Getting tonked by a twelve-year-old

Well I'm not sure if I have an answer to the question I posed earlier, but I do at least have a few more balls under my belt on a level pitch.

Just after 6 o'clock I popped down to the cricket club hoping to find the nets deserted, only to find that the under-17s were practising. I had a pint in the club and chatted to a few people, and then I went over to see if they'd let me join in. They did, which was nice, and I started bowling. Again, my first two balls didn't even reach the batsman. I really do need to work on those early balls!

After a while I got in the groove more and was starting to get a bit of turn and beat a few batsmen, but I think the guys I was playing today were of a higher standard than the 3rds and 4ths so I had the ball fly back over my head a few times. That said, I did give them a few things to think about, beat the batsman quite a few times, and my best ball of the evening - a fizzing top-spun leg break - drew the batsman to his right, drifted to his left and bowled him round his legs. A quality moment!

The under-17s went home after a while but two juniors who must have been about twelve-ish pitched up so I bowled to them for about half an hour before I ran out of puff and it got too dark. The first guy batting was unbelievably good for his age. He was a left-hander, had virtually every shot down perfect and he employed them extremely well. After a while it dawned on me that he had got his bat on every single ball I'd bowled at him, and I have to say my respect for his batting was almost matched by my despair at my own bowling. I did beat him once, but only once! He had a rather sweet way of apologising when he smacked balls back over my head, but I told him if a ball deserves it he should give it the full treatment, and he did - time, and time, and time again!

So all in all I found it pretty impossible to judge how my bowling compared to earlier in the garden, since those pesky batsmen can be such a distraction - especially when they don't even come up to your shoulders but repeatedly smack you for four!