well, summer's nearly here, if not exactly all here, look you see. as part and parcel of the English way of doing things, it is of course a truth that the moment the weather allows for it to be, so it shall be that cricket is played.
yes. the reward we get, here in England and indeed an increasing number of corners of the wider UK and British Isles, for enduring a long, dark winter is plenty of lovely sunlight. one would really struggle to find a better use for long, sunny days than to spend them playing and watching cricket.
oh, great. i see once again that blogger, or google, or whoever, has elected to "auto rotate" my pictures again, meaning they are all sideways. hey ho. from what i can ascertain from the stats most of you read this on some sort of mobile device, so i guess you are good to go in terms of just tilting or rotating your phone or tablet or whatever to see the image the right way around. or, you know, don't. maybe they work for you sideways.
so, anyway, yes. James is very much part of the whole cricket thing once again. regular readers will recall his utter dislike for all that snow business, so to him summer (or spring, i suppose) is most welcome. it means, to be sure, that he can get out and about without freezing or getting wet or slipping.
above is a scene quite early on from the first practice session of the year. well, that is not true. it is more honest to say first outdoor session of the year. for the first three months of the year some indoor training sessions were held, just to keep all and sundry on top of their game.
should you have a keen eye, or have a thing for games, in the above you can most certainly see my (considerably) better half. also, it might be that James and/or William are there somewhere. i can't really make them out, my eyes are not what they once were. if they ever were all that.
just like the first image the above picture of James is not from training but from the first match of the season. one which our team won, although as i have said before and will always say, it is important that the winner of any match of cricket is the spirit of the game itself. but, at time of writing, we have played two, won two, and we are all delighted with this.
yes, true. after the events of our winter, or if you like the summer of the southern hemisphere, we do indeed live in a time when there is a new dynamic to the game. but no, absolutely not, we have not introduced the whims and wonders of sandpaper to our game. it would be best to leave such nonsense to our friends in Australia, although i believe it would be fair to say that they too have now abandoned the use of rudimentary DIY or joinery applications in cricket.
no, William is not in a team for the cricket this year. he is a bit too young to be playing it competitively. but, as you can see above, he really rather enjoys going to the games so as to explore the different grounds. and, true, he too has enormous fun at the practice sessions.
do i still provide an unofficial worldwide coverage of the matches? yes, kind of. well, i take pictures and videos to send along to Dad, as well as giving him score updates. from what i can ascertain, our team now has a very, very healthy fan base down in New Zealand, thanks to my Dad sharing these updates with his chums.
some of the video i mentioned in that very last paragraph? sure.
that is one of the finer deliveries James bowled in his first competitive over of the season. no wickets, but from what i recall he also gave no runs away. certainly no extras, at the least. a most splendid and steady start. yes, his Grandad did indeed express approval for his performance.
what do i think of this new idea, "Cricket 100"? that thing where each team will face 100 balls, with the number of deliveries counting down? messy. it sounds like someone's clumsy, ill advised attempt to "Americanise" the game, what with American sports traditionally featuring a clock counting down. should the intention of this new format be to "sell" the game to our friends in America, then i am unsure how altering the game beyond all recognition would achieve that. should it be that our friends over the pond would wish to embrace cricket, then i would have thought that 20Twenty or T20 or whatever you call it would appeal.
unless i am very much mistaken, yes, that is the first selfie of my (considerably) better half and i this spring, moving into summer. quite difficult to get, too. she was quite busy helping and being involved with the practice and training, whereas i had some quite urgent business with the bar, and indeed a packet of Marlboro cigarettes.
would i have liked to play cricket myself? well, i kind of did in my younger days. some of my most important formulate years were spent in a pre-sandpaper Australia. there, if it was daylight and you had time, you played cricket. when i returned to England from there, it was a truth that they played football instead. honestly, i suspect i would have lacked the dedication and commitment to make it as a decent cricket player. did have fun playing rugger, though.
yes, an "in match" picture above. one that i used the "zoom" feature on the camera what i have, welded as it is to a phone for some reason.
for how long does the cricket season go on? my understanding is that it commences at the end of April and goes through to the early stages of August. so, then, for much of the time when England is open to the idea of having a spring and a summer, but of course the weather does not always agree.
and on that note, the above is why i qualified we are spring, not summer as such. by the last few overs of the first game the light, as you can observe, became a slight issue. that was some time after 8pm, so splendid that we had some sun. roll on, however, the days or rather nights when the sun is in the sky until well after 10pm.
well, that would be that for this for now. undoubtedly, dear reader, further cricket updates shall come here for those interested in a hopefully supportive way. but, for now, then,
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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