Why do I do this?

AGM went well last night, the position of secretary is secured and no power-tools were needed :) There was a fairly poor turnout really, but it was still more than last year, so not too bad. There was a lot of talk of improving the facilities at our ground before next season, by putting a proper base under the mat and building concrete net bays - and a sum of money was set aside for this purpose.

It would be nice to have the net bays definitely. There have been plenty of times in the past two years where there's been a very low turnout at practice and too much of our time and energy has been spent running to collect the ball from all corners of the ground rather than focusing on the task at hand. Nets should go some way towards helping with that. I know practice games on the actual square have plenty of benefits too - from the point of view of developing awareness of the field and being able to set up realistic practice scenarios.

I was also accosted by a member of the club that had found his way on here and read some of this! He was disappointed that I hadn't mentioned his heroic 40 not out (carried his bat) in the 2nd game of the season. I've mentioned it a couple of times since then though, especially late in the season when it became apparent that our biggest issue in the 4ths was failing to use our overs. Definitely the only times we've posted a really decent score (anything over 100 at this level), it's been because one or two of the top order hung around around to get a hard fought 40 or 50. Then with the stability at that end a few others managed to chip in with 10s or 20s.

Anyway I explained to him the purpose of these blogs on sC (or BC now I suppose :D ). You never know, if he reads a couple of the other ones over there he might start his own next season :D I know personally I feel like it's helped me a lot. If nothing else, writing this stuff down in a way that has to be mildly comprehensible to others forces you to acknowledge what you're doing wrong - and what you're doing right. And it helps every now and then to skim through what's happened this year to try and spot patterns etc. And on top of this, comments from other people on sC helped to straighten out a few issues and put things in perspective. I may not be international standard (yet :p) but I'm a hell of a lot better that I was last year and at the start of this season, hopefully with some good work in the off season the trend will continue.