I have seen the future

And it looks like this.

Rain

Three games, which have taken the grand total of 64 emails to set up (yes, I counted), have resulted in my facing two balls. And that was only because we were on astroturf.

Still. Normally we sit at our desks on a Monday, anxiously checking the BBC website. Then, because we don't like what it's saying, we check the Met Office one. But we don't like that (especially because it has a detailed statistical break down of exactly how likely we are to get very wet), so we anxiously click around any number of other weather sites, finally finding one that tells us there's only a forecast of heavy showers. Fantastic! We can play through that!

Two days later the BBC changes its prediction and tells us we're looking at bright sunshine. A day later it picks 'light showers' from the meteorological roulette wheel, but being cricketers we'd already decided three days earlier the game was definitely on.

Under slightly ominous clouds, we wend our merry way to wherever the ground is, run out onto the pristine outfield, pull a bat and ball out of our bags, get ready for a bit of catching practise, and it immediately shits it down for eight hours straight.

15/04/2012 - Crouch End

During the off-season I got the chance to review a rather great book about middle age. One of the things the author touches on is his experience of becoming a dad. He makes the point that he was dreading the work, the lack of sleep, the distraction from his career - but that once it happened, he found it liberating - a "freedom from self".

I don't have any news like that to report, but I've been busier with work and other stuff (including sorting fixtures, which has been more of a nightmare than usual) this year more than any other. Those who've been hoping to see lots of blogging here, for example, may have noticed this. I don't expect this situation to change any time soon, but I've already realised it's likely to make the cricket a lot more enjoyable.

Where once I'd worry about how I and the team were doing, I can honestly say there's too much on my plate now. So more than anything, cricket's just an escape. I turned up having had an average of 4 hours' sleep a night for the last week, and I felt like death. This is something of a change from a few years ago, when I'd turn up feeling awful and having had similar levels of sleep, due to a five-day booze bender.

I was therefore overjoyed I didn't get to do much (a breathtaking 2* and a few overs of utterly rubbish spin/dibbly mediums), but I enjoyed it more than plenty of other games where I've done well. We had a laugh, we won pretty easily, the opposition were friendly, the tea was good, there was a bar with cricket and footy on - so even though it was FUCKING freezing, it was a top day. Not for the two guys who cabbaged themselves before we'd even started - one in a footy game in the morning, another catching a ball while we were warming up. Very important lessons to be taken there, I feel.

Off-season the netting has gone really well. I'm using my feet to the spinners well, and feeling confident against pace due to a couple of little technical changes. In fact I feel more in control of game plan than ever before. I'm not sure there's any other game where you can keep learning and developing as you do in cricket.

Back in 2003 I wouldn't have had a solid strategy for, say, a right arm over the wicket away swing bowler - I'd have known what they were trying to do, but I'd have carried on playing like I always did: block a couple then try and whack it somewhere. Then wonder what I'd done wrong on my way back to the shed. Today I shift my guard a stump across, stay side on, look to pick off the runs on length and try to avoid playing too square if it's on my legs. It's a lot to think about in isolation, but like all my other plans it's evolved over the years through failing, again and again, so it usually happens without too much thought. This means getting out these days isn't much of a mystery: it's usually either because I just wasn't good enough or lost concentration and deviated from some part of said plan.

Which makes it all the more frustrating when I do get out. After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Can't complain, anyway. And there was a farmers' market at the ground.

It's going to be a good season, I think.

Resignation...

Here's the oddest thing. Last night I handed in my resignation as fixtures secretary. I'd been wondering about it throughout last year, as job and other things started to bear down on me, & once I made my mind up I felt pretty relieved - thank God I won't have to do that next Winter: now I can worry about all the other shite I have to worry about.

But as I typed my last fixtures email, I suddenly wondered if I was doing the right thing and out of the blue, I had a massive shock: I realised I didn't want to quit the job at all.

Fixtures secretaries are, by their nature, a weird bunch. I know I'm no different. I grumble a lot. Barely a month goes by on here without some mention of a useless council officer or twat of an opposition administrator. We all do this: after a game you'll generally find me and the opposition fixture secretary tucked away in the corner of the beer garden, moaning about the cunt who does the fixtures for XXXCC. The very next week the cunt from XXXCC and I will be in the corner of a different pub, slagging off the guy I was talking to the week before. He's really two-faced, apparently.

Our own team mates annoy us, because they don't seem to appreciate the work they do. They moan when a pitch isn't good. They moan when a pitch is too far away from East London. They moan when it's too far from West London. They moan if a game's on a Saturday. Or a Sunday. Or on a couple of memorable occasions, when it's rained off: no, really.

When they get in a sledging fight with someone or argue with an umpire they don't seem to realise that their little moment has suddenly made the next communication a hundred times more awkward, because in the eyes of the opposition "that guy who said he'd ram a stump up our wicketkeeper's arse" just become synonymous with the team as a whole. Everyone gets that, but it's just impossible for everyone to behave all the time. We're blokes, after all. The only way you can guarantee you'll behave is, well, spending a winter planning fixtures. And even that doesn't always work. Especially if their keeper won't shut up.

It makes you hate everyone in the world of cricket, your own team, local government, national government by extension, and above all yourself for choosing to take such a stupid job. Don't all sign up at once.

Ah, but. But but but. It's great. And here's why: you're making something. You're making a great big thing: a year of fun, and however soppy this sounds, that's very rewarding. How could it not be? You get to a good ground with beer on tap, have a laugh, smack a ball around with your mates and you know that if it wasn't for you the whole thing might not have happened. When you're doing the job you're caught up in what you're doing, so you never get the chance to step back and think about why you're doing it.

So the season's not even started and already there's a bit of a shock: I knew I had to quit my job, but I never really imagined I wouldn't want to.

Right that's enough of that, let's see how I'm going to bring up my 300 this season.

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.

How to play spin bowling - a masterclass

Posting purely because I want to remember I've read this at some point

Fascinating stuff from Andy Bull.