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!