Rayleigh Fairview 3rd XI
Weather was crap leading up to this game, but Friday it dried up and was windy and sunny, so the prospects for the game were looking promising at the end of Friday.
The team was as listed here. Once we got there it looked like it was going to be another game like the one on Sunday... way too many kids and not enough adults with a good skill set and this was kind of confirmed by the fact that they won the toss and put us in to bat so they at least could all get a bowl and do some fielding .
It was sunny, but pretty cool, not sure what happened with the 30c temps that were predicted at the start of the week.
The opener for them bowled really well, not enabling Tritsan or Brian to get off to a good start. The majority of the runs coming from the other end. Brian lost his wicket and then that brought Nauman to the crease and the good bloked was bowled out. Tristan soon made his 50 and not too long after his 100, shortly followed by Nauman with 50.
By the time the 40 overs were up we'd scored 285 and it looked like there was no way that oppo believed that they had any chance of chasing that down, so after some scran we took to the field and it was obvious that they wouldn't be trying to chase the game and look to win, so right from the outset the games dynamic changed and it drifted into a really dull game where, they just played cautiously.
Joe brought me on early, but to be fair there was no way of knowing who these batters were or who they they had in the hutch. The interesting thing was that this same team put on a 200 plus innings recently , so who know what was to come, Joe proposed that these blokes weren't the same team. Tony bowled in the first overs and was taken off after 5. Having taken 2. This scenario is Tony's best case scenario, blokes playing tentatively with no real technique, his strength is bowling on a good length very straight, kind of you miss I hit with some balls outside of off that he gets edges off that go through to the keeper. He keeps it very simple just changing the speed and length and sometimes he gets it to turn by bowling cutters as far as I'm aware, he never really says anything about it, so I'm unsure what he does, others say he's not a spin bowler, he's just an accurate slow bowler.
The oppoistion come up with their trump card, a kid walks out and the captain says "I know it's a legaue game but..." Basically saying the kid can't play, they've oviously got no chance of winning and they don't want the kid put off playing cricket. Which in a way is reasonable, but I knew wasn't going to help my stats.
Before we'd even started the game Joe mentioned that Rayleigh were in trouble with regards their ground... https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/25923562.rayleigh-cricket-club-forced-out-ground-helped-found/ and with this in mind and the request from the captain suggested we take it easy on the kid and straight-away took Bibishan off replacing him with me.
So here I am. The 10th over, 10 overs too early with no-one looking to take the game on and playing with any aggression, just poking the ball here and there and sweeping legside balls. I knew this wasn't going to go well.
8 overs later with no wickets at least one drop or near miss I end up with this tripe...
The majority of the 4's were embarrasing in terms of the effort in the field and again I go back to comments I made last season, the whole club should be made to show up in April before the season and made to do a series of brutal fitness, skills and agility tests including the basic bleep tests and the results of these used to make decisions about which teams you're suited to play in. Once those basic abilities are established then start looking at the stats. They shouldn't look at age, which I feel they do, the fact is my fitness and agility in the field in my opinion should see me playing in the 4th XI at least. Add my bowling stats and I reckon I should be playing 3rd XI cricket. Others have said if I played in a team with equal fitness levels to me, my stats would be far better.
Anyway those runs at 25 should have been 17 maybe less? I reined it in a bit by asking for there to be a sweeper either side and this made a significant difference. I always look at the team sheet looking to see if there is anyone in the team that can and will run and ground field with any enthusiasm and there rarely is. Normally that's not too much of an issue because I get brought on when the opposition is looking to take me on with aggressive batting and my bowling does the job.
Analysis; (1). I thought I was brought on way too early 10. None of the batters were batting aggressively. (2). The field setting was wrong for this situation and this has made me review and consider my field in the future. I think I need to start with two of the faster more agile players either side of the wicket, deep, sweeping on the boundary for protection at the start. Even with my optimum field I have a faster player forward of square leg in the deep
I've not been recording where I get hit this season, but this here below is an approximation of this game, which if I'm honest was a result of the ball being too leg-side and too full, the boundaries on the Leg-side were either too full or too short and slow.
The disappointing thing, the bloke that came on that did play with some assuredness and aggression only appeared in my first over and then he pretty much stayed there for most of the game. There was also a young bloke who was hitting 4's and 6's, again doing so at a stage in the game where I feel I should be deployed.
What do I do about these types of games? I need to be more "Tony" and the obvious solution is to bowl flippers and adapt a field to reflect this. I bowled a few in this game and they came out better than I expected having not bowled them much in the last 3 years. But, with playing Tuesday nights I've not been netting to hone the accuracy, because if I bowl them I need to get the accuracy to pretty 100%, remembering these are noted to be the most difficult ball to bowl with people talkin about having to work on them for between 5 (Benaud) and 8 years (Grimmett). Personally, I reckon if you spend a couple of weeks you can pretty much develop the delivery.
Despite this being one of the most dreary games ever, we did win and it puts us into 5th position in the league. I've no idea who we've yet to play, but to me it looks like we're not out of the game as such and we still have a shout at coming top. We've got the resources most weeks, the weakest link as far as I'm concerned is the lack of committment in the field and appalling lack of athleticism of blokes that are 20-30 years younger than me, sometimes more.
Gutted at not taking any wickets and my strike rate being degraded, I went back expecting to hear the bad news of the other spinners bagging loads and going above me in the tables. I mean they play against aggressive batters and they have the fielders to take the catches and chase down balls and dive in the field, so they should be flying past me in terms of strike rates, but not so. Sri Kumar took 4, but the rest of the spinners, not great returns.
Despite such a poor game, I've still managed to hold 3rd place in terms of wickets taken and 2nd behind Yannick the pro player. But the figure I look at is the strike rate which is currently 22.42 ahead of most of the other who players in teams where their catches are taken more readily.
Digital scoring how crap it is.
Writing a while later, yeah it's crap. Can't remember why in this game exactly, but as I recall, the game had to be stopped a number of times so that someone who did know what they were doing was able to re-set or recover what had gone wrong. If you know what you're doing and the internt doesn't fail it's fine, but there's 2-3 things that can go wrong and you're screwed. Rest assured it goes wrong. As I write we're 2nd in the legaue. We lost a game because this system went wrong at the end of an over and in the confusion someone bowled an extra ball in the over and the next thing we're looking up and our best batter is walking back having been dismissed off of the 7th ball.
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