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.