Great Waltham cc 3rd XI v Basildon & Pitsea 3rd XI game 26/5/19

Another lovely venue up the A12. Most of us got lost following those bloody Satnav's. I knew exactly where I was going but the bloke in my car had his one on and it started telling us that the A12 was jam-packed and that there was another option. Initially I dismissed the idea, but the traffic was bad as we approached the A12 and we were running out of time so over to the Satnav and then it began going really wrong.

I knew from the direction of the sun and the fact that we were predominantly going west something was going awry, then when we pulled up at the entrance it was obviously wrong. After much faffing and some good old turn right turn left, turn left again at the Bull and Duck we set off in search of a Satnav signal. In the meantime the captain Alistair had pulled up and he opted to follow us. Eventually following the old school style instructions getting closer to the A12 we picked up a signal and that allowed 'Satnav boy' Tim Brown to put the correct post-code into the phone and I got a look at where we were on the map. If he could get me on the A12 all would be solved and after a few miles down winding lanes we got on the A12 and the Satnav was no longer required, although we did initially drive past the entrance and had to back-track a couple of hundred feet. But, eventually we arrived.

Someone who'd got there on time had done the toss and we were straight into bat...

As you can see it didn't go that well again other than our captain Alistair Hayton getting 53. Al McIver did okay too, but the rest of us fell short of our expectations. One of their bowlers did well taking 6 wickets and he was also the top scorer with the bat - Joel Barker, I can't imagine that he'll be hanging around in the 3rd XI that much longer at 17 I'd imagine he'll be in the 2nd XI at some point this summer?

Quite rightly on the basis of my performance so far this season I found myself at the bottom of the batting order with Tim Brown. I did get the opportunity with about 5 balls to go. So with 5 more balls left I walked out and as Alistair approached I asked what do you want me to do - try and hit it? "What do you think - yes hit it". I thought - fair enough with Tim Brown the No.11 after me, even if I miss it, he might do some damage - he's known to hit 4's.

As I got to the square Josh Debond approached -
"What's the bowler like"? I asked.
"It's okay it's not doing anything" was his reply. I didn't even take a guard I was just going to skip down and hit the ball with a straight bat. There's was one thing Josh Debond forgot to mention though... The fact that the bloke was bowling off-breaks, so I found myself on the way back to the pavilion first ball. Tim Brown followed and I made sure I told him that the bowler was an off-spinner. It made no difference.

As we walked out on to the field I looked around and it looked as though we were also a bit thread-bear in bowling dept as well.. Tim Edmonds, Alistair Hayton, Tim Edmonds son Ben and me. Last week and the week before I'd bowled poorly, so this week looking to address this I've been working on my Flipper bowling as a way of simplifying things. I've added a 8 step run-up and a few MPH in speed.

I got given the nod to bowl quite early and at one point in the over before my spell I almost bottled it and nearly scrapped the idea of bowling Flippers. Thankfully I didn't and it went really well. I was only hit for 1 for and that's because that delivery was an attempt at a Leg-Break as a variation and it came out of the hand completely wrong. The batsman

G.Reed who was going at a fair lick when I came on was halted in his tracks with my Flippers and eventually got a single. When he arrived at my end he said something along the lines of "At last, I haven't been able to get you off the square"! Which I felt was a pretty good endorsement of my bowling. I almost had him with some ridiculously close play and misses and he almost chopped one onto the stumps off an inside edge. I was taken off after

six over I guess because I hadn't taken any wickets. I was happy though with the way it went only a bit miffed because the 2 leg-break attempts were hit for 4 and 2 respectively - if it hadn't have been for them I'd have had pretty good figures.

Having posted a score of 147 Waltham had reached that by the 29th over almost.

So once P.Rolfe came out pulling off reverse sweeps for 4 we could sense were dead and buried.

Over on my other blog you'll find a number of wagon wheels for some of the key batsmen and a suggestion as to how you might go about bowling to them if you're a wrist-spin bowler or a left arm orthodox bowler. Double click the image below.

The detailed analysis of the batsman is here https://bowlingplans.blogspot.com/2019/05/great-waltham-3rd-xi-batsmen-analysis.htmlsix or double click on the image above.

Some Bloke called Dave - December 2018

It's nearly Christmas and I've got a bit of time off and I've been able to catch up a bit. Since the demise of my original mega- blog and the experiment with websites I've been a bit lost as to how I can move forwards with my cricket blogging. At the same time, one of the methods I used to promote the blog and inter-face with other wrist-spinners started to lose its way and that too seems to have gone south. So the question has been what content do I have - do people still want to hear me waffling on about wrist-spinning? In the last 2 years I tried to have a pre-populate 50 post blog where I intended to put all the best content from the mega-blog, but I haven't got round to it and have felt more inclined to work with this blog, although at the moment it doesn't get many hits. The 50 post version though includes one page which gets more views than any post I've ever produced and since then I've tried to modify that into something else again despite how successful that page is.

Today though, with the fact that I'm going to be playing wholly new teams blokes, there seems to be the potential to create something new again, so alongside this blog, which is the only blog these days that has new content, I've come up with something specific to the new league...

Double click on the image above to access the blog.

It's basically an improved model of the aforementioned post that has had more hits than any other post... Analysis of batsmen. Potentially, because this blog is targeting the new league which is much larger than the previous one, it may take off and be equally as successful?

The other thing I might look at re-establishing is my old forum here http://spin-bowling.boards.net/ which in the past has been really popular? We'll have to see how enthused I am by the new league and teams in the coming summer. In the meantime I'll try and get monthly content in here over the next 4 months leading into the new season.

Joe_________________________________________________________________

He's still hanging in there. We had the annual awards night early in December where there were further revelations relating to the club which are below. But with regards Joe he won an award which I collected on his behalf from Elvis. Joe won Under 18's player of the year which will go some way to keep him on board. He, like many of us had a tough year playing way above his level and came out as the 4th best at the club behind Tony Keep and some 1st XI blokes

It has to be said that Tony Keep is an old bloke and has been playing cricket for decades and he is a very good bowler - accurate, variable speed and flight - seam up bowler - slow/medium pace, he might cut it a bit as well and bowl off-cutters. He took bowler of the year which has been Joe's for the last couple of years if I'm not mistaken.

Writtle Nets

Haven't been so many times this year, the price has gone up, almost pricing us out of being able to go, but we've been twice. I've been batting slightly differently - more gung ho and it seems to work in the nets. I'm a massive fan of England Women's player Tammy Beaumont's batting and her controlled aggressive approach to taking on the bowlers, especially the walking down the crease to the fast bowlers early doors approach and this is something I started to do last year with some reward. In addition, just playing in a more relaxed and confident manner, looking to be aggressive seems to be working. Whether it'll convert to a cricket pitch and a real game remains to be seen, but if we manage to be placed in the new league at the right level and standard, it might come off?

The funny thing is in the nets Joe doesn't do that well and gets really frustrated and I play far better than him, but he's able to take it to the game with far better results than me?

T Rippon news. (The new league)

At the awards night there was another revelation. The Zimbabwean contingent who looked poised to take over the club seemingly changed their minds and suddenly lost all their commitment to Basildon and took themselves off to Benfleet cricket club along with their kids. As a result some of the old committee enthused by the events of November I would imagine, combined with an influx of some new committee members have taken the reigns again to guide us through the new season with 3 teams as opposed to 4 teams which has been the case in the past.

The really disappointing thing though about this league is the length of the games. I'm not 100% certain, but for the 3rd XI team it may be as short as 40 overs which is ridiculous in my opinion and may yet to prove to be 10 overs too little for me and Joe like-wise as I think he'll be bowling in 45 over games. The argument for this is that anything longer is too long for the concentration span of kids. It's a dilemma for cricket, but its to the detriment of the game. Maybe there should be a league whereby kids and adults that want to play crap formats like T20 and The hundred are given the opportunity to do so and the rest of us who want to play proper cricket do so in 50 over games? Maybe once these kids get into it, they'll think I want some of that, I want to prove I can bat long, I want to show that I too can score a century and bowl a long spell. Surely that's what male teenager do? It's certainly how I would have looked at it, I'd have wanted to be the Alpha male among my peers when I was their age... most stamina, most focused, strongest, most agile etc.

There seems to be an acknowledgement of the fact that we're still struggling to get players, although there is a belief that once we find a level that we can be competitive at, that'll bring in players and already there's been a few names mentioned of players who'd retired that have said they'll come back. But longer term, there's a desire to get more of the kids to come through to the 14, 15 year old age bracket. They've got this idea that some of the younger blokes including my own so Joe (17) and others in the 16-19 age group will get involved in training the younger kids, thus demonstrating that kids do get past that age group and do filter into the adult games and excel. There's about 4 of them that are able to execute that role, although one did disappear off the radar mid summer last year, so he might have been lost to the game. I've not mentioned this to Joe, I'm going to leave it to the club to spring it on him and see how he reacts, personally I don't think he'll be up for it and I don't think he sees any value in it. Additionally, he works and he'll be in a situation where he would have had to negotiate Saturdays off to play cricket and will feel like he owes the company, e.g. be available to work at other times... the evenings.

December ends with my weight being 11 stone and 11lbs which I was surprised about given I've eaten a fair bit of crap over Christmas. Started to exercise today 30th Dec, man am I unfit. I can usually do head-stands for over 4 minutes, but at the moment I can't even get my legs up vertical because all my lower-back and core strength has gone! There's a fair bit of work to do!

https://trmecl.blogspot.com/

September - October 2018

I'm writing this in December a few months later, so the memories are a bit vague. I've said it before, but increasingly I have less time for this because of a number of reasons and the fact that I don't have as many problems with my bowling any more I seem to write a lot less these days.

The last two seasons have been difficult for our club and as another season ended with the mood and morale around the club being at a possible all-time low their were rumors that the club was facing a crisis.

A quick re-cap... Over the winter of 2016/17 some significant players in the 1st XI announced that they wouldn't be playing again because of newly emerging commitments, these are blokes in the late 20's for the most part and the impression I got was that they had work relate opportunities or had young families. I don't know how many of them made the decision initially, but it seemed that once these blokes had made their intentions clear, others followed suit on the basis of not wanting to play in a team without the blokes that they'd been playing cricket with since they were 11 or 12. The resulting domino affect almost wiped out the 1st XI meaning that all the other teams below them had to move up a level.

The consequence of this was that a great many of the games that we played in over the summer were over before the coin was flipped. My own team the 4th XI was affected the most. Everyone moved up to the 3rd XI and that meant that every 4th XI game the club struggled to get players for. Some how we got through 2017 and were looking to recruit new players over 2018.

2018 was worse and within a couple of months the 4th XI team was dropped from the league because we failed to get a team out on three occasions. I had my toe broken early in the season, but found myself playing in the 2nd XI with a broken toe two weeks after the break occurred. Loss after loss, meant that people were less inclined to play and even I hit a real low and considered moving to another team. The primary reason for this was, the bloke I played under adopted the strategy of were possible batting first to basically get it over and done with as soon as possible, trotting out the adage... "Who wants to be chasing leather around the field for 3 or 4 hours in this weather". To be fair there was something in it from the weather point of view as this was one of the driest and warmest summers ever. But his approach meant that we'd go in and score a ridiculously low total... and the only people that would get a look in with the bowling would be the seam-up pace bowlers.

On the odd occasion he'd share the bowling around, but invariably it meant that maybe we'd get 2 or 3 overs each at best. Most games I didn't get a bowl and all season I managed to bowl 31 overs - 50% lower than most years. In essence most of us were turning up to field and then go home after having tea, many of the games were over before tea!

There was no influx of new players, a few Dads got involved thankfully, but by the end of the season it was grim. There was talk of the club disbanding and the majority of them going to Benfleet, other people said that there was talking of leaving our current league and trying to join the T Rippon mid Essex league but it was all hushed up as people were worried that if the league got to hear about the situation we might get kicked out and there was no guarantee of the T Rippon league accepting us. Ironic when this was the 50th anniversary of the teams existence.

Bank Holiday anniversary event 

The August Bank holiday sees the club put on a fun day and the kids wing of the club get their parents and everyone to come along and the players from the adult teams turn up and show their faces. Usually, it's a pretty good marketing event and kids that come along with their cricket playing mates get the bug and turn up the following season. In recent years the event has been a bit lack-luster. This year there seemed to be a concerted effort among the players to turn up - it might have been preceded by a meeting where the committee said that we all needed to pull together for the sake of the club. As the day neared it was obvious that the day would be ruined by rain - predicted to start at 10.00 and rain all day thereafter. Sure enough it did, but... a lot of players turned up including me I might add to lend support to the kids branch of the club and the people behind the kids section were very appreciative.

Again at the event there were the rumors of this being the last season, but there was news that there was going to be a meeting to discuss the clubs future in the coming weeks.

The meeting

Brutal was the description I gave it when I came away. The meeting seemed to be made up of three groups. (1). The committee (2) The players (3) The youth arm of the club.
The Youth arm of the club seemed to have an agenda - wholesale change. The youth arm of the club is big, with tons of 'Pre-phone owning kids' e.g. under 14 with no sense of autonomy. Over 14's is another matter, they're as rare as Dodo's - two maybe and they'd been playing in the 3rd and 2nd XI facing the same situations as us the adults, there is no Under 15's team. But this faction wanted action. They made the case that there was no filtration of kids into the under 15's because there was no interaction between the players and the kids and that this needed to happen and that the club would die if the kids didn't stay on and go on to play in the 4th XI and so on. The players needed to be involved in the youth arm of the club.

The committee early in the piece openly admitted after 2 years of decline that the situation had got to the point where they had exhausted all ideas and were now in a position where there was nothing left and asked the club whether they felt that they should stand-down and let a new batch of people take over and inject some new life into the club?

It was obvious from the discussions that the the youth arm were up for it - fronted by a bloke and his wife who had moved to Basildon from Zimbabwe and now had kids playing at the club. In addition they had previous experience back in Zimbabwe. They made a case for potentially taking over and it was put to the audience and we all agreed in principle that they could, providing there was some form of transitional arrangement where the out going committee was involved in an organised hand-over.

Further discussions were had on the future of the adult arm of the club and whether it was going to make the move to the T Rippon league. It seemed that there were protocols to follow and that there wasn't a precedent for the situation and it seemed uncertain how the existing league would react. Furthermore it also seemed that there was no guarantee that T Rippon would accept us. Despite all this it was agreed that we'd leave the existing league and then try and join the T Rippon league. The main benefit seemed to be that the T Rippon league was much larger and there was scope for a team such as us to move up or down within the league if we managed to be accepted.

That seemed to be it with everyone having to wait now until November to find out the outcome of leaving out existing league and whether T Rippin would accept us.

_________________________________________

Other stuff

September and October were unusually warm again. The Paddock was parched throughout Sept and October with deep cracks all over the wicket still with virtually no rain.

This was from October 14th.
Usually by this time I'm seeding the wicket and looking for there to be lush green grass, but it was still parched and yellow.

I'd put some seed down on Oct 6th, but it hadn't taken...

Weekend 13/10/18

Very warm weather 24-26 degrees c. The wind was southerly and was blowing warm – it was like a hot summer day! I sat in the garden in my shorts sun-bathing at breakfast it was lovely! Later in the afternoon I took my crate of balls over to the paddock along with my G9 camera and had a bowl and videoed it. As I hadn’t bowled in 2 weeks or so, I wasn’t sure how it would go. To be honest I felt a bit knackered – it’s always surprising how quickly you lose your fitness.