Cricket Practice - Another Nail in the Coffin

I was leafing through some old the Cricketer magazines, like you all do I'm sure, when I came across an article in the October 2011 edition (pictured), of relevance to one of my familiar themes.

It is all very well for one to criticise things that they see as flawed, however without then going on to say what should replace those nonsenses, leaves your criticism hollow.

I have been unable to find the article online, so will reproduce here. It is accredited to Crispin Andrews in the 'Expert Eye' column, page 24, for any subscribing hoarders out there, just in case you do not believe me. To be clear, I am not making this up!!!


Expert Eye

If you want to improve your game then forget about nets, throw-downs and fielding drills. Instead juggle, play on the Nintendo Wii and hold a pencil in front of your nose until your eyes hurt.

Last year Zoe Wimshurst, a visual performance coach, tried out some of these ideas on the Leicestershire squad. Over a six-week, pre-season period, 24 first teamers and Academy players worked on not just batting, bowling and fielding, but on improving their eyesight.

"So many decisions a cricketer makes are based on information coming to them through visual signals," says Wimshurst, who also works with the British Olympic team and runs her own consultancy Performance Vision. "The quicker those signals come in, the more time the player has to make a decision and get their body into the right position.

Wimshurst tested the players' visual skills and then split them into four groups. The first did practical visual training: juggling and kicking balls simultaneously, catching a ball with an unpredictable bounce to help reactions and moving pencils towards their nose to strengthen eye muscles. The second group used an online vision trainer that helped Clive Woodward's England win the Rugby World Cup in 2003 while the third played Mario and Duck Shoot on the Nintendo Wii. "All these help players scan ahead, get both eyes working together and assist peripheral awareness," Wimshurst says.

The fourth group did only additional cricket drills. When tested again, this group had improved it's visual performance and cricket skills least. The winners? Those pencil pushers, although the Nintendo boys ran them close.

The batsman Jacques du Toit from the pencil group, is convinced the sessions helped. "My peripheral vision improved, no doubt," he says. I can keep a clear picture of fielders without having to look up at the last moment ans take my eye off the ball."

So the next time some well meaning psychopath requests some laps of the park to 'warm up', tell them you are working hard staring at a pencil thank you very much.

Further corroboration  that orthodox training methods are very limited comes from this site which I shall let you peruse at your own convenience. In a seemingly decent piece, some quotes may appeal to the teenager in you, I've picked out my favourites:

" if you want to improve your cricket, you need only concentrate on six inches"

"cricket is a mental game"

"What is so surprising is that despite the fact that everyone knows cricket is a mind game, most players and teams practice their technique, but spend little or no time developing the mental skills "

"Once you have mastered the skills of cricket..."

"you need to be sufficiently aroused to perform at your best. But if you become too aroused, your performance will suffer and you'll start to make mistakes"

"Cricketers often allow their arousal level to become too high"

Broken Records!!!

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

There I was just minding my own business the other evening whilst out for a drive when I heard Ms Hannah Cockroft on the old wireless.

Who she???

For those of you not up to date on the latest minority sport news, Ms Cockroft, who won gold medals at 100m & 200m at last years World Championships, has broken a 100m wheelchair world record at the new Lympik Stadium (T34 class). Her account of events interested me muchly.

On the morning of the event the competitors were to be bussed to the stadium, however the bus crashed on the way to the hotel to pick up the athletes. So taxi's were summoned. Alack, none of the taxi's were big enough to take Ms Cockroft's racing chair!!! Things began to get fraught. She was panicking that she wouldn't get there on time for what would be her only opportunity to race in the stadium before the Paralympics.

Eventually they managed to pack her and her chair off to the Olympic Park. On arrival the Jobsworths protecting our freedom wouldn't let her through the security cordon. Just in the nick of time she made it inside. Afterwards she said;

"I missed the warm up and had to just get my numbers on and go straight onto the track. It was the worst preparation I'd ever had before a race, my head wasn't in the right place at all,".

Regular readers will now see where I'm going with this. Here is the formula.

Fraught Preparation + No Warm-up = New World Record!!!

Would any sports scientists care to explain this to me.

Here is a report from the BBC. The actual radio broadcast I listened to mused somewhat further on how a world record could be set with basically the opposite of what is 'accepted' preparation for best performance.

When the Frazerio Spring finally happens, I shall outlaw this dangerous and counter-productive practice of 'warming-up' prior to partaking in activity.

And a wee bonus for the over 35's (99% of the club?) with this classic VT.

Cross Nets

Holy Cross!!!

Those of you with a lower level of sophistication might see a simple picture of fishnet stockings, but if you look closer I believe time-served Crossers will immediately recognise the 'Cross Nets' connotations in this photo.

And with that subtle prompt, I would like to remind everyone that tomorrow is the final pre-season indoor net session.

Usual time, usual place.

At such an esteemed club as ourselves, every opportunity must be grabbed to attend nets as you never know when the next one might be. And although numbers have been almost acceptable so far, let's forego the temptations of Chelsea v Spurs (Sky Plus it) or shopping with the wife (tell where to stick it) and engage in some of the rusty hacking and blended frogging that passes for our practice.

Oh aye, one last thing, if anyone see's a Smith, let them know about nets too...

Something Else Fishy

A pike & two googlies

In another of what may now be characterised as an occasional fishing/cricket cross reference, I thought I'd share this Prize Letter of the Month from September's Cricketer magazine.

~

Toby Codd, Devon County Under 13's captain, earned a place on The Cricketer's Honours Board earlier in the season with a magnificent hundred against Isle of Wight. He rates another mention, for an altogether different reason, following his dismissal against Hampshire U13's at the ESCA U13 County Festival at Kings College, Taunton. Codd went fishing outside off stump and was snapped up by Hampshire keeper Alex Bass off the bowling of Robert Pike, resulting in the unusual piscatorial entry:


Codd     c Bass    b Pike 2

Four Pacemen of the Apocalypse

Something Fishy???

With a variety of intellectual powers on show, the results of the 2nd Annual Holy Cross Quiz Night were;

1. Four Pacemen of the Apocalypse - 47pts
(Professor McGill, Doctor Bonfield & Bishop Lynch)

2. FC Clam Idea* - 40pts
(Prez, Andy G, Michael from the Rugby Club & Ross (?))

3. Simple Minds - 34.5pts
(EC, Vik, Chuckie, Doogs,)

4. Three Dogs - 28.5pts
(PVB, Two dogs, Bimbo)

This means Dr Bonfield is the only mortal being to participate in the winning team twice. Allegations of favouritism levelled against Quizmasta K by this author will be fully investigated by an Independent Panel chaired by myself.

* not actual spelling

1sts v Watsons 2's - Skipper Arrives Early For Next Seasons Match

Quick Quiz Question (answer at end of report):

Which letters are missing? A, B, D, F, G, J, K, L, N, O, P, Q, R, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.



The skipper at around 1pm on Saturday???

The first sign that things weren’t all they should be was when I received a text from Bainbridge at 12.57 saying “Starting, I won the toss”. Worrying. The skipper had asked me during the week if I could keep wicket, so I knew vice-skip Simon wasn’t playing, but where was The Skip?

One minute later, when I arrived, I discovered I was one of the lucky few to keep my place after the Parks Trophy victory three days earlier. Out went Pickering, Webb, Gaware & Lynch in a Romanov style cull. In were Morcom, Jones, Killey & Trewartha. Nick Jones, who I’d never met before, had his pads and gloves on ready to keep. So I assumed he was a Watsonian and thought we must be batting. That we only had 10 men and no match ball, batting would be the only sensible choice really. Until introductions were made and I realised my assumptions of normality were going to be tested to the max. Our 12^th game of the season and our 4^th keeper in the ongoing mass rotational experiment that we call Selection. And we were bowling.

Bimbo, now with a 100% record of winning tosses, immediately ceded control of proceedings to Frazerio. A dumb move. Any fool (or uncle Jo) knows that as soon as you get a sniff of power, you hang onto it and begin plotting the downfall (or preferably death) of any close rivals. If he’d held on to the mantle of power, he could have been opening the bowling for years to come. But as soon as I resumed the role, all the old insecurities of high office came flooding back. Immediately spotting the threat of Bainbridge to my acting position of command, I had to put him in his place (deepest fine leg and not opening the bowling).

With Lynch and Warsnap somewhere else and Bimbo in purdah (definition; the seclusion of women from the sight of men) on the boundary, I chucked our ‘borrowed’ ball (for we had none of our own) to Bonfire and asked Gary ThreeforFourforFiveforWartha (a name of Cornish origin apparently) to take the second over.

Papa Bonfield, suffering a bit from writers block struck with his very first ball (is that too obscure a cross-reference from last Saturday’s report?) enticing a snick that Jones happily snaffled and the Cross juggernaut was on the road again. Bonf proclaimed the virtues of the very short lived innings as, usually, the East League hackers aren’t good enough to nick his pearlers. About time somebody was good enough to do so!!!

Our favourite Watsonian now entered the fray and struggled against Trewartha, edging a couple through the burgeoning slip cordon before tickling one to your vice-vice-skipper at gully. Flannigan was next to go, tied down by Trewartha, he had a flail at one and missed, before losing his off stump next ball.

Er, still no skipper at this point. Brian ‘the one-armed bandit’ Fraser was in attendance in spectator mode and offered to do sub fielding duties. However this just reminded me of an old family story. My Grandad once told me, over a Werthers Original, that during the Second World War, one of his brothers was late back to his barracks after a period of leave. His CO had uttered the immortal words “I’d rather go into battle a man down than take Fraser”. The regiment then went off and were almost wiped out in one of those glorious futile gestures. So Brian was given a Coms role as we requested he found out where the F the skipper was. Difficult as he wasn’t answering his phone (/awake yet).

On the battlefield, the carnage continued. Yellowlees was next up. Looking good, he became ‘engaged’ in some ‘chat’ with a simmering Bainbridge (the ghost of the Bish alive and well?). When the Bimbo replaced Bonners, he thought long and hard about which of his arsenal of deliveries he’d deploy to dismiss his verbal nemesis. He decided on a hybrid of the half tracker and the long hop. A gleeful Yellowlees threw his bat at it, but could only chop it onto his timbers and off he went wondering if there were better ways to spend a Saturday.

The wireless operator reported at 1345 that contact had been made with the skipper and he sounded “groggy”. He was at his folks and would be going to Arbo to get his car and kit and should be half an hour.

Gary T scalped another in the meantime and the hosts were 41 for 5 against our charging one man Light Brigade.

After 3.5 overs of mediocrity I decided to relieve Bainbro of his toil, before he produced the first good ball of his spell to end his fourth over. Cue the first Hissy Fit of the day when I thanked him for his contribution. The tiara was thrown to the ground as he wailed something or other about just having found his rhythm. Dabbing his tears away I agreed to allow him to continue while Killey replaced Trewartha at the other end.

Sim & Boorman had now began a counter offensive. Defying the evidence of what went before, although the ball was quickly losing its shine in the drizzle, they continued to play shots when they could and kept the score ticking along at a healthy rate. Hissy Fit #2 arrived in the form of young Ellis. Asked to bowl at the Colinton Rd end, he was inconsolable. So Dougie offered himself up instead allowing Precious Prince Charles to get his way. I’m going soft in my old age.

Drinks came and went, but still no Dear Leader, until, in the 27^th over, our spirits were lifted. Out of the drizzle appeared that small red fanny magnet (the MR2, not Euan) and our cup winning skipper, like Marty McFly emerging from the DeLorean (Back To The Present???), arrived pitchside. In the 28^th over we were a team again.

Scrabbling around looking for a partnership breaker, I decided to ask Morcom to bowl an over, but first tried Gary T who still had two overs left. Three wickets later (figures of 6-39 for Trewartha), Morcom’s brief was truly defunct, though he still got one over as consolation anyway. Watsons had made a more than useful 92 for their 6^th wicket.

A further change recalling Russell and Bonfield was enough to take the final two wickets in 9 balls and Watsonians were all out for 145 in the 38^th over. Considering we had 10 men for most of it, a changed team, no office bearers and the quality of the opposition, I thought we did pretty well, although there was a murmur or two that we should have got them for less. If only I’d brought myself on 1^st change eh…

A mightily splendid, but disappointingly meagre Tea was then taken at Myreside where the increasing rain chased their 1^st XI off at Myreside just as we settled down to watch some ‘proper’ cricket being played.

And that was it.

In summation, another great performance by Gary T, averaging less than 7 with the ball and a strike rate under 12 in all 1^st XI games this year (it also transpired that Gary scored his "first" hundred against Watsons, not bad for our number 11). Shannon getting a batsman to nick a ball also deserves a second mention. Good efforts in tough conditions by the other bowlers too. And yet again in the field, it doesn’t seem to matter who is playing, our fielding was excellent once more, the only drops were two toughies behind the stumps by a useful looking stand-in keeper. The total lack of nets seems to be paying off spectacularly!!!!

S. Bonfield     6.3-2-16-2

G. Trewartha 10-1-39-6

Bainbridge     7-1-25-1

Killey             3-0-23-0

Russell           5-1-17-1

Ellis               6-0-17-0

Morcom         1-0-7-0

Quick Quiz Answer: E.C.S.M.I.T.H.

"It was one of those nights that just gets away from you and you can't bring it back"