Indoor cricket game 2

 I've been selected again, I thought this might be my Mady Villiers moment, but seemingly not. Again, more players than there were places and for a moment, I wondered whether an old duffer like me might see another game, but I take wickets (So far) and I've been given another shot. What I probably need to do is learn how to use the scoring machine as that may help secure my position to some extent, but over and above that take wickets.

So Harry and Arvind are not playing this week - they didn't put their name down, so they've been replaced by two other lads Reece and Fharan Redgrave, both bowlers that can bat. Reece is an off-spinner and Fharan is a seam bowler, usually quite fast who plays in the 1st XI sometimes - one of the up and coming stars of the club.

I actually think this format of the game is quite nuanced and that hitting the ball hard and long isn't the solution as that'll potentially be caught. Again, I have to admit that I still haven't got my head around the rules, but what I observed last week was that a late cut that goes to the back wall is possibly worth four - 2 for hitting the wall and if you run one that's the additional 2. The same would be for a leg-glance to the back wall. 

I reckon there's value in tip and run as well or getting your body in the way and going for byes as I was trying to do. But early wickets is the key thing I reckon to winning this game. With that in mind - My stock ball with the leg-breaks worked well and I reckon that if I can get the Top-Spinner going as well I'm going to be potentially effective? The Top-spinner if its working, means the small leg-break with far more dip is going to be a valuable ball as well. Bowling at the stumps is going to bring in all sorts of potential dismissals because they're looking to hit the ball every time. 

On Sunday, someone bailed at the last moment and the captain, Lennon put the call out for another player and the position was grabbed by Kirby. She's a 5th XI player that takes wickets - one above me in the most wickets for the club with better strike rate and economy, so in a way a threat... This maybe my Mady Villiers moment/match. We'll have to see?

The game 

The Opposition - Brookweald cc

So the team... Dan, Lennon, Kiegan, Farhan, Kirby and me. The others I reckon are 16-19 years old and me 64. Wish I'd got a team shot, but I'd forgot to do it. Again, I think we all went into this game still with no idea of how the scores work, just knowing that hitting the walls is important, plus the all important run between the wickets. We bowled first and as with the first game, the oppo got off to a flying start. Lennon started off with new bloke Farhan. Again this game is so fast - you're up against a clock and you can see it on the wall and you have to get through your overs to ensure you get through the whole innings, so my overs are a blur. I know at one point I was thinking 'He's not going to bowl me' but I got my overs in, one near the start of the game - maybe the 3rd over and the other were towards the end of the game. One of the wickets was off the wall caught by Lennon (I think - I really need to read the rules) and the other was bowled around the back of the legs again with a leg-break and again the bloke stood there in disbelief like he'd never seen a leg-break before? 

They scored 123, which was a lot less than last week, but these blokes looked like seasoned pros and were taking it seriously so I kind of expected a decent attack with the ball.

Not grasping how the runs are scored half the time, it seemed we were going along OK with Farhan doing a really good job with the bat, hitting sixes, most of the others chipped in with runs. Keagan didn't do so well this week and was clean bowled by the bloke who seemed to be their strike bowler. I was out first ball, walking down the wicket, copped one on the foot and it went away to leg and I ran expecting Dan to be backing up and taking the run, but when I looked up he was standing there and needless to say he didn't get back.

My observation for what its worth is that, if the ball comes off the bat or even the body and you run, just the fact that you're running puts them under extreme pressure and for the most part these blokes aren't Jonty Rhodes and they rarely pick up the ball cleanly and get it into the wicket keeper effectively - it's just not that easy in such a dynamic situation. Whereas I'm playing with young lads and they did this so much better than the oppo, and again the oppo running between the wickets lack the fast burst reactions of teenagers and were run-out for 3 of their wickets.

Kirby batted well till she was out, but as I said last week, the 2 bowlers or me at least, shouldn't occupy the crease if you're not hitting the ball or running with blokes waiting to come in because they've been retired (happens after 25 scored). Thankfully me and Kirby went quickly allowing Dan and Fahran to come back for the final 2 overs. It looked like it might be a run or two too much  3 overs out, but the last 2 needed just over 20 off the 2 overs, there were some dot balls, but these were countered by some good tip and runs for 3 and a 4 or two and you could sense that the oppo were aware that they'd got it wrong and they could see it slipping away from them, there was some serious backing up going and some 'Mankadding' chances as a warning. In the 2nd from last over the bloke went right through his action - didn't let got of the ball and went back to the stumps as a warning to Dan for over zealous backing up. But on the last ball Dan hit the necessary runs and we won our first game at the 2nd attempt and this put us at 2nd place in the league (See below).  

Our bowling figures for the game (Below)

Batting details (Opposition) Below. 

League at the moment (below).

League Top 10 Bowler rankings

I'm top of the league currently, but that's down to the fact that I've bowled the most overs. The bloke below me with a strike rate of 6 with a wicket per over is the one to watch and try and keep ahead of. 

No games now for a couple of weeks, so we'll no doubt drop down the rankings. Can't wait for the next game. Hopefully I'll get picked again. 

Indoor cricket league game 1

 I've always wanted to play indoor cricket, but it's always seemed shrouded in secrecy and open to a selected few. You never heard anything about it other than one or two of the 'Insiders' within the club mentioning it among each other and that was it. This year with the exponential growth of the club and the massive influx of people from different ethnic backgrounds, it feels like we've lost a lot of the people that were holding the club back... the 'Inner circle' maybe have left or have stepped back? Whatever has happened it's meant that Indoor cricket was offered to everyone and I jumped at it and so too did 29 other people. Tonight was the first game...

What happened? The game was played at the Riverside leisure centre in Chelmsford...

The team consisted of...

Back row left to right...

'Harry' Hiralkumar Suthar

Me Dave Thompson

Arvind Rajaram

Front Row left to right...

Keigan Scannell

Lennon Cleveley (Capt/Keeper)

Daniel Gray

To be honest as this was our first game I didn't have a clue what was going, no idea of how many overs we bowled or what constituted a game - seemed like possibly 10 overs. I think I bowled 3 and so did someone else (Arvind)? The other 2 bowlers bowled 2 it seemed? 

The scoring was different. What I did note that was a normal run was worth 2 runs and most of the runs seemed to be gained by hitting the ball to the wall and running a single. Hitting the wall gained you a point and the run between the stumps 2, so that scored you 3 and seemed like the 'Go to' approach? 

Balls hitting the end walls in the air I think are sixes, not sure about the side walls. I'll pick up the rules as we go along I guess? 

Umpires were provided as too was a scorer which was a result as you have to score using a machine that looks like something from the Apollo space missions in the 1960's and 70's. 

When we turned up, the game that preceded ours was coming to an end someone noted that the scores were in the 90's at the end of the game. The opposition were in the changing room when I was getting ready and I spoke to a bloke about it and he said they'd been playing some years and their first 2 years they came bottom of the league 2 years in succession, saying that it takes a while to figure the correct approach to playing it.

How do you feel it went? Given how the game panned out and the fact that I've not picked up a ball in a month or so it went well. Read on below...

What was good/bad? It was cricket so everything about it was good, met a bloke I've played against before "Ken", can't remember who he plays for and I didn't even get the name of this team he was playing for here! Nothing bad really - maybe it would have been a good idea to get more of a sense of how the scoring worked out because it was nothing like anything I'd seen before! The light in the hall might be better and others commented that it's difficult to see the ball coming off the green carpet. The ball is a dull red low bounce rubber, pretty much responds in a similar way to a proper ball. I copped one in the face off a slow bowler - didn't hurt, there's enough weight in the ball to warrant the use of a box though. 

Analysis. Apparently, the scores will appear somewhere on-line and I'll copy them over. Not used to the fact that the scoring rate is mental, it felt like the first few overs were poor. Wides are tight, anything down the leg-side was given as a wide. So the run rate was in excess of 10 and over and it felt like the game was going away from us from the outset. I think I came on for the fourth over having seen Dan, Arvind and Harry bowl and get clobbered, I got a wicket with the first ball with Harry or Arvind taking an easy catch at Mid off. I think I bowled another over straight after and then the next over I got another wicket bowling the bloke around the legs with a Leg-break. I think we got another 2 wickets, but anyone scoring over 25 I think gets retired and they had 2 x retirees and they came back on and the oppo finished on 140 which looked way beyond what we'd potentially get against an experienced side.

14/10/24. Got access to the score sheets...

 

So, looking at this it looks like there's 12 overs per innings. No idea what the rules are - could you use 3 bowlers and they bowl 4 overs each or two - 6 overs each? Will have to either read the rules or see how it pans out each game. So looking at the score sheet for the bowling looks like I did OK, especially as I took 2 of the wickets and wasn't particularly costly in comparison to the others.

Just been looking around the website and found more data... 

Even though we lost, we've got some points and 4 teams have played we're not at the bottom of the table and having spoken to the bloke in the changing room I reckon that should be our first objective.

This is a nice start, just need to keep doing it. It would be good to find out what this other bloke does. I reckon a good ball to be able to bowl would be the top-spinner and a small leg-break with a lot more over-spin. I wonder how it's going to pan out in terms of Lennon picking the team? Will the team rotate. I reckon we could have easily fielded 2 x teams given that there's 30 people with their names down to play? 

Good to see all our batters in the top 10 with Keagan at the top. Now it's a case of how do I stay in the team? Because I'm pretty useless at batting and the fact that I don't really have an ego re batting, I was aware that there were proper batters in the wings waiting to bat again, so I was happy to lose my wicket and give them a 2nd chance. What I did do batting with Lennon was run x 2 which was the only example of it in either innings. Risky, but when the pressure is on, the fielders are struggling to get the ball back clean.