Stuck for something to scribble about today, so I'm going to break down the rules of the indoor cricket. Think I promised to do that a little while ago.
Ok - the indoor cricket at work is 6 a side, 12 overs a team. The 12 overs are broken up into 3 batches of 4, with each 4 over set having one pair of batsmen. Losing a wicket doesn't mean the batsman can't bat any more, it means -5 on the score.
How about the bowlers ? Everyone bowls 2 overs but you can choose when you have people bowl. One of my favourite tactics when captaining was to try and spot which batsmen couldn't handle a certain bowler and get that bowler against that batsmen. It works too :-)
It's kinda small in there so how do you get big scores ? Hitting the walls gives a bonus. Side wall in batsman's half - 1 extra. Side wall in bowler's half - 2 extra. Side wall then end wall - 3 extra. End wall - 4 extra. End wall without bouncing - 6 extra. But if you hit the ball onto the balcony or the roof, you're out mister.
Fielding is fairly obvious, fielders spread out, with a wicket keeper and a bowler. I usually stand behind the stumps to try and get stumpings but some bowlers are either too quick or too wild to be that close. Mind you, we have Brian, who bowls quick enough for me to be wanting about 3 times the distance to the stumps, compared to the short 10 feet from stumps to back wall.
Games only last an hour but it's a hell of a rush to play in them. I think I enjoy these short games more than the outdoor games. However, it's not been so good this year because of the balls we're using this year. Think the ball I bowled really, really slowly (as a variation) sums it up. It bounced head high ... And when I change to offspin, the normal place that goes is rib high. The balls are pretty squishy, which means they bounce strangely and don't come off the bat too well. When my shoulder lets me*, my sneaky plan for domination will be to bowl really, really slowly to see how many of those head high bouncers will happen. You can't really do much with those as a batter ...
*Due to a dislocated shoulder eight years ago, I have a long term shoulder problem. It's ok 99% of the time, except for when I want to actually bowl with it ... The problem is a little restriction near the vertical, which destroys the smooth rotation of the arm through the bowling action. Sometimes it's fine, other times I have no length accuracy whatsoever. I'll figure something out to stop it being a problem.
Message to all indoor cricket fans who find this post through Google appearing to like me !
ReplyDeleteApologies for there not being too many tactical insights in here, all I can really advise is :
Know your team. Figure out ways to get their strengths out while hiding their weaknesses. If you can turn their weaknesses into strengths through things like matching slow bowlers against suckers for stumpings, good on ya :-) It's fantastic when that works out.
Same with batting. If you've got a weak batter who can nurdle, think about combining them with a strong batter who can whack. The plan is to get the nurdler to always get a single to allow the hitter to get back on strike. But let them know they're out there to rotate the strike. Nurdling isn't glamourous but can be very effective at getting positive scores instead of negatives from wickets !
Know the conditions too - my main ball was medium pace swing but I did a few off spinners too because the floor & ball combination meant they sometimes bounced rib or head high !
And good luck :-) Preparation like hunting for tactics online goes a long way towards making your own luck.