The sneaky leg-glance

So, as I said previously - it's been a relatively quiet week cricket-wise. Tuesday nets were cancelled as our 1sts had a game - which was then rained off :( Luckily, I'd dragged myself off the couch on Monday evening and down to the pitch to do some bowling by myself so there was no loss in terms of practice time. This bowling went quite well - with at least one out of every 6 actually hitting the stumps. And as I got into it, I was bowling faster without losing accuracy - which was nice.

I did hit a bit of a wobble mid-session though, where I bowled one wide and then started to overthink - resulting in more wides X( But at that stage I just went back to basics and it came good again before the end. I really need to get my hands on a camcorder so I can see my action - it feels OK, but I'm probably doing loads of stuff that's slowing me down.

On Thursday, I'd a good long bat, and things are still on the up in that regard. At the start of the season, my problem was that I was playing back to everything - so I fixed that by going forward to everything (which is obviously a problem in itself). But last night was the first time that I was able to pick some of the balls to go forward or back to. And at the moment, I have 5 shots that I'm reasonably happy playing - in that I can sometimes play them without having to think about it or premeditate it. The two I've always been fairly happy about are the cover drive and the late cut - which obviously leaves a bit of a gap for the straight ball or anything down leg! I could also manage a sweep - but only against spinners, and only if the ball was overpitched or really short.

Now, however, I've picked up the forward defensive - and somewhere along the way the leg glance snuck in there. I think it's because after learning the defensive stroke, I play the ball better with a straight bat - and the leg glance is basically just that with a twist of the wrists. And as I've said before - now that I'm less likely to get bowled by a nothing ball I'm more confident with the other shots. I'm still not at the stage where I can pick gaps, or even hit it to the boundary (though with shortish boundaries and a good outfield you never know) - but it's progress.

Quick update on the bowling machine - I've hit a bit of a roadblock in that I have the mechanical element sorted, but still haven't got wheels. To be fair I haven't really looked all that hard. It's a bank holiday here again this weekend, so hopefully I'll get a chance to go to a few hardware stores or something to see if I can find anything suitable.