Game on !

New cricket season has started :-)

Which means instead of my evenings mostly being taken up by keeping up with recorded stuff, gaming or keeping up neighbours with loud music, occasional evenings are spent being the Comic Relief on the cricket field.

I approached this game with trepidation cos I've done literally no training this year. I'm one of those obnoxious people who has natural fitness. I may have a spare lorry tyre around my waist but I can still run quick and throw myself around. Which is rather useful if you have no technique to back you up. Cricket's a game that rewards practice, as the practice lets you hone all the complicated technical things the game involves. Everything needs to come together in those fractions of seconds after the bowler sends the ball down. People with no practice behind them tend to be all arms & legs & unintentionally fielding while upside down.

We had awkward conditions tonight. There's been no rain in Bristol for what must be a month now, so the pitch was a bit hard underneath. However, because we play in the evenings, that's when the dew starts coming up making the ground a bit greasy. When I ran my first single I was wishing I was wearing my spikes as my feet nearly kept going with the intention of putting my (ample) bum on the floor. Lots of cloud cover (and light drizzle for a while) made for swinging conditions that were making me wish I could still bowl.

Bowling woulda been fun out there :-)

What are spikes ? Trainers are fine for indoor sports (mostly) or artificial surfaces but for playing on grass you really need something more grippy. Footballers and rugby players have their studs, athletes and cricket players use Spiky Shoes. Mine are a bit old and encase the foot in leather (who said "is the leather a bad thing?") so I'm acquire a set from Globe Sports "soon". Make mine a pair of the Original Pro boots.

Why do you need them ? Simply put, it's dangerous not to. Cricket calls for fast acceleration and lots of leg power being used to turn. If you attempt to field in flat soles, you'll tear muscles due to compensating for slipping. Spikes let you field better and keep your legs intact.

I'm rabbitin' again aren't I ? How was the game ?

Early season affairs can be quite comical as those who have practiced try to put what they've learned indoors to good use. And then there's the numpties (me!) who didn't practice at all. That said, we had a decent game tonight. I definitely enjoyed it although I have a few things to relearn and a few things that need to improve a lot.

Relearn - with the batting, I can be very still. You need to move your feet very quickly while batting to get into position to play your shot. If you aren't in the right place, you'll miss or hit very weakly. Either way, you don't achieve very much. I have a couple of things that I try to see if I can trigger myself into moving when I need to. Need to remember to use those ...

Score - I got 10 runs tonight, bit laboured again (missed stuff I shoulda smashed) but I achieved a couple of targets : Don't get lowest score, Don't get out first.

Fielding was pretty comical at times. I make up for missing practice by running like a headless chicken and throwing myself around. I missed one fairly easy catch but made for it by taking a smart running catch late on. It was too dark to see it which is probably why I caught it. I'm weird like that.

What I need to do is wire my brain into doing baseball slides (long leg barrier to stop ball going past) as well as making sure I'm in the right body position to pick up and throw. I missed another catch which may just have been in range because I was a) on the wrong foot to launch and b) didn't commit to a dive.

Must do better. Will do better :-)

Close game - they needed 10 off the last over to win, with that going to 6 off 2 balls. Very close. We finished off strong though with 3 catches in that last over. I held one, after being inspired by a catch by the bowler that he nearly wore because it was getting rather dark.

That was a theme for tonight. One of the catches our side held was going straight towards someone's mouth. He could have opened wide and had it for dinner :-)

Did I get away without breaking anything ? Almost. I have a finger that is trying to be bigger than my thumb (dropped catches hurt more). My replacement knee pads are a waste of time because I skinned a knee through them. And I appear to have a bruise on my (rather too large) belly where I edged the ball into it. But apart from that, no groin strains, didn't need to throw Big and my legs appear to have survived. Should be no problems coming out next week.

Right - wall of text alert went off half a post ago, so I'll sign off and look forward to making some sensitive souls run away tomorrow when I show the unsuspecting people a PLAGUE FINGER ! (it's gone purple - lol)

PS Tonight saw a first ... I'm usually in a Floppy Hat but due to the light tonight, I wore a cap for the first time in probably 20 years on the cricket field.