On the 19th May with a slight relaxing of the
Covid 19 ‘Stay at home’ rules I was able to get out and mow the wicket over at
the Paddock and have a bowl. With my knee having been bad for months almost a
year I’ve got to say in recent months it’s felt significantly better with a
slight increase in basic activities such as walking. I started (Before the
Covid 19 lock-down) to get off the train at Westcliff, breaking my journey and
walking to Chalkwell and then getting back on the train. Since the Covid out
break I’ve been walking around the wood and running a little – short bursts
equivalent to running up and down the wicket twice every now and then during
the walk.
So on May 19th I bowled 24 balls off of a run-up
to see how it went and it was fine. I’ve been watching a bloke on Youtube
On the 20th I bowled another spell of 24 balls
around 3pm and 30 later in the day 7.30pm. Using the Martin Koban rule, I
reckon I came back with a pain level of less than 1. Something like 0.25.
21st I’ve had a rest day today – some angled
board calf stretches, a 20 minute walk, couple of deep squats and I’m feeling
okay. Also 10 seat squats.
22nd A bowling day; So, I know I can bowl 24 balls
and not have any negative outcome and it’s likely if I rest as seen before a
few hours later I can bowl another 24. Koban says not to accelerate the
increase in activity too fast, small gradual steps, combined with your physio
regime. The same applies with that, if you increase what you do in your physio
this too should be increased gradually, noting what the outcome is e.g. any
increase in pain or discomfort.
If anything for me it’s the other knee that feels as though
it’s been affected, so I need to keep an eye on that. Another thing I noticed
was I didn’t wear the same trainers today. I’ve been wearing newish Adidas
Sambas with a cushion in-sole, but today I wore my old knackered Samba’s and it
didn’t feel so good – so the cushion in-sole seems to make a bit of a
difference.
I think what I’m going to do is bowl 24 each day now and see
if that works okay and then after about three days I might then start adding a
ball a day and working up towards the 60 balls which as I recall might be the
maximum I can bowl in the league I play in.
To make it more interesting I’m going to record my pitch
maps, which should be pretty good as, so far this first week has been spot on,
so it’ll be interesting to start plotting the data.
23rd – Had a bowl today, completely ignored the
plan – bowled more than I intended, but that was out of frustration that it
went so bad. Since the resumption of bowling I’ve bowled with good accuracy, so
yesterday I decided that I’d record my pitch map. Isn’t it always the case that
when you start to do something, and you want to do it really well it doesn’t
work out like that? That’s how it was today. Before I went out, I felt ropey
anyway, but went despite this. The weather was sunny but really blustery 40mph
winds. The intention was to bowl the usual 24, but there were so many bad ones
I bowled extras to try and get it right.
If you look at the pitch map for 23.5.20 you’ll see that
generally for much of the time I bowl really full, thankfully most of the
leg-side balls are really full mid-stump height full tosses which I usually get
away with. But generally, that was a really poor bowling performance. I will
just have to see what happens tomorrow. Despite the extra 6 balls or so, my
knee feels fine, so the same again tomorrow 30 balls and hopefully better
accuracy.
I’m going to make excuses now – the approach to the wicket
for my run up is rough – really rough. I might look at how I might be able to
level it out a bit, because I’m sue that doesn’t help.
24.5.20
Better today and again more bowling, but the knee seems to be holding out...
.The clusters on the leg-side behind the wicket are full tosses, they tend to be about middle to top of the stumps and would probably be given as wides. The grey rectangle is my optimum length and the measurements are in Yards and feet, Ideally I'd be getting them on that grey rectangle, but I'm okay with the slightly wider option as I can bowl the flippers with a little bit of off-break with some practice. But as yet I've not worked on them as yet, I'm still trying to get it to the point where I can bowl 60 balls with confidence and not suffer any swelling or pain. It looks as though I'm getting there as this appears to have been around 45 balls.
Red balls are balls that went on to hit the stumps.
The two sessions over-laid below...
25/5/20
No bowling today, well that's not strictly true. Got up and did some stretches as I'm having aggro with my lower back and struggled to do some of the usual ones. Yesterday while I was bowling because of the lower-back aggro and feeling my 60 years, I did some work on running and attacking the ball on the ground and throwing down the stumps. Whilst it was a bit creaky, the main issue that arose was that this involved using my knee in a different way and this morning it felt like using the Koban pain index I was probably at No.1, so decided to not bowl properly.
Instead I bowled probably a couple of hundred Flippers off of a couple of steps and my younger cricket playing son Joe joined me and batted against a wind ball and I had a bat as well. It was lovely and sunny and we were out there a couple of hours which was nice.
I'll see how the knee feels tomorrow and probably have a bowl in the evening. During the day I need to do some stretches and yoga and work on this lower back soreness as today I also suffered back-spasms which is something that has happened over the last 20 years on and off, but it's not something I want happening on a regular basis.
26/5/20
Again another bat and bowl in the sun with the wind ball - bowled a far bit off of a long run up. The knees fine. I think the issue is side-ways movement - Pliques are required or something similar I reckon might have to look into options for physio with side-ways movement.
27/5/20
No Joe today he's gone fishing so I had to bowl on my own and do so properly and plot another pitch map.
A lot of balls today and no affect on the knee it seems which is good news. Instead I've seemingly got a really stiff back and never felt that comfortable bowling during the session and it resulted in loads of wides - highlighted in orange and loads of those full tosses on the leg-side, they ranged from a couple of no-balls around chest/head height and the other were all withing stump height.
Towards the end of the session I changed the angle of the run-up and that seemed to help considerably with the accuracy. So now I've got to work on this stiff back situation. It does feel like I've got a weak core - so I'm going to work on planks and see how that goes and other back exercises.
30/5/20
Bowled tonight and last night as well. I was going to plot a another pitch map but the start last night was so bad I gave up and tried to figure what was going wrong instead. Towards the end of the session it was coming together okay again. It seemed as though because I was plotting where the ball landed I was putting undue pressure on myself. So, then as soon I scrapped the plotting my line and length came back.
Tonight like last night I bowled for an hour - yep, the knees doing well and I'm no longer counting balls bowled. I'm probably bowling 60-80 balls a session at the moment with no ill effect. Tonight I went out and just bowled - no pitch map plotting and it went a lot better, probably the best session so far. I did notice that I was bowling far too front-on and had to re-adjust by making sure that in BFC I was looking over the outside of my leading arm at the stumps. As soon as I was doing that my accuracy improved considerably, so that's obviously something I need to keep an eye on next time.
31/5/20
Last session of May. An hour or so bowling, pretty consistent and accurate - good line and length, worked with varying the speed and moving the wrist position to create variations. Went well. knees fine as well.
