First day back

Sunday saw the first nets of our pre-season preparations, and as usual I didn't get what I was expecting. What was I expecting? Well I was expecting to be a bit rusty, but I wasn't anticipating quite the level of problems I encountered with my bowling. In short it was abysmal. I started off in the third net, which was empty at that point as not that many turned up on time, and right from the off it didn't feel right. The ball wasn't coming out of my hand correctly, the feel wasn't there.

As they were only the first few balls bowled after four months off I wasn't too perturbed, but unfortunately as the hour went on I just didn't make any progress. I was as bad at the end as I was at the start, and when I say bad, I mean BAD. There was simply no consistency whatsoever, some balls would fly into the roof of the net, some plopped out of my hand and landed at my feet, the odd ball didn't even end up in the net at all, and any balls that did actually go the distance were usually well wide down the leg side and far too full. It was a nightmare from start to finish.

The one good part was my batting, which I thought was excellent. True, I wasn't really up against the best of bowling so it wasn't a fair test, but my stated intention was to get my eyes behind the ball and think about moving my head rather than my legs, and it seemed to work extremely well. I wasn't concentrating perfectly, and the habit bowlers have of waiting on the wall right behind the bowler's arm makes picking the ball up tricky at times, but even so it felt pretty good. My cut shot seemed to be working well, my defence was OK and I don't think I was bowled once, although I seemed to play the clip off the legs a little late with the ball striking my pads two or three times.

I'm not sure how much better things are likely to be next week, as I'm suffering a rather nasty cold which is making all my muscles ache - particularly those associated with coughing - so we'll have to wait and see if the cold can disappear in time for them to recover by Sunday. I'm not sure exactly what I've got to do with my bowling to get back to some consistency, but it's three months to the first game so that should be enough time to get there eventually.