Tuesday 7 February 2012

Hello 2012, Council Hell, Playing spin, A great bowler.

Fuck me sideways, it's cold.

So the Winter has been several months of hell, and there are two more to go. I've been busy organising our fixtures, which is always hugely stressful. In October I phoned our home ground's booking officer to ask when I could book pitches. She told me to wait for the form in December - first come first served. Could I use email rather than snail mail? No. Fuck knows why.

So I got the form, and sent it back straight away. Then I phoned to make sure it had been received. Her colleague took the call, said the booking officer was on holiday, but she'd leave a note to confirm I'd checked that it had been received. In January I phoned again, and the booking officer told me she'd received the form two weeks after I'd posted it, so I'd only got four dates. "But I phoned to confirm...no?...They told me they'd leave a...no?" Briefly contemplated vicious brutal murder, arson attacks, internet hate campaigns. Ended up saying "Oh well."

And worse than that - fixtures are basically a particularly annoying Chinese puzzle. You get the teams you want to play and the dates organised - then you find you can't get the grounds. Or you get the grounds and the team you want to play can't manage it. In attempting to rectify the situation you usually find you can't get the ground or the team so you go online and find a team you don't want particularly want to play at a ground you don't like. Still, we're nearly there and it's not looking too bad, all things considered.

At least I've been able to watch the world's Number One Test Team in action. Oh dear. I think we can all learn some lessons from the few successful innings played in this series.

1) You can't go at over 3 an over against good spin if they're bowling well. Accept it.
2) Use the feet when possible. Against someone like Rehman that's not very often but remember it's as much a defensive policy as an attacking one.
3) Go comprehensively forward or back. The two players most likely to do this - Trott and Bell - failed for different reasons: Bell because he couldn't pick Ajmal (suddenly his travails against Warne look like they might not just have been the struggles of a young batsman - does he have a problem reading spinners from the hand?), Trott because he was in terrible form.
4) There's no obvious answer to umpiring shockers. DRS, in its own way, is just as arbitrary as no DRS.
5) Whinging about actions won't help your cause.

Finally - this guy averaged 20 with the ball, second only to Sydney Barnes. Beautifully smooth action. Hint of Wahab Riaz there, and is that some 1950s reverse swing I see? Think it might be.


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