Nightvision's Blog

[Nightvision]

Hello, and welcome to my blog, dear reader.

My name is Jason Jones and I love Cricket. I'll explain why this is in a different post (it'll bump up my blogcount, you see...), but for now, I'll stick with the basics. I'm 23, I play for what is probably my local team, Belton Cricket Club in Norfolk. We're a typical village team, with player ages spanning from 15-70. People always ask me whether I'm a batsman or a bowler. The truth is, I'm neither. I'm a relatively decent batsman once I get my eye in, but a mildly inconvenient tendency to miss full, straight balls early on in my innings means that I'm rarely seen outside the tail end of the innings. As one or two of you may know, I'm also an aspiring Leg Spinner, having been practicing for about 3-4 weeks now. Not quite Warney yet, then.

Before we start the rollercoaster journey that is a season with Belton Cricket Club, allow me to clarify a few things about what you're likely to get from this blog:

1) Expect tangents! - To say I'm easily distracted is like saying Shoaib is 'a bit quick'. Not technically untrue, but massively understated. Don't be too alarmed when what started as a blog detailing the merits of a covered wicket on your local ground turns into a discussion regarding whether or not a 13ft tall chav-proof electric fence is 'too far'. This is simply the way my brain works. I like to call my writing style 'freewheeling' and 'improvisational'. Others prefer 'random' and 'nonsense'.

2) It's light reading. - I don't think there are really too many of you out there who really actually genuinely care whether I can bowl without causing the Wicketkeeper to have kittens. If you do, I salute you, and also sympathise with you. So whilst almost everything I post about my progress will be accurate, I'll try and keep it as entertaining as my talents will allow.

3) Updates will be random. - As previously mentioned, I'm a bit of a randomist with regard to my writing, and this will also apply to my update schedule. There may be days when the spark is with me, and I'll end up posting two or three blogs in a day, and then there will be Sahara-esque dry spells where I can't string two coherent words together for weeks at a time.

Anyway, that's more or less it for this 'introduction' post, and hopefully you'll read on to the next post. Who knows, you might even enjoy it.

[Nightvision]

Last year was disappointing for me as a cricket season. Not only did my shift pattern mean that I missed 40% of games due to work, the crap summer also meant that there were relatively few games where I didn't end up doing that very undignified sprint for the pavillion as the heavens open and everyone legs it so that they get one of the four available seats in the dressing room.
It's quite a sight if you've never seen it. As the clouds overhead get darker and darker, everyone's route to their new position between overs just so happens to take them RIGHT PAST the pavillion. Also, you get an abundance of players suddenly wanting to field at the dreaded deep square leg position, where you're guaranteed to spend lots of time chasing the ball to all corners, as village captains still don't seem to have grasped that a lot of village cricketers are leg side sloggers. Hence, the beautifully constructed field designed to completely restrict any runs from the off side that worked against the opening batsmen doesn't work against their number 6, 'Big Trev'.
This bloke carries a small California Redwood out to the middle with him, and has been known to scare the bejeezus out of small aircraft. They don't have to worry about the Pavillion windows with Big Trev, because the ball doesn't go anywhere near the Pavillion. It's the poor buggar mowing the lawn at Number 12 down the road that usually ends up copping one.

Anyway, where was I? Oh right, deep square leg.
Yeah, as the clouds get increasingly threatening, suddenly it's the position everyone wants to be in, as it's the shortest distance to the safety of the dressing room, and you're pretty much guaranteed a seat. When it starts to spit, but play continues anyway in the vain hope that maybe the clouds will reconsider and let you finish the game (or at least get far enough along for tea), people start to twitch. Suddenly people are reluctant to chase the ball too far (well, more reluctant than usual, anyway), just in case the rain comes while they're out in the deep, and they'll be condemned to stand awkwardly in the middle of the changing room, not being entirely sure what to do with themselves.

Yes, what with working most of the summer, and spending the majority of the rest in the dressing room wondering why we all didn't just cut out the middleman just go straight down the pub, I didn't get much out of last season.

But this season will be different! The weather so far has been fairly kind, and our Sunday team kicks off the season this weekend against Worstead. They'll inevitably get thrashed, as Worstead are traditionally a team full of ringers who should be playing a much higher level of cricket, but no-one cares, because it's the new season! Sadly, work means I'll miss the opening game, but I'll be there in spirit.

There's something in a cricketer's soul that defines them as different to the majority of other sportsmen. It's a sense of completely unreasonable and unwarranted optimism. It doesn't matter that your team is 29/7 chasing 328 off 35 overs, your number 8 is a pretty good hitter, and then it's you, and you're due a big score, and even if you don't win, there's no reason you can't get some good practice in, eh?
Never mind that the pitch is so waterlogged that one of your tailenders is nursing a nasty bite from what appeared to be an angry seal, the sun's going to come out any minute, and then we'll be out there before the hour's out, just you see.
This quite frankly absurd behaviour extends to the new season. There's something intoxicating about mid-April, and it messes with a cricketer's mind. No matter how bad last season was, this one is always going to be miles better. You've waited out the winter months watching the England team inevitably fail miserably in the Southern Hemisphere, and now it's your chance to show the boys how it's done. The bat is sparkling, that twinge in your right knee is now only slightly crippling you when you run, and you've got at least six new deliveries you can't wait to try, much to your long-suffering Wicketkeeper's chargrin.

It's the same with me. I've been batting better than I've ever been in the nets (which is a cast-iron guarantee for a low-scoring season if ever I saw one), my bowling is starting to come on nicely, and I'm actually fitter than I've been for quite some time. It's only a matter of time before I break the 20 runs barrier, and I'm confident that if I get a bowl at any point this season, I'll at least trouble the batsman, no matter how many names the Wicketkeeper calls me under his breath.

So no matter how strange this mentality must seem to the long-suffering Cricket Widows out there, it's the best part of the year for a lot of us. Namely, it's the bit of the summer where we haven't lost yet! So here's to that Mid-April feeling, as it'll be long dead by the time Mid-May rolls around!

Jason

[edladd]

Very true Jason, I love the way every cricketer can look at the vast black thundercloud directly overhead and still think "It'll blow over in a minute"

[Nightvision]

I worked a night shift Monday night, and was due in for another one on Tuesday night. Whilst for many, this would be an inconvenience, for me it's quite handy. You see, I finish a night shift at 8am. I start a night shift at 8pm. Once the obvious human requirements are taken care of (a pot noodle, ten minutes in front of the telly and some much-needed sleep), the day is mine. As the sun is out, it's ideal lawn-mowing weather. This does not lead to a good day's sleep for those of us that work nights. I generally get on fairly well with my neighbours, which was why the thought of marching outside and inserting a Flymo into a part of the body best left unmentioned was as upsetting as it was appealing. At about 2 o'clock, and with all of two hours' sleep, I gave up and got dressed. Might as well make some use out of the weather while it's good.

I wandered down the local field (a two-minute walk from my house), and set up the stumps, wondering what horrors or wonders my tempremental right arm was going to cook up today. In lieu of the fact I was wandering round like an extra from a George Romero flick, I don't mind confessing that I wasn't expecting much.

Which was why I was surprised when my first ball fizzed off of a length, pitching about a foot outside leg and whipping back so dramatically that it actually missed outside off. Now I have to allow for the state of the pitch, which quite frankly, is pretty awful. Although the playing field is pretty big, it only allows for two surfaces:

The 'grassy' wicket: This improvised strip is covered with grass so long, I'm a little reluctant to venture too far into it without a ball of yarn and some industrial-strength tiger repellant. The ball doesn't so much pitch as vanish below the canopy to start a new life as an over-ambitious dung beetle's pet project.

The 'cracked' wicket: The majority of the field is covered by a football pitch. This has both benefits and drawbacks. The benefit is that the grass is usually kept pretty short, making it a quite reasonable bowling surface. The drawback is that closer inspection reveals that the pitch has likely been bombarded with mortar fire in the recent past, such is the extent of stud-marks, tufts, divots and the like.

Obviously, the second one, although far from ideal, is a much better surface for a spinner. The only problem is, when the ball really bites in and turns, it's difficult to know whether it was you or the pitch that did it. You can usually find a small area that isn't too churned up, but it's still more than nasty enough to send opening batsmen running for their mummies.

Anyway, I dismissed the first delivery as one that probably got assistance from a pitch demon, and bowled my second delivery. This one went so far wide down leg side that I think deep square leg had a better chance of fielding it than any wicketkeeper would have done. The tone for the afternoon had been set. Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be Jimmy Anderson bowling spin.

And so it continued for an hour - one ball absolutely perfect, pitching middle and leg and clipping the top of off, the next a rank two-bouncer that was about as threatening as a Steve Harmison loosener. I was trying everything - shouting at the ball, kicking the stumps, threatening the ball... I even at one point offered the bails a crafty backhander if they'd just jump off every time the ball left my hand. All to no avail. In the end, after one ball so bad it didn't even qualify as a pie chuck, I gave up. I'm not easily discouraged, and am quite happy just lobbing balls at the stumps for hours at a time, but I also know when I'm wasting my time, and this was one of those occasions. Hopefully I'll be able to get another session in soon with my guinea pig batsman, (I should clarify, this is a HUMAN batsman I am using to test my Leg Spin bowling on. I'm not actually bowling at a small domesticated mammal. I'd never be able to find pads small enough, for starters...) as having an actual person in front of the stumps seems to focus me a little better, but as far as today was concerned, enough was enough.

Jason

[Nightvision]

It's interesting how a good day's bowling can completely change your outlook on things.

My past two practice sessions had been throughly miserable affairs. The weather had been crap, the ball hadn't turned much, and my line had been shocking.
Yesterday, I had a blinder. My good lady was with me, and deciding to make the most of that big yellow thing in the sky, we headed down the field. Once we'd managed to fight our way through the 672 different games of football going on, we found a space long enough for me to bowl on. She padded up, and I started to wheel away.

Now, my girlfriend is not a cricket fan. As such, her desire to sweetly time a cover drive is not really all that strong. Certainly not as strong as her desire to take a huge cross-batted swipe at every single ball based on yesterday's evidence, anyway. I wouldn't mind, but she has phenomenally good timing - almost every time I pitched the ball up on a length... *thwack* and the ball goes sailing off through the leg side again. There were even some quite good sweep shots in there from time to time.

Whilst it was slightly disheartening at first to watch a slight figure of a girl hammer some of my best efforts away time and time again, and even more disheartening having to trudge off after the bloody thing every time, I realised something after a particularly wild front-footed hook just missed my head on the way to the undergrowth some 40 metres behind me for the third time this over:
This is exactly the kind of practice I need. I need to be bowling against players who have had enough of dead-batting the quick (I am aware this is a relative term in village cricket...) bowlers for 15 overs, and are looking to get after the hapless spinner for a few quick runs. As a defensive bowler, looking to strangle run-rates more than take wickets, it’s likely I’ll be that hapless spinner they decide to get after, so I’d best get practice at getting tonked out of the park, just to make sure I’m doing it right.

Anyway, I persisted with the line and length, instead deciding to vary my flight, turn and pace. And slowly but surely things started to happen for me. Some of the big swipes were missing, and those she did play were becoming more and more hesitant, committing to the shot later and later, meaning the ball was usually just lobbing up to where I’d have a Short Leg fielder (That is, a fielder positioned at Short Leg, not a particularly stumpy bloke...) perfectly positioned to make a horrible -up of the catch.
This trend continued for a little while, until eventually, the unthinkable happened. She played a defensive shot. Now it was hardly a Rahul Dravid special, but it was a deliberate attempt to simply prevent the ball hitting the stumps, and it was like a victory for me. I’d managed to get a wild slogger of a player who wasn’t even particularly concerned about losing her wicket to go back into her shell and nudge the ball away from the stumps. This meant that hopefully I had her guessing to such an extent that the only safe option she had was to simply knock the ball down. There was still the occasional almighty hoick at one that pitched a little wide or short, or simply sat up off the pitch, but by and large, she was having to wait to see what the ball was doing before she could play her shot.
Looking at it from an outsider’s point of view, I can see that this seems like a bit of a hollow victory. “So what? You managed to out-bowl your non-cricket-playing girlfriend... yeah, there’s something to really celebrate.”
That wasn’t what it was about. I’d have been disappointed if I hadn’t have out-bowled her. She’s not a technically good batsman by any stretch of the imagination, but her timing is excellent, and she gets bat on ball more often than I do, to be quite honest, but I’d still expect to be beating the swings more often than not. The achievement was that I was getting clubbed all over the place at first, but was able to change my bowling so that a) not only was I not getting hit quite so far over the fence, but b) she was having to change her ‘gameplan’ (which seemed to be “attempt to bring down any low-orbiting satellites in the Norfolk area”) to cope with my bowling, which is EXACTLY what I want to be doing as a bowler. So whilst it’s not quite a five-for of top order batsmen, it’s a start, and a much needed confidence boost.
I go on tour with the team to the Notts area next weekend, so you can expect plenty of bloggage from me upon my return.
Until then, stay lucky.

Jason

[Nightvision]

In this blog: Why Ali G is like the British Weather, Rains of Badgers and why they could happen to you, and Adam Gilchrist vs the Gods...

Not much luck with the weather today... no sooner had I wandered down the field for a turn of the arm than the heavens opened and I had to take cover. I've now been bowling Leg Spin (or trying to) for a month, and I like to think that for that relatively small amount of time, I'm coming along quite nicely. I'm not quite Shane Warne yet. Heck, I'm not even Ian Salisbury yet (Note to self: Lay off Salisbury, he's in your fantasy team!), but I'm bowling more good balls than bad ones, and passed the first (very very low) rung on the ladder, which was out-foxing a non-cricketing girl. (Like I said, not quite Warney yet...)

Thursday will be an interesting test of where I am, as it will be the first time I'll have bowled Leg Spin on a vaguely helpful pitch against my teammates (and more significantly, the Sunday team Vice Captain). A good spell here, and I might well find myself bowling a few overs this season. A bad one, and it could damage my chances. Of course, all this is dependant on the weather. It cannot rain on Thursday, and preferably not too heavily on Wednesday either, as the pitch doesn't drain well... In order that this doesn't happen, I will be taking the following precautions:

1) At no point will I wear sunglasses or shorts, no matter how good the weather.
This should be self-explanatory to the Brits amongst us, but to those lucky swines that live in climates where you don't have weather with a personality of its own, I'll explain:
Wearing any type of clothing that would indicate good weather is here will incur the wrath of the Weather Gods. In fact, they probably see it as a challenge - 'soak the poor goon in the nice shades' is an Olympic sport to those guys. Shorts are a no-no, and not just because you have horrible legs. Sunglasses are practically asking for trouble, and you can certainly step away from that panama hat.

2) I will not take sun cream with me anywhere for the next two days.
This is another popular game amongst the weather gods, namely: 'turn the berk without sunblock lobster red'. It's another one that they're very good at, and over the past few seasons my shoulders and neck have been every shade and colour from 'six-day old mocha' to 'angry tomato red'. This is because I'm not a very organised person. I have plenty of sunblock. I'm just not very good at remembering it. On the rare occasions I do, I'd be better off with a big can of duck repellant to keep the family of Mandrakes that have found a new home on the square away from the tea, such is the rainfall.

3) My car shall remain unwashed until Friday at the earliest.
If there's ever a guarantee of imminent heavy precipitation, it's the two hours immediately following the exhausting morning spent washing your car, the missus' car, the elderly neighbours' car and any other cars that you get volunteered for while you're at it. Nothing attracts heavy rain and incontinent avians like sparkling paintwork, it's a scientific fact.

4) I will volunteer for extra shifts at work.
We all know this one. You can quite confidently bet your house that the one day you decide to do overtime will be the best day of the year. The sun will be glorious, the ice creams will be free, and the local chavs will be skulking in their bedrooms sleeping off last night's White Lightning session. Conversely, any short notice days off you get will be beset by inclement weather of biblical proportions, including but not limited to; Rains of badgers, Yellow snow, Temperatures lower than a Bangladeshi batting average and flooding of small landlocked villages in Hertfordshire. If the Weather Gods have a sense of humour, it's like Ali G - mildly amusing at first, but after they repeat the gag 50 or so times, it's like 'okay, so what's new?'.

5) Under absolutely no circumstances will I utter the words: 'Weather looks good for Thursday'.
I don't even need to tell you why this is a bad idea.

Of course, we all know that none of this is going to matter, and that it's going to bucket it down on Thursday. Unless of course I break my right arm. The Weather Gods are a fickle bunch, and somewhere along the line, a cricketer must have REALLY pissed them off. I'd hazard a guess at it being WG Grace - his beard was quite an impressive growth of facial hair, and I'm sure it made more than a few weather-based deities a touch jealous. Other suggestions would be Adam Gilchrist, for his continued efforts to knock one of them off their cloud with a cricket ball, or perhaps even Shoaib for... well, I don't know, but he's hacked everyone else off, so why not them as well?
Anyway, whoever it was, they doomed cricketers everywhere to be forever beset by the 'sudden shower', leading to the aforementioned 'dressing room sprint'. To be honest, with the weather the way it is, it's a marvel that we don't have more cricketers running the 100m in Beijing this summer... we certainly get enough practice!

Until next time...

Jason

[Stumped]

sadly Jason you are right, as soon as i wash my pride and joy the heavens open!

[Liz Ward]

Ah! To be in England now that Spring has come!


As for Point 5), probably Grace. He did have difficulties with his priorities:

A patient once arrived at his surgery and asked his assistant whether the doctor was in.

"Of course he's in," the assistant replied, "he's been batting since Tuesday lunchtime."

[mas cambios]

Top blog so far! keep it up :laugh:

[someblokecalleddave]

Yep - Impressive blog so far!