After campaigning for the last few years and more so last year about the need and demand for cricket to be played right through Sept it's happened and we have fixture right up till Sept 28th/29th and some weekend there's 2 matches. Last week Sept 7th there were two teams out playing friendlies. The bloke that's set this up Luke Dawe said "This is unheard of in the history of this club... It's unusual to play games in Sept let alone have two teams out"!
We had a great game on the 7th as well - a timed game that ended up as a draw, but it was close and the weather was fantastic. (A lot of people cite the weather as a reason not to play in September).
So this game coincided with our end of year awards night and initially it seemed there'd be no games at all because of the hope for everyone to show at the event. My captain 'Nishant Khare' had other ideas and he knew that people wanted to play and so set up a short-arse game of 30 overs starting at 11.00 with Orsett & Thurrock. This is team with a lot of players from the team I played with when I started.
A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with one of the better players at the club Michael Gray about his son Dan who took an award for his bowling at the end of season event. On this particular day he was having a moan about how badly he'd bowled saying that he'd been tonked because "he was searching for wickets". He then said "All he needs to do is bowl a tight off-stump line and the batsmen will make the mistakes and wickets will come. Instead, every ball he's looking to bowl them or get LBW and these players at this level if its inches off line - as he found out... were whipped off the legs for 4's and 6's".
I've not bowled that well this year... currently 7th highest wicket taker at the club, but that's down to being one of the people that bowls the most overs...
But hearing Michaels analysis of Dan's bowling I realised that's primarily been my objective and now it's as plain as the nose on my face that's the reason I've gone for so many runs. I also played in an interclub game a month or so ago against the blokes I usually play with and they said pretty much the same thing, when I bowled in the channel or wide of the off-stump - leg-breaks or flippers it meant that they had to play high-risk shots, whereas if I tried to pull off a Shane Warne and attack the stumps from outside of leg, they were filling their boots with 4's and 6's. Needless to say that's not always the case, there's batter at out club that's a significant player who specialises playing off-side and straight shots. I was told to bowl at his legs or or wide of his legs as he couldn't play it. Sure enough in the nets in 20 balls I had him out 4 or 5 times - he was lost!
So with the Michael Gray mantra in mind I committed to adopt that approach.
We arrived and saw that the wicket was over to one side of the ground. I then requested that I bowl from the 'Road End' at the top of the page.
I then proceeded to attempt to bowl an off-stump to wide of off-stump line and it worked. Almost every time I was tempted to try a more attacking line I was hit for 4 through square leg or fine leg (Shorter boundary) red-lines approximating the 4's. Whereas the off-side line brought rewards - wickets at extra cover point and point with regulation catches. I conceded a couple of 4's (I thought there were more) but the more disappointing one was the one through mid-on. I must admit it was a friendly and I find that some of the other players wont put in dives to stop fours and this was one of them. There were a number that went through the same area and the fielder (A small boy) was having to run from (A) to prevent the boundary.
In part that's my fault for not setting my own field, but given how I've been bowling with no clear strategy of my own I've generally been happy with the fields I've been given. I need to be more assertive next year with this revelation re this bowling line/strategy and set the field I want.
Overall I was happy with the outcome and my figures and the captain Nishant said that with these figures I now sat at the top with most wickets for the 6th XI.
Sticking with this theme, the opposition opened their bowling with two of the players I used to play with back in my Grays and Chadwell days - Matt and Andrew Hills - both really good players. Matt said that it was probably the first time in 16 years they'd opened the bowling together.
They both adopted the same approach to me, but were both several times faster than me and have played since they were kids and are/have been very good players. I'd never seen Andrew bowl before, so he was a revelation. Check those figures out! 4-3-4-3!
But it was the field they used that was interesting - see below... (Blue B is the batter).
I don't think at the speed I'd bowl I'd adopt this field (Above), but probably something more like the one below and I've still got potentially three more games to put it to the test.
In conclusion; The rationale therefore is that I bowl an off-stump line. This season when the batters come in they're initially susceptible to being caught behind, in the slips and gully. So it may be the case that I start with 2,3 and 4 in place for the first over when a new batter arrives at the crease. Once, they've seen what I'm doing I could move 4 to "A" and dependent on what I'm bowling like move 3 to the boundary at deep mid-wicket if they're managing to get the ball there or I look to bowl a more leg-stump line?
The white lines are records of where I've been hit predominantly in games, so I reckon this field might actually work for me. The key is - like Andrew Hills make sure I bowl and off-stump line and be prepared to adapt and explore a leg-side approach if the batter shows all the signs of being an adept off-side player.
Note. This approach is the what I used to do and had done for years with very little luck, but that was massively in part due to the fact that strength of the squads I played in was a massive factor - no one could run, jump or catch unless the ball was hit directly at them. Different story these days with the club attracting far more committed and athletic Asian players. The club is exponentially better and growing massively. Next season the 6th XI I've been playing in this season is to be put into the league and we'll be playing league cricket. This is us...
Oh yeah we won. We bowled first and and they were all out for 219 off of 25 overs. We got that in 17 overs for the loss of only 5 wickets with Asad Abbas back row left with black arms scoring 55 not out.
Back row left to right
Asad Abbas, Varun Khare, Adhitya Kalabarigi, 'Harry' Hiralkumar Suthar, Chris Prince, Nishant Khare, Adil Ijaz.
Front row left to right
"JJ" Jayvant Jadhav, Vedant Khare, Arvind Rajaram and me Dave Thompson
