, added some links including one with Warne Practicing in the nets with Terry Jenner in attendance.

Tonight I've transferred the bowling accuracy page over from the now defunct website to the blog and that's here if you want to have a look... http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/spin-bowling-line-length-and-accuracy.html

Paddock's currently looking like this...

Back Yard pitch preparation - The Paddock

It rained a little this morning - very light shower so I thought I'd have a look at how the paddock is getting on and roll it again before the seeds sprout. Having had a look at it, the earth is still wet and malleable and I decided that I'd roll further up the wicket towards the bowlers end and look at the prospect of extending the cut strip further.

Having rolled it with reasonable success, I decided that I'd also cut the grass before it grows so much that cutting a full length wicket would be a mammoth task...

So for the moment It's cut to about 16 yards and rolled to that extent too. It's probably reasonably flat to about half way down the wicket - more than enough for our use. As you can see the weather is grey and over-cast and it's warm - 16 degrees, so ideal growing conditions. Ideally we'd have a bit of rain and that should get the seeds growing and the grass coming through.

Oh yeah, if you're interested in bowling the Flipper and it's variations have a look at my Flipper page here over on the other main blog as I've done some more work on it yesterday.

Been doing some work on my Leg-Break basics page

On the other blog - www.wristspinbowling.blogspot.co.uk I've been working on the Leg-Break page, have a look - double click on the image below...

Comments with regards to content are encouraged - leave your comments below...

Cycling cardio - went out on the bike again today and timed it more accurately. Yesterday I did it in about 13-15 minutes. Today with 13 minutes in mind as a target I went a minute better got it down to 12 mins, so I'm quite happy with that.

Yesterday I read an article on-line about Statins which I've been advised to take because of my high blood pressure. The interesting thing I picked up from this is the blokes reduction in eating bread and sugar. The sugar thing I'm already doing and to some extent the bread as well, but I'm going to make more of a concerted effort to reduce both bread and sugar over the coming months. I'm also going to try and eat more Garlic and Ginger which are good as well.

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.