November 2018

Cricket Nov

November got under way relatively mild, I always think of Bonfire night as being one of the first nights to be frosty, but it wasn’t. As a result, the paddock grass is growing well, only thwarted by the fact that it’s in the shade for a considerable time during the day. But most days have been sunny up till mid Nov – so good for the grass. I’ve been keeping an eye on it and at least once a week I go over and rake off all the dead leaves and it’s looking pretty good.

Despite the fine weather the ground is far too wet to practice on, so there’s been no practice. On the 11^th Joes work shifts panned out so that Writtle nets may have been an option and I tried to cajole him into going on the basis that he could drive and get some driving practice in driving up the A130, but he didn’t go for it.

Over the back end of last winter, I toyed with the idea of adding off-break bowling using finger spin as opposed to Googlies and did some work with it. But then as the season started noticed that the off-spinning flipper was also an option and discarded the idea of finger spin.

I worked on the Flipper a lot last year in practice… the Warne ‘Bog standard’ back-spinner, trying to get it accurate at different lengths at different speeds (See video here). But, also kept trying the off-spinning version intermittently. The issue I had with it was that for the most part it didn’t really turn a great and I was looking for something that would turn. Tonight, I’ve been watching the Women’s T20 match between England & Bangladesh and was really impressed with their captains (Salma) opening wicket - Danni Wyatt for a Golden. Salma bowls Wrist-Spin, so I guess Wyatt was expecting the ball to turn and it didn’t – Salma just bowled a nothing ball out of the front of the hand – Mark Butcher quite rightly calling it an Arm-ball as opposed to the ridiculous notion of a Slider the ball going straight on to hit middle of the off-stump. So, perhaps I should also work on a ball that doesn’t do anything – as it’s very effective if the bat is expecting the ball to turn? But, the same thing could be achieved by bowling a slow off-spinning flipper with the bonus that it may come back in a little to the RH batsman? That seems like the best option, just keep working on the flipper, and just get the line and length right.

I had planned to try and keep my fitness maintained, but during the half-term break at the end of October before the good weather had completely gone I had some work to do on the roof of the house and stripped off half the tiles, batons and the lining so as to put some insulation in between the rafters and put a new lining on. As a result of doing that I went down with a cold and felt inclined to rest in order that it passed and so the exercise regime went to the wall. As a result, my fitness has lessened, and I need to get back on it, but at the moment still lack the motivation.

25^th Nov

The weather got wetter and a little colder, but nothing radical, if anything still relatively warm so the paddock did well up till the first few frosts which occurred around Nov 20^th At the weekends I went over and raked the leaves off the wicket and it looked pretty good up till this weekend 25^th… The grass having been subjected to a frost looked knackered and the poxy foxes had dug holes in the bowling zone – fairly wide though, so not a problem. Looking at the trees around the edges – particularly the ones that over hang the batting end, it looks as though I should cut some of them back to let some light on the wicket. The seeds that I sowed at that end which are supposed to be the ‘Shady’ type don’t seem to have grown at all.

Still not had any net sessions at Writtle, but have been talking to Tim Brown from the club about going. I keep asking Joe and he keeps coming up with excuses not to go primarily around the fact that he works so much these days and is always knackered.

There’s been some news on the T-Rippon league application which as a club we were slightly concerned about as there was a chance that we would be black balled it seemed and prevented from joining the league. Towards the end of November there were a couple of key events happening in the background, one we’d hear how the SNEL would react to our leaving and then whether we’d be expected be black balled by the T-Rippon league.

The first good new came from the SNEL they allegedly said that it wasn’t a problem us leaving and they’d leave the option for us to come back if we changed our mind at a later stage in the new year. So that was a positive, all we needed now was for the T-Rippon league to accept us and then we got an email…

Dear members,

We are delighted to advise that at their AGM last night the T Rippon Mid Essex League voted unanimously to allow us to join them with immediate effect.   As a result, we have informed the Shepherd Neame Essex League that we have left.

Further details will of course be discussed at our Presentation Night on 1st December and at our AGM in January, but the committee are confident that this move will will be the start of an exciting new chapter for the club.

If you have any questions in the mean-time please get in touch with a member of the committee.

Kind Regards

The Committee

So, we’d done it, we’d made the transition and we now had the prospect of playing cricket next year with a new and positive out-look.

At the end of November my fitness regime was non-existent.