Outdoor nets tonight

I went to Nets tonight for the first time in ages. The club has upgraded its nets from a single small cage over a section of grass to two larger permanent cages with an all-weather surface. It has its good points and its bad points, the good points being that the higher roof means I can give the ball some proper flight, the surface is much more like that which the 4ths play their home matches on, and because there's two nets I had one all to myself this evening with no pesky batsmen to distract me. The bad points would be that the surface doesn't seem to offer as much to spinners, the carpet ends right on the start of my run-up, which seems to upset my balance a bit, and the cage extends right up to the bowling crease, meaning I don't have an unbroken line of sight between the start of my run-up and delivery.

My bowling was not too bad considering I hadn't bowled at all for two months. I was bowling at a target - a section of rubber car mat cut to a small square and arranged like a diamond - and while I wasn't hitting the target with any regularity, there's never really been a time so far where I have been able to do this consistently. I was struggling a little with various things - balance, rhythm, focus, etc - but overall it wasn't as bad as I had feared, even if I'm not really confident of my ability to bowl a decent over with few wides.I did try an over of flippers but I'm concerned that my "proper" flippers would be no-balled because of my arm bending. I'll have to get the camera on it and see but it doesn't feel right. The "Baffler" seemed to work pretty well though.

My batting, though, was worse than ever. No footwork, no movement, no time to think. I say no movement, but I am very good at instinctively moving back to balls down the leg side, which is absolutely useless as they're given as wides in our league and it's simply a waste of effort, a run lost and another chance to get out. I just can't seem to stop myself. As for moving across to off, I'm hopeless. So many wafts at balls where I simply planted my feet and had a swing - my balance is simply terrible, although perhaps the fact I'm fighting an epic head cold had something to do with it.

I'm down as 12th man for Saturday's game, so I'll just have to wait and see if everyone turns up...