It’s all about him.

The boy and I are happily playing cricket inside. I bowl the ball at his bat and then he whacks it back to me.

“Galen, could I please just watch this on TV for a bit?”

starts watching tv

THWACK – the ball hits my nose.

“OW!”

LAUGHTER

“OK, I can play cricket again now.”

“No, watch TV.”

And just like that, the boy spent the next 10 minutes throwing a cricket ball at the side of my head.

For most of my life I’ve bowled spin. I was an “off-spinner” in my Primary School days, and then at High School I bowled a bit of leg-spin, some off-spin, and the occasional bit of slow/swing bowling. I was never very good, but I enjoyed it. I preferred batting, but in many ways I was probably a better bowler. And to be even more honest, I was probably greater value as a fielder than as a batsmen or a bowler.

When I started playing cricket again last year, I didn’t really have a clue. I tried bowling spin, and it just didn’t work. I tried bowling some straight ones and I found that I could get the ball to swing a lot. But I didn’t take a single wicket in the Saturday competition. I was very fortunate, however, to get figures of 7/27 from 9 overs when we played Lynton and Lynmouth. I also scored a couple of 50′s early in the season.

This year I changed my mindset a bit, and attacked cricket as a solvable problem. I tried to concentrate on small aspects of my game. I would spend a few weeks thinking about one particular shot, and I would particularly work on that in the nets. When batting I wanted to make sure I didn’t give my wicket away. When it came to bowling I concentrated in a similar way. What things worked? What didn’t? What was I doing right? What was I doing wrong?

I played every game this year, and only missed one net session. Sometimes I went down the ground in the afternoon and spent an hour or two working on my bowling.

I changed my run-up a bit. I slightly changed my action.

Last year most of my wickets came from catches.

This year I took the most wickets at the club (31), I took 8 of those in Division 1 of the West Somerset League, and the vast majority of my wickets cleaned up the batsmen. It’s a great feeling when you hear that rattle of the stumps.

We had our annual cricket dinner last weekend and I won the bowler of the year award. I was really happy that I managed to achieve this, and I hope that I can give even more next year.

One of the problems with thinking about cricket as much as I did this year is that, to really do well, you have to stop thinking about it, and just let things come naturally, especially when you’re batting.

I made the conscious decision this year to ignore that, and to try to solve the little problems (of which there are still many). I wasn’t a good batsmen, and that is what I wanted to fix, bit by bit.

I hope that next year I can still work on the little problems that I have in my game (I struggle playing slightly short balls on the leg side, I back away from balls on my off-stump, I play back too often, I don’t attack enough, I fall forward sometimes when I play forward), but that I can also try to make everything more natural. When it comes to being on the pitch I hope I can just relax and enjoy it. I need to work on things when I’m in the nets, but I need to make those things natural, and when I’m in the middle I just have to let go.

The North Devon Cricket League awards and roll of honour were recently posted to the NDL website. The awards ceremony is taking place this Friday in Barnstaple, but I don’t have any plans to attend.

If I may, I’d like to draw your attention to the Division 3 bowling award, which appears to have been awarded to Brent Howard from Sandford.

Division Three – Bowling – Brent Howard (Sandford) – 13.31

Brent had an excellent bowling average of 13.31 for the year.

However, before I could leave that alone, I had to look back through my notes for the year to see what my bowling figures looked like. I’ve never been able to bowl all that well, but I was really happy with how everything went this season, especially when I took 3 for 15 from 9 overs against North Devon, and I thought that my yearly figures would probably be interesting.

Overs bowled: 77.2
Wickets: 23
Runs: 270
Average: 11.74
Economy: 3.50

So yes, I’m a geek, but hmm, I have a better average than Brent.

Ah well, at least I know.