No more the wicket virgin...

I've been persevering with the cricket, battling my utter lack of co-ordination, and inability to catch, throw or hit the ball. My results so far have been less than stellar, with a grand total of 1 run in 4 innings, and handing over about 15 runs an over when I bowl (including a metric shitload of wides). Occasionally I show moments of competence, however I'm not really getting the feel for it, as I only get to practice/play once a week.

This Sunday we played Sonning (and we play them again next week). They fielded a fairly young team, compared to our usual suspects (which includes some extremely good batsmen/bowlers). We batted first, and a couple of our lads took it on themselves to rack up immense scores (one guy got 92, and the other retired "hurt" on 105). I was in for all of 1 over, and managed to scrape together 2 runs, including a nick that sent the ball into the stratosphere, before being dropped. We had a final total to defend of 256, which in a 40-over game is fairly excessive. It did lead to general good moods at the tea break (well, that and the cakes...)

Fielding was a quieter affair. We didn't put forward our best bowlers (which would probably have turned the game into a rout), and as a result I had a spell in. I've really struggled with the bowling side of things...there are a lot of things to do at the same time, and I tend to forget one or the other, and end up putting it very wide. While Waseem and Sami were in the process of losing 4 cricket balls in the trees surrounding the ground I'd been doing a lot of practice in the nets, focusing on getting my technique vaguely bowling-like. The result was that I put in 3 overs with very few wides (as an added bonus one of the young lads I was bowling to chased everything, and managed to touch 3 or 4 wides with the bat, instantly negating the free run...). He then did me a bigger favour and skied one straight to our best fielder for my first wicket! In retrospect I still don't feel bad in any way about cheering myself wildly as the catch went home!

I had a good chance to make it 2, as the last man put one straight back to me, but he had the indecency to put it to my weaker side, and I dropped the catch (he was even younger as well...). I have no doubts that a better batsman would have been smashing me everywhere, however I'm still new to all this, and I'm happy that I managed to bowl a short spell without bowling too much complete crap. It was a good day, and probably the first one where I didn't just feel like dead weight on the team. It will be interesting to see what team Sonning put back against us next week...Englefield is a much smaller ground, and it's much easier to convert bad bowling into boundaries...