Saturday, March 12, 2016

The Paddock 2016?

At the end of last year possibly because of the involvement of the estate association who are looking to improve the estate, the paddock fence was completely removed (See link here for over-view and images) rendering it totally useless virtually. We can't bat on it anymore as 3 sides to the paddock are woods and the balls will just disappear into the trees and be lost at £5 a go. The local kids can't play football in there for the same reason, so they're screwed as well. All of which completely baffles me when - 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/may/05/obesity-crisis-projections-uk-2030-men-women 
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/Pages/statistics-and-causes-of-the-obesity-epidemic-in-the-UK.aspx

So, the question is do we bother to use it this year and could we use it in any useful way given that there seems to be a massive concerted effort to prevent anyone using it in useful way other than as somewhere they can let their dogs s**t?

I did bowl in there a couple of times for a few minutes having strung the blue scaffold netting between some trees, but the blue nets mesh is so tight it catches the wind too easily. So the answer would be to buy some proper cricket netting. But that would mean we'd have to spend almost 15-20 minutes setting the bloody thing up. One option would be to put a couple of posts in... Dig a couple of big holes and cement two poles in so that we could just go over there and string the net up? Aggro and expense, but possibly worthwhile as we'd at least be able to bowl in there?

That would mean that with the proper cricket net and the blue scaffold net we could practice shots like leg-side paddle sweeps, slog sweeps etc. I'll have to give it some thought as it'll cost me in the region of about £100 and the posts could easily be pulled over and vandalised. 

Double click the image for the supplier of this product.