Saturday, June 10, 2006

Uplifting Crowd

Waiting for the England game to start at the moment and couldn't resist commenting on the crowd. One thing that always makes me grin is the sheer noise that an English crowd can put out at anthem time. A few years ago, we had distortion over the radio cos they were so loud and today at the Paraguay game it was :

Big Noise for God Save The Queen
Almost silence for the Paraguay anthem

Our boys like giving the anthem a good singing :-). You could almost see on the faces of the Paraguay players an anticipation of all the crowd support being for England. Now hoping for a good game.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Game time

Had my second game of the cricket season tonight. I think I was looking forward to this one a bit more than the last as I had a decent idea of what I'd be able to do. And I was reasonably fit and able, which I wasn't for the last game I was picked for (rained off).

Word of Warning - this isn't a victory dance post ;-).

So how'd it go ? The other guys batted first and proceeded to cane our bowlers all over the place. I think they piled on about 150 in their 20 overs, which is a tough ask. My fielding did its job but was still pretty ragged. I had one run out chance but didn't hit the stumps with my throw. I did however succeed in my Intimidation Plan, which is basically : Be hyperactive in the field and make the batsmen think you're a livewire that you don't want to try running to. I enjoy doing that and when I'm on form, I'm rather good at it. That's the good thing about this season, I have my running speed back to how it used to be. Losing 1 stone over the winter has done me a lot of good.

I technically had a chance for a catch but got nowhere near it - it was one of those over the shoulder catches that I had no business getting anywhere near. And unsurprisingly, I missed it ! Still, I saved runs in the field and think I did ok. I reckon I'm getting my throwing action improved as well. I need to learn a good throwing action to preserve my weak shoulder.

We didn't do so well with the batting, although we did make a good effort. I opened the batting with our captain and my 3 tests went like :
1 - Did I get out first ? Nope !
2 - Did I get lowest score ? Nope ! Other guy got just 1 run, I got 27.
3 - Did I hold up our scoring ? Not so good here, I started well but was having trouble scoring later on.

We lost in the end by about 30-40 runs but we genuinely had a fun game, which is what it's all about. I picked up the bruises though, I'll have a shiner on my shin from practice before the game and probably a bruise on my thigh where I got pinned while batting. More seriously though, I have a bright red line on my right hand middle finger that comes from the seam of the cricket ball impacting my finger through my batting gloves ... I reckon the gloves did their job though, I'm pretty certain I don't have the broken finger I probably deserve.

Now watching The Matrix off DVD :-).