Steamy Interlude

Hmm. With a title like that, I wonder what people's first thought was regarding the subject of this post :-)

It's actually the change in weather ... Honest guv :-) From a comfy temperature, it's got a lot warmer over the second half of the week. I don't do too well in heat, I tend to go over temperature very easily. Not usually a problem in England ;-)

So this weekend has been spent doing stuff with as little energy output as possible so I don't overheat. A quiet weekend is the best weekend :-). I was anticipating not doing much anyway cos of cricket on Thursday but had the pleasant surprise of not actually being too stiff the morning after. That's weird ... I seem to be blessed with a form of natural fitness, where I maintain a certain level of muscle capability despite not doing much to earn it.

That's not the same as saying that I'm an athlete with a perfect figure who can run a marathon a day. Muahaha. It just means I can recover reasonably quickly and have the ability to ignore most of the niggles. Like being down to just one good leg within a ball or two of the match starting.

Doh !

One of the hidden things about cricket is a "Show No Pain" that runs through the core of the game. If I'd shown any hint of the groin muscle troubles, batsmen would have thought about taking on my fielding. So by showing no pain, it adds to a kind of intimidation factor. Bit like me looking to avoid throwing long distance. It's not so much the twinginess I'll get from the bad shoulder, it's to not give the batsmen any hint that my throwing arm is weak. It's actually not that bad, I actually gained some throwing power when I dislocated my shoulder.

Also added 50 yards to my golf drive :-)

How'd the game actually go ? We pasted 'em. Some good bowling backed up by decent fielding restricted the opposition to a low score that we knocked off quite easily. I opened the batting, although I only got 2 runs before getting caught trying to push along the scoring. My fielding was ok, I need more practice and 2 good legs. I ended up having to dive to stop the ball due to not having as much reach as I'd like, which looked good but leaked runs.

Ho Hum. Will do better next time. And quite possibly with a new bat too, although that depends on having time to get one.

And surprisingly, I only got a morning's worth of stiffness this time :-) Plus my breathing and heart rate stayed stable during the game. I was having a fair bit of trouble keeping those under control in the first.

The conditions were interesting ... A good swing bowler with a decent ball would have been devastating. Cricket balls are strange things, a skilled player can make the ball move left or right as it's going through the air. At my best, I was able to move it left to right by at least a foot on its way down to the batsman and then when it lands, the seam takes over and moves it the other way. Unplayable when it works :-)

It takes a good ball and cooperative conditions. The ball needs to be hard, with enough leather left to take a shine. You shine up one side and let the other roughen up on the ground. You then hold the ball such that the seam stays upright after releasing. The angle of release and which side is shiny then determines which way it will move. There's lots of theories around this but that's the essential part ... Conditions need to be good too, warm and humid heavy air is the best. We had that on Thursday, which almost had me tempted to think about bowling ...

Bad idea that ... Whereas I can get away on muscle memory and reflex for the batting, bowling takes a lot more work. It needs conditioning to prepare the body plus practice to hone the technique. A shoulder in good shape helps too, there's just too much of a question over whether mine will cooperate. And when it doesn't ... Head high full toss that swings in and follows the ducking batsman's head.

Oh - I've also had to rearrange my Airport Express stuff ... I've had interference on it before, where the music stream breaks up and disappears. I fixed that before by changing network ID, same fix this time. What's disappointing though is that there's currently 3x unsecured networks in range out there. I'm not planning to check 'em out to see what's there but it's a bit sad that people aren't aware of basic security. I suspect my broken music stream issue is linked to this, as rogue computers attempt to brute force hack it.

Changing network ID and passwords regularly can be a good idea anyway ...

Anyway - that conditions thing brought me back to the heat ... It's not as hot as it will be but this house is a bit of a heat trap. Can't open the downstairs window as I'll have a cat inside looking for food !