Gonna buy a hat ...

Well, maybe not yet at least.

Cricket is one sport where tailoring your gear to support you while playing really helps. And that's from toe to noggin. It's pretty tough to go into a sprint on ground made greasy by dew when you don't have spikes on. Spikeyboots really help :-) And a good pair of boots will keep you playing when you get a toecrusher from a bowler.

When I'm in the field, I generate a lot of heat so I depend on just a few bits n pieces. I have my SpikyBoots which are still going strong after a few years. (Ok, they're starting to fall apart but they'll last a bit longer) I have a couple of pairs of white trousers which now desperately need a wash :-) I throw myself around in the field and never feel I've put the required effort in unless I get at least one new grass stain. To give me the confidence to dive around, I wear a pair of knee supports. They're quite honestly, RUBBISH ! They don't give much support to knee ligaments but they do at least give some padding against the ground while being RUBBISH means they don't hinder movement.

I don't tend to wear a jumper now, although I used to when I was a young pup. Couldn't bowl in a jumper ... having that wool around my shoulder put me off. (This was when my arm was 100%). Finishing the fielding outfit is what I have on my head. I've never worn contacts, so I'll always be with my glasses on. Top that off with a rainhat and you'll see a crazy disreputable person in :

Shabby boots, grass stained whites, a tubby tummy attempting to creep out from underneath a shirt that is never tucked in, hands spread wide to help me start with tearing off after the ball and my trademark demonic grin lurking below glasses and rainhat*.

*(with English weather, I refuse to call it a sunhat)

One of the guys is leaving our project, so we celebrated by heading off to Lords for a day at the cricket. It was a great day out, good company, interesting weather, close exciting games and the right team (our's!) won. And I walked out of there with a new hat :-)

I like my new hat :-) But after Wednesday's game it looks like it'll be kept aside as a non cricket playing hat. Maybe a watching hat :-).

Depth perception is pretty critical when you're in the field, it goes towards timing dives and knowing where to stand for a catch. So I'm depending on my glasses being well aligned, to let me judge where the ball is correctly. To have the best chance, you need to be able to put a 50p on the ground where you think the ball will land, as soon as it goes up in the air. What happens if the eyes are out of alignment is that the 50p landing point guess will move as the ball gets closer. So you set yourself for the ball landing in one place, if you stay then the ball will either go over your head or land short.

Or, if the glasses/eyes are doing really badly, it'll land 6 foot to the side ... Not had that kind of embarassment for years though, my current pair of glasses have done the depth perception much better than any I've had in the past.

Funnily enough, I never really needed good depth perception while batting ... Although what I've forgotten this year is that the helmet has helped because it lets you level your eyes with the horizon. You forget more technique than you ever learn.

What happened Wednesday was a bit embarassing. Looks like the new hat was a bit big, so it comes down over my head more. That means it hits the legs at the back of my glasses, which knocks that alignment out just a little. It's a pretty close thing, so you can only really tell if it's ok when the ball is coming towards you and not even then. I held one catch but missed stopping the ball with a few dives.

And then there's the one on the boundary ... I was actually sub fielding for the other side, so when the instant guess says it'll land 30 feet short I'm thinking "fine, wasn't planning on catching one of our guys anyway". Then it starts getting closer through its trajectory, closer, closer and that 50p landing point is suddenly just 8 feet away ... To the point where it's probably easier to go for the catch than let it bounce. Especially as the cricket ball bounce made the rotten thing move 5 feet to the right.

Yep - embarassing. So the new hat is fired and I'm back to the old one. Old hat is fine :-) It sticks on well and has a bit of air up there (although that's filled by my hair). The brim is a bit unruly though, so it has issues keeping the sun out.

Still, after me beating myself up for getting caught out by gear we did actually win. Closer game than it needed to be, with me standing at the other end when the winning runs were knocked off. I got 4 not out, having dropped down the order to give a cramping leg chance to settle down. 4 plus 1 catch isn't bad, especially when the early catch prevented one of their openers from making an impact. I threw myself around in the field again, with the bad ankles standing up to the strain well. Calf wasn't so good, it wanted to explode on me due to cramp. I blame poor preparation, Wednesday at work was extremely hectic.

Oh, before I finish, I have been reasonably pleased with myself this week ... Firstly, I managed to avoid buying another bat on Tuesday. Why another bat ? Ask a cricketer that question and you'll get a blank "Why not ? It's there ?" look. The other reason is cos I've still managed to avoid sledging the bloke who's going out with the Evil Ex, who's also played in the last couple of games. I have a feeling that if I had started sledging him, I would definitely not have stopped as there was plenty of excuses for it.

That said, I'm not going to start sledging the guy now, I'll just close out with a Youtube link :
Chris Rea's Gonna Buy A Hat.