12/05/12 & 13/05/12 - Cambridge

Well now. How interesting. It's tempting to think, after nineteen years (nineteen years!) of playing, that you've learned all the crucial lessons with regard to batting.

I've mentioned before how I've always struggled with a certain aspect of my game, which I'm convinced is born of the fact that growing up I was never really a top order batsman - I was a bowler who came in somewhere in the middle, blocked the good ones, hit the bad ones, and slogged at the end. It's not too bad a plan, all told. But it's always meant I've struggled to find a happy ground between first gear and fifth, assuming the bowling's good.

So over the winter (which is apparently still going on), I had a good think about all this. If I got criticised for anything by people I played with, it was being stodgy. Yet I'd hit quite a few sixes over the years. How did that work? I realised that the major flaw to my batting wasn't playing bad shots - well, it was - but why these bad shots were happening.

And the answer was simple. They happened because I hadn't had a bad ball for a while- or had missed them - was feeling run rate pressure, and had decided to chance my arm. And I came to another conclusion: that I was actually a bit lackadaisical when it came playing decent balls. My team had needed someone who could stick around when I joined it, and I'd prided myself on hastily assembling a good defensive technique, but actually, pure defence isn't always the right option.

So: a good length ball that wasn't bad but wasn't particularly threatening either - I'd kept it out, but how far had I tried to direct it into a gap? The one down my leg side - I'd had a go at glancing it, but was I really fighting to make sure I got any kind of bat on it all? Between the flowing cover drives and the leaves outside off stump, there's a minute world of little battles to be won or lost, and more often than not, I'd chosen the most conservative approach.

Those little moments: they seem like absolutely nothing - a run, two at best - in isolation, but put them together and they're HUGE. Absolutely, totally, unimpeachably vital. The massive six you hit to bring up your 50 is nothing on the five quick singles that got you to 15. Because they take scoreboard pressure away. They keep you off strike just when you're thinking it's time to do something stupid.

So on Saturday I went out with a slightly adjusted mindset. I was determined to try to score off every ball I could, even if it was just a single. It sounds SO obvious I could cry. But this is it: I've never really thought like a proper batsman, and that's why I'm not, really. It's amazing how the 'block good, hit bad' manifesto entrenches itself - when a more sensible creed would be 'nudge good, hit bad'.

I couldn't have picked a better game. Decent, nagging bowlers on a flat but very sticky wicket. My first ball was on a perfect line and length, swinging back in. I patted it back. The second swung just fractionally too much, and I'm sure that last year it too would have gone back to the bowler, or just been blocked anywhere without too much thought. Not a bad ball, certainly too good to hit for four, but not quite as good as the last one. I just closed the face on it a little, pushed it gently between mid wicket and square leg, and I was off.

Next over, a nippy delivery angled across me just back of a length. Before, I'd have let it go or got into line and blocked it out to cover. I might have picked up a run, but it wouldn't have been a priority. This time I made a really conscious effort to direct my push into the cover point gap. Two runs. The next ball swung into my pads - usually I'd have missed it, and I did so this time, but while I normally just tend to have a waft as I fall over to the off side if it's down leg, I really tried to remain still. The ball clipped my thigh guard and ran away for a leg bye.

And so it continued in that vein - I made 40 odd at about a run a ball, largely in singles and with the occasional boundary. I got out, of course, trying to hit a six, but this time the ball definitely deserved it: a slow full toss from a spinner that ended up in deep midwicket's hands. I really feel like this innings could be a watershed.

The problem, of course, is my fucking job that has me working weekends. Never mind youth unemployment, the cost of this recession will be measured in thousands of runs that were never made by a crap cricketer.

A few lines on the stuff that doesn't matter (i.e. everything other than my batting, motherfuckers). This was now our eighth(?) tour to Cambridge, which really is a great place to visit. Wonderful grounds and pitches, fantastic pubs, spotty teenagers in Millets' clothing to laugh at.

Saturday's game was against a combined College side. Like us, they were (ridiculous) playing essentially their first game of the season, so everyone was very rusty. They won the toss and batted, which was the wrong decision on a damp track. Our first over went for seventeen. The next yielded two wickets. In the end their rusty batting was worse than our rusty bowling and they only set 150-odd, but had they put together a total of, ooh, 40 more, I think it might have been a different game when we batted. With my innings and that of a new recruit who played exactly the sort of knock I never seem to get away with (lots of lusty swings interspersed with a few edges and mishits) we were over the line and in the pub pleasingly early.

Woke up on Sunday feeling as hungover as I always do on the second day of this tour. Remembered that I'd only had four pints. Fuck. We played the amiable bunch of chancers from a pub we always visit on the Saturday night. Fortunately the hoppy, lustrous, delicious local beer was on tap, and I managed to drink myself into a state of vaguely acceptable equilibrium.

This was a fun game - we gave our tail end a good go, which I always enjoy watching as these days we have a top order worthy of the name and their chances to bat can be a bit thin on the ground. I came in at the end and hoicked a quick 20.

We then ended up unleashing our two best bowlers on them - we were in the fixture sec/captain's nightmare scenario - only a couple of our very best players available for a long-standing fixture from the days when we were very bad, they'd kindly travelled all the way up from London so had to be given a bowl, end result a terrified pub line up facing eight overs of searing antipodean pace. Four wickets fell, but on the plus side no one was killed. Beers, singing, home.

Eight years, and it's still fun. Mind you, it's a depressing yardstick by which to observe the ageing process. First time round I went clubbing on the Saturday night till 2am, drank blue vodka loopy juice and slept on a pool table. This time I was wrapped up in bed by midnight and wondering if I shouldn't have had that extra glass of wine with dinner.