One week into pre season training and apart from very sore legs and hands, all is going well.
The majority of my exercise is walking the dogs on Cannock Chase and for now I have increased the length of a couple of the walks. I am trying to average three bike rides a week of an hour on the exercise bike and have started running a couple of miles along the canal.
Additionally I am doing three sessions a week on my core, upper body and legs along with the ongoing rehab type exercises and I have done one week of cricket specific exercises: throwing, catching (hence the sore hands as after 33 years a cricket ball is a tad hard on my soft squidgy hands!!), some bleep running.
I have always had pretty good hands, but my arm is nowhere near what it was so patrolling the boundary not going to be that successful without the AA to help get the ball into the keeper, and I will be about as useless at cutting off the quick single as I will be in taking one. That leaves slip (a popular position I am told), gully (an infrequently used position), and the likes of midwicket, mid on as more realistic fielding positions.
Where I might be able to field is not the only question filling the endless hours I am spending training *cough* though.
Listen to the pros, who can play pretty much every shot in the book, and they all talk of their 2 or 3 main scoring strokes. If you ask Scooby who I have netted with 5 or 6 times and is the only person that has seen me do anything resembling batting in the last 3 years and he will tell you to put your money on a cut or lofted off side drive. He has a point. I certainly can’t see the sweep being deployed at all, and the reverses, ramps and scoops are no more than a pipe dream. Despite the amazing developments in cricket bats I don’t think a power game is mine for the taking, nor the quick single to rotate strike. I was always a good puller, driver and cutter so I would go with Scooby if I was a betting man.
Taking about Scooby brings up another question: is it mandatory to have a nickname? I don’t recall ever having one and the obvious ones of Chrissy and Marshy really have no appeal.
COVID-19 allowing do we shake hands or bump fists and tap bats? How do we travel to matches given the size of kit bags these days, and let’s be honest a lot of the players (self included), what’s the story with cricket teas these days – if I ate as much as I used to mid game I would need a nap – do we have a dress code for home and away games.
It is not just the training that is making me feel tired and in need of a lie down, so you know what, I am going to keep one of my Spanish traditions alive and go for a siesta.
See you next week. Stay safe and keep well.
Thank You
Gray-Nicolls are generously supporting this diary and my return to cricket for the 2021 Season
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