The start of the season was marred by issues with my hips and core strength which I put down to the fact that I'd done some building work on my house and nearly killed myself physically. As a result I thought I'd completely rest over the winter in order to recuperate.
By January I was still feeling the affects of the building work and added to that I'd lost all my usual fitness. So I started to work on my fitness and flexibility. That's the point where it transpired that my hips and butt were weak and everything below that point was out of sync. So a lot of work was done trying to get all that sorted. Meanwhile I had the opportunity to net a lot over Jan and February and I bowled my usual Leg-Breaks exceptionally well and looked to be starting the season on a high.
First game went okay with 2 wickets in a pre-season friendly, but thereafter it went down-hill very quickly and my new captain started to leave me out of the attack. Being a bowler I was now turning up basically just to field. The club had changed leagues and we'd lost our fourth XI where I normally resided and basically had moved up a level and I was being left behind. I concluded I needed to join a bigger club with a 4th,5th or 6th XI that played at my level. I started to look around and found a club and my intentions became clear to my own club and they rang me and virtually pleaded with me to stay.
Meanwhile, having been carted around the park by these blokes here I'd already started to explore how I might address the fact that my bowling was so ineffective. It had been noted in the first game of the season that I'd have done so much better than my 2 wickets if I had a straight ball. So I started to look at my use of the Flipper combined with my leg-breaks. Practicing with my son Joe he said one of the biggest issues was the lack of pace with my leg-breaks. So I started to adopt a run up of about 9-10 steps. The Flippers immediately looked promising with consistency of line and length being markedly better than the Leg-Breaks, so I committed to working almost exclusively with the Flippers as it seemed to be very obvious that I could bowl these with good accuracy.
The red dots went on to hit the stumps
I then bowled the Flippers in a game and was kept on to bowl all 9 overs and went for very few runs. The runs that I did go for were down to attempting to bowl leg-breaks off the new run-up and was easily hit for 4 each time. At one point towards the end of my spell, the bloke that had been freely scoring before my spell ran a single and ended up at my end and commented... "Mate what are you bowling.... I can't get you off the square"! So that then provided the incentive to continue with the Flipper experiment.
But, the run-up was taking its toll on my body particularly my hips it seemed. I then had what seemed like a really innocuous minor accident walking along a dark corridor in my sons flat at Uni. I didn't realise that his dark corridor had a drop down to a new level equivalent of 1 stair step. I stepped down it and jarred my knee with a sensation of a strain in the back of my knee. It hurt slightly, but I didn't think much of it.
I then bowled in a couple more games and the Flippers went well again and I got carted when I tried the Leg-breaks. But I was noticing that I was struggling with my legs - seemingly with regards strength. I then started training with Sumo squats on a wobble (balance board) but going right down to an Asian squat and then one session I sensed a strain in the back of my knee and some subsequent swelling and soreness. This seemed more significant and happened just before my holiday in Cornwall, so I committed to taking things easy whilst away and stuck to it.
Once back in Essex and looking forward to a game of cricket I discovered that this week there was no game because of the uneven numbers in our league and everyone in the league at some point missed a game and it was our turn. So I contacted Orsett and Thurrock who I nearly defected to earlier in the year and got a Friendly game on Sunday.
I bowled superbly - probably the - if not the most controlled and consistent spell I've ever bowled. I got one wicket, that of a significant batsman and bowled my full allocation of 10 overs. Again the only time I was hit was the 2-3 times I bowled leg-breaks and both times I was hit for 4. Again the batsmen came up to me at the end of the game and asked "What the hell was you bowling"?
I realised that I was onto something here, as if it wasn't for the leg-breaks I'd have gone for about 2 an over and realised that in the short term I needed to cut the leg-breaks out totally and work on them in practice. But, that was never to happen.
By the time I'd packed my bag and got in the car my knees were feeling as though they were now suffering from the pounding of the run-up. I'd extended the run up in this game as it seemed a lot more rhythmic, previous games I'd been suffering from stuttering in the run-up, but extending it to about 14-15 steps had resolved that and added more pace. But having driven for about 10 minutes I got home and basically staggered to the front door with my right knee really suffering.
I iced it as best I could and then got it up above my head (Elevation). The next morning it wasn't any better and over the next 4 or 5 days I was in bad way and had even been to the Doctors. The doctors were fairly inconclusive. Xrays indicated that it wasn't arthritis and the doctor recommended I see a specialist and have a MRI scan. This was way back in mid August and I'm still waiting for the MRI scan appointment to come through.
In the meantime I've been taking it easy - no cricket, no running, no bowling and its been slowly improving. I get twinges in the back of the knee and it feels 'Delicate' generally. But I've been doing physio - strengthening the muscles above and around the knee and today I went over the paddock and bowled 7 balls off of a 9 step run-up with a decent bound. I bowled 100 or so balls off of a 2-3 step walk-in as well and I seem to have come away from that un-scathed. The plan is to carry on with the physio and to cycle through the winter and resume light bowling at winter nets. I'm hoping that come May I'll be able to run-in off of a 12-14 step run-up and bowl my Flipper variations and get some wickets.
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