Skip to main content

Winter Nets @ The Spencer Club

Winter nets? What are they? All this talk of nets has got some members of the family wondering just what the hell I am up to!

In response to my Facebook status saying 'Tomás was on fire in the nets tonight', the response from one bemused friend was 'you really need to give up those tights boy!' 

Just to clarify then, winter nets is the name given to practicing batting and bowling for cricket, prior to the start of the actual playing season - the idea being that you can practice inside in the relative warmth of a sports hall, instead of in a dark, boggy field.

So, having found a 'mediocre social cricket team' to play for on Gumtree.com, called Swinging Googlies Cricket Club, I am getting into this whole winter nets thing. So far, since mid-february, there have been two sessions, with a third happening tonight

Wednesday February 18th was the first net session of the new year. It provided an opportunity to get to meet the rest of the team - a load of Mikes, Steves and Daves. Regardless of all having confusingly similar 'bloke-ish'  names, they are a great bunch of people. 

My nerves, I must admit, were jangling as I stepped up to bowl my first delivery. I haven't been able to bowl straight on a full-length pitch for about 7 months and my initial instinct was to declare to the rest of the team how bad I am... and surprise, the jinx that had befallen my bowling suddenly lifted. Granted, it wasn't the fastest or most dangerous delivery, but it did pitch well and go in a straight line!

As for my batting, it could be said that it was erratic as I thought it would be. I found it an impossibility to hit any of Lawrie's light-speed fast balls, but I did manage to make some contact with the rest of them. 

My one weakness though, it would appear, is against spin-bowlers. I have this unfortunate habit of seeing a slow ball coming towards me, swinging my bat ferociously like Errol Flynn, missing the ball completely and knackering the tendons in my shoulder. All of this happens in a split second and is followed by the 'chink' of the ball hitting the stumps.

Anyway, it's all something to work on. The following nets session wasn't as bad. I defended my stumps admirably, but still managed to repeat my left-shoulder straining antics.
Labels:

Comments

Jude said…
Just stumbled across your blog and found some of your posts amusing. Especially the women's conversation and the 'C'ricket with a capital - I have a habit of doing the same with Ballet, Literature, and Tennis.
3/19/2009 11:05 pm
Jude said…
It is a little bit weird watching sports players dance, but then some of them are pretty good and that's probably as a result of their sporting abilities. Some of them I think should just stick to their sport, e.g. Mark Foster and Andrew Castle - just terrible. I actually thought tennis players might be the best, obviously I was wrong. Still, I wait for the day Federer steps onto the stage, he looks like he'd be really good at ballroom, or ballet.
I actually have to confess to never having watched Ramprakash play cricket.
3/25/2009 11:19 pm
T.S. Ó Ceallaigh said…
Well if you've never seen him play Cricket then you'll not understand why he made such a good dancer!

Andrew Castle... hmmm... that guy irritates me somewhat and is yet another reason why one shouldn't watch GMTV!
5/11/2009 10:24 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From a Crooked Rib by Nuruddin Farah

Cover image. © Penguin Books. I stumbled across Nuruddin Farah’s novels when searching for something written by a Somali author. Perhaps due to the conflict that has raged for years in Somalia, it is very difficult to find much from Somali writers published in English. From a Crooked Rib was published in 1970 and tells the story of Ebla, a young, orphaned, illiterate nomadic girl, who runs away from her encampment. She takes the decision to leave upon learning of her Grandfather’s intention to marry her off to an older man within their Jes (a group of families living in an encampment together). She firstly escapes to a town, Belet Amin, where she finds her cousin and his pregnant wife. She also finds a guide and confidante in a character known only as the widow. Things seem settled until, yet again, Ebla finds her freedom compromised by a male character – this time her cousin, whose wife and child Ebla has been nursing. In her haste she leaves Belet Amin with the w
Post a Comment
Read more

Beach Huts, Southwold, Suffolk

Sleeping beach huts on Southwold Beach, Suffolk. Safely back from my annual visit to Rotterdam, my parents invited me to spend a few days with them in a small holiday cottage in Southwold, Suffolk. Give or take driving through Newmarket a few years back when studying at Anglia Ruskin University, I'd never really seen much of the county. Southwold itself is a beautiful seaside resort which happens to be the home of Adnams , a well known brewery, which means that for a small place there are a healthy number of pubs - suddenly Dad's choice of location made sense . On the early afternoon of Wednesday 20th February  I took a walk to the Harbour Inn to meet my parents for lunch. The pub was just under two miles away from Grace Cottage , where we were staying. This gave me the opportunity to take some pictures of the sea. On our way towards the see we also spotted  Georgie Glen  from Waterloo Road humming happily to herself on the High Street. Southwold is lovely,
Post a Comment
Read more

Wild Nights: Camping Britain's Extremes by Phoebe Smith

Cover image © Shutterstock. It’s been nearly two years that I’ve been talking about my desire to go wild camping. So far I’ve bored my parents intermittently and failed to convince any friends to join me. I chanced on an article on the Guardian’s website by Phoebe Smith and realised that wild camping was an actual thing that people actually did. In my own inimitable style, I set about obsessively researching experts, equipment, locations and guides – a process that is still continuing at the time of writing. With this in mind, I looked up Smith’s book Wild Nights: Camping Britain's Extremes . In the book, one of a few that she has penned on the subject of wild camping, she documents her own personal challenge to sleep in a number of extreme places: furthest points of the compass on the UK mainland, the highest/lowest places above/below sea level and the remotest in terms of distance from any roads. Her story begins in Glencoul, Scotland with what should be a bea
Post a Comment
Read more