It's rained at last!

It's been hot and dry here in the UK and it's been pretty much the same elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere. The result is the wickets are dry and hard.

Nearer to home the Paddock where Joe and I practice and have a knock about has suffered from the long dry spell with massive cracks on the wicket. Thankfully at the end you bowl to and bat on, it hasn't been anywhere near as bad as the areas mid-way down the wicket. We've had to resort to bowling really full and do some running repairs on the area "good" to "full", but this rain today has meant that I've been able to do something more significant.

In the garage I have a load of clay ready to be mixed with organic matter (Compost). The clay is graded through the use of a couple of Sieve's with the intention of re-seeding or repairing.

 
This image here below is indicative of how bad the cracks have been. What's surprised me this summer elsewhere, is how sound the cricket wickets have been that I've seen, none of them have cracked in the same way which is either down to the correct ratios of clay with organic matter and care and attention from the local council?

So today with it scheduled to rain all day I've put down some of the slightly rougher and bigger mix with some seed in. I don't think the seed will take as it'll dry out again and we'll probably use it through till September for batting. What I'm hoping will happen, is the rain will break down the earth further still and it'll bind/stick to the existing earth 

 Over-night the rain is due to stop and tomorrow cloudy/bright with a good breeze, so before it has the chance to dry out I'll roll it and with a bit of luck it'll bind with existing surface. There was a little bit of a dip in the surface - a bit of a bowl, so hopefully I'll have rectified that to some extent.

Some rain for the Paddock

Easter has been cold and grey and thankfully I've been up to my neck in DIY, so the weather has been good for doing DIY. It would have really p*****d me off if had been sunny!

It's rained a bit so the paddock preparation is coming along okay. I went over and had another roll today as we had a dry day today. Despite the rain - I think because there's been so little in the way of warmth and sunshine the grass shoots have yet to come through. There's a small patch that's been repaired in the middle of the space and that's got a few shoots, but that's in area that sees the most light.

.Not getting out has mean that I've been able to do some work on the Leg-Break page of my blog, added some links including one with Warne Practicing in the nets with Terry Jenner in attendance.

Tonight I've transferred the bowling accuracy page over from the now defunct website to the blog and that's here if you want to have a look... http://wristspinbowling.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/spin-bowling-line-length-and-accuracy.html

Paddock's currently looking like this...

Back Yard pitch preparation - The Paddock

It rained a little this morning - very light shower so I thought I'd have a look at how the paddock is getting on and roll it again before the seeds sprout. Having had a look at it, the earth is still wet and malleable and I decided that I'd roll further up the wicket towards the bowlers end and look at the prospect of extending the cut strip further.

Having rolled it with reasonable success, I decided that I'd also cut the grass before it grows so much that cutting a full length wicket would be a mammoth task...

So for the moment It's cut to about 16 yards and rolled to that extent too. It's probably reasonably flat to about half way down the wicket - more than enough for our use. As you can see the weather is grey and over-cast and it's warm - 16 degrees, so ideal growing conditions. Ideally we'd have a bit of rain and that should get the seeds growing and the grass coming through.

Oh yeah, if you're interested in bowling the Flipper and it's variations have a look at my Flipper page here over on the other main blog as I've done some more work on it yesterday.

Working on our practice wicket in the Paddock

This morning I heard the familiar sound of the council mowing the grass verges and potentially the paddock. So after breakfast I wandered across the road to check to see if they'd cut the grass on our wicket. I've been holding back on seeding it because I guessed that they'd churn up all the grass.  Sure enough what with the wet and cold start to Spring this year and the use of a dirty great sit-on tractor mower like this here...

The paddock got pretty churned up including the bit I worked on a couple of weeks ago. So this morning it looked like this...

This shot here would be the view from the batsman.

This view here is almost side on - we bat at the end here on the extreme right of this image.

Looking at it more closely, it was obvious that the damage wasn't that severe and that with a little rolling it was going to easily rectified. 

The soil is very wet and the temp today was 13 centigrade, so idea for sowing the seeds. I've bought 2 types, one for under the trees in the shady area and a general hard-wearing grass for the bit that has the sun on it all day. So I've mixed them together, with more of the shady version under the trees.

 Here's all my gear ready to go.

 This is with the seed put down prior to a proper roll, you can see on one side where I've started.

 Here I've covered the seed with fine grade dressing made up of general compost and clay.

 Then before rolling I've covered the cut strip/wicket area with scaffold netting, so that the clay doesn't stick to the roller lifting all of the seeds.

This is it once it was rolled and some additional loose top-dressing in areas that needed to be filled because of shallow dents. You can see in the distance the roller at the bowlers end as some work was done in the bowlers foot-marks. Usually we only cut the batting end, but looking at it today I might cut a full 22 yards this summer as it look pretty flat.

Hopefully, no-one will vandalise it and the grass will establish quickly. Rains expected in the next 24 hours mixed with sunshine in between (April showers). The latter part of the week it's going to get warmer and the following week traditional April showers so wet and warm. The prospect therefore looks good. As the grass establishes, I'll get some grass food of some sort to help it flourish and hopefully we'll get some good use out of it through the summer. 

The Paddock 2nd of March 2018

It was supposed to be the first day of spring yesterday and I may have had a wander over to the paddock to have a look at what I should do by way of getting ready for the summer. Instead I was over there taking pictures of the snow.

It's around this time of year I start to think about whether I'll be bothered to make use of the space. If you don't know the background story here, I'll go over it quickly.

This is a piece of un-designated land about 70 metres from my house. There's nothing there except for a patch of rough grass. There used to be a chain link fence and two goal posts, but they were all removed about 2 years ago and the 'Anti traveler' fence was erected to keep them from parking their caravans on the site I'm guessing. Thankfully, the cowboys that were contracted to remove all the fencing didn't do all of it so there was some fencing left behind albeit covered in brambles, bushes and Ivy. As well as not taking all of the fencing down, they didn't take all of the wire, posts and concrete bases away either - instead they dragged them into the woods and dumped them in there.

The local council do very little with the space by way of maintaining it - they mow it about 5-6 times a year and keep the grass relatively short. I've contacted the council in the past and asked them to replace the fence when it was still there albeit with sections missing or vandalised. They came along and had a look and deemed it wasn't worth it saying that it wasn't a designated space for recreation. That aside, people have played football in there since the 1970's as well as other games and when my kids were small we started to use it to play cricket in and practice in and still do - helped by the fact that some of the fencing - about 65% of it was intact so that we were able to play without the ball disappearing into the woods. Why the fencing was taken down - still alludes me and almost feels like an attempt to stop kids from using the space?

So for the last 8 years or so I and my sons have cut and rolled a wicket in the space and utilised it, going so far as putting nets up

Click on the image to see the video.

In the image/video above you can see the fence on the off-side and there's a good piece of fence directly behind where I'm shooting the video from, both these sections were removed and dumped in the woods by the contractors.

We now have to put the blue scaffold fencing stuff up any time we want to bat. Thankfully the contractors left behind some sections of fence and we're able to at least bowl in the space up against the fence. This wicket you can see here was also ruined by the contractors they parked their transit on the wicket area in October when the grass was wet and left enormous indents on a length for fast bowlers - Joe the kid batting is now a fast bowler and is 16.

Back to this season 2018...

The other thing the council don't do and I'm not sure if they've ever done it is - prune the bushes back. I noticed a few years back when the bushes hung low enough, the bloke on the mower drove around the bushes and therefore left the perimeter grass uncut and over a period of a couple of summers the grass area was noticeably being reduced by virtue of the trees being left to grow into the space. Just down the road there was a similar open space that wasn't fenced off but was still mowed and over the last 8 years the grass has given way to bushes and now there's almost no grass at all - but a hand full of bushes and this I reckon is what would happen to this space if no-one maintained it.

So in the Autumn and spring I maintain it, cutting the brambles and bushes back to stop them encroaching on the space and cutting the light out so that the grass doesn't grow and the bushes and weeds take over. Each year I ponder whether to continue and so far I have done as it's one of the things I still do with Joe and it's also one of the ways I keep fit and it makes me feel a bit like Clarrie Grimmet who bowled in his back yard into his 80's every day that he could. (he obviously liked his cricket) 

So, this year will I be doing it again? Yeah I reckon so, last year we used it quite a bit for batting and it got very worn. I'm even contemplating trying to get this wicket you see here back in action, so once the snow has gone and while the ground is still soaking wet we'll get over there with the roller and see if we can flatten out the areas we'll be bowling into.