Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Tuesday Practice and Drills

You may have noticed that this blog has become a lot more about my sons this year, which is true, but this is slightly out of my hands in that it's been down to a couple of things. First off I'm carrying an injury to my knee ligaments which may be the end of my cricket playing in the not too distant future as it seems that each time it seems to be getting better, I've only got to do something relatively 'Physical' and it goes again. But in addition to that I swapped teams going from Thurrock CC to B&PCC to join my sons as their club and this doesn't seem to have worked out either as since the start of the season I've played in two games one of which was an inter-club game. Supposedly the team I'd generally play in I'd have thought would have been the Sunday B team, which I've not even had a sniff of an invite for, whereas last year when I wasn't even in the team I played for 4 or 5 times? I get selected for the Saturday IX's but number 15-18 on the team sheet, so I never get a match with them and it's Saturday anyway and my preference is Sunday. So, being with B&PCC isn't working for me and it seems to be the same with some of the other players who seem to get their games with other teams and not B&PCC, so that's a bit of a dilemma.

So, as a result I haven't got that much to write about and I've resorted to writing about my kids and the some of the kids at B&PCC. Anyway, today the enthusiasm was taken a step further again in that we did training drills and made up a game based on what we'd seen in the field at Lords. For me as I'd mentioned one of the most exciting things in the game was seeing Swanne bowling with Ian Bell, Matt Prior, and Alastair cook and Andrew Strauss all crowded round the bat trying to take close in catches. So, today we came up with a game where I bowled and the batsman had to produce strokes that would create edges and catching chances for the close in fielders to take and it worked, they loved it and were diving around all over the place. Then later on we did some catching drills of the type they do at Mopsies with the coaches - the one where all the lads stand in a line and the coaches hits a ball off the bat to the line of boys and they catch it. They loved it and some of their other non cricketing mates are also getting into it as well. Secretly I'm trying to encourage one of them to take up being a wicket keeper.

The day was then finished off with the usual Tuesday evening over at Mopsies doing their regular training with their team. Today they were doing diving - stops on the boundary, which kind of tied in with what we'd been doing. Then at the end Joe, Ben and Kieran didn't want to leave they wanted to stay behind and do more cricket drills!