SportsShoes Blog

Me and a group of mates have joined a 5-a-side football league this week. I’ve joined for some good fitness training and also because its a great laugh. We play on a Thursday night at Goals in Bradford. They have awesome pitches with the latest astro turf , which is great to play on.

We have started off in League D (the bottom league) and were due our first game last night. However our oposition never turned up (we put it down to them running scared of their mighty opposition!!), so this left us with no game, 3 points and a default 10-0 win in our first game. Quite a start to the season.

We did end up with a friendly against another team in our league and ran out 13-5 winners. I had forgotten just how much distance you end up covering in a 5-a-side game, it really is great fitness work. But I was struggling towards the end, so its time to get my running shoes on. I have been a bit lazy in getting out running but as of Monday I will be out on the roads and feeling the burn!!!

No cricket last week as it was my birthday and I was a touch worse for wear last Sunday. Back on it again this week with my new club which should be good!

Well well well time flies! Its got round to pre season training again. It has been a shock to the system getting up on a Sunday morning for training, having spent every Sunday since September in hibernation I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. And to make it even more fun it was colder inside than it was outside!

Bowling was strange for for a bit,  I was using muscles I haven’t used in 6 months and they didn’t like the first 30min, they were feeling very stiff. I was surprised how quickly I settled into a rhythm and after an hour I was feeling good. I just bowled this week as I find it takes me longer to settle back into bowling than it does batting so I tend to work on that for the first 2 weeks then get on with the batting. Monday morning wasn’t fun, ached alot, my shoulders were very bad so it’s time to stock up on Radox!!

What a complete joke England were in the Stanford Twenty/20 competition. The completely bottled it and got taken to the cleaners by a well organised Stanford XI (which was pretty much a West Indies team with 2 exceptions). Pieterson said they had been distracted in their preparations and that the players mind was not focussed on the game. Personally im not having that excuse, if you can’t motivate and focus yourself in a game for your country and for $1million each then their is something seriously wrong. No matter how much of a circus it looked like and ended up, the England boys should have been able to get themselves fired up and seriously motivated, especially after all the hype in the media leading up to the event. But in true English cricketing form we bottled it when it counted most. Maybe the confidence and belief we all thought Peiterson had instilled in England isnt quite what we thought it was. They just have to bounce back strongly in India next month.

And also well played to the Stanfors team. They looked well organised, fired up and on great form. They outplayed us!!

Well im going to the physio tonight to go for a session which is specifically focussed on core stability so hopefully ill learn some new excercises to help with this. Its something very important to quick bowlers due to the pressure and strain on your back and the twisting motions during cricket.

Since I first had a stress problem with my back when i was about 13-14 i have had a weak back which has caused me problems on and off for about 7 years now. I really want to build on my strength this winter to try and stop problems like this occuring. With new weights sets and a multi-gym station in my spare room at home now I will get plenty of chance to work on this once i have the all clear on my back.

MRI scan on my back is next week which is surprisingly quick, hopefully they can just tell me its muscle problems which are slightly easier to help as you can do excercises and stretches to aid recovery. If it is a stress fracture or the begginings of a stress fracture then all I can do is wait and rest it which is going to frustrate me, but it will push me into starting my cardio with some nice cold winter runs instead of my nice indoor workouts!!!

Well seen as I’m not doing much as far as training goes due to a possible stress fracture in my lower back I thought I would talk about Australias defeat to India in the recent test match.

Now as an avid England fan I love to see the Aussies lose and it is looking like they aren’t the Cricket super-power the have been for the past 15-20 years. They’ve lost Shane Warne (pretty much the greatest spin bowler ever), Adam Gilchrist (one of the best wicketkeeper-batsmen ever), Glen McGrath (arguably the best and most accurate fast bowler ever) and also several other highly rated players (Langer, Gillespie, Kasprowicz, Martyn, Tait) were not playing for various reasons. There are 5 players missing from the Ashes team who whitewashed England last winter. This will have caused quite a bit of disruption for them, with so many new faces in a team which has barely changed in about about 5 years. The departures of so many world class players has left them floundering a bit. They have struggled to replace Warne with a genuinely class spinner, they have a couple of new faces but they are no where near Warnes class, yet. Brett Lee is now their strike bowler but does not have the deadly accuracy of Glen McGrath at the other end, which helped form a deadly partnership which could rip through any batting line up in no time.

Their batting does not now have as much depth as it used to when they had Gilchrist coming in at number 7 or 8, a luxury any team would love. They still have world class batters like Ponting and Hayden but the line up does not make bowelrs hearts drop quite as much as it used to. I’m not saying that they are now a poor side or that they are going to be easy t o beat in the next Ashes but they look as though they have a few more cracks in their armour and they have more weaknesses we can expose, as long as we are on good form.

If both England and Australias form keeps going the same way it is now then we have a serious chance of regaining the Ashes. We are a team full of confidence and we are on a great streak of wins.  India this winter will be a stern challenge and is the real acid test for Pietersons captaincy, he will have to get the most out of his players against a team who are on great form and in some of the hardest cricketing conditions around. The Australian team should never be written off as they always have match winners in the team but it will be interesting to see how their relatively new-look team gels over the winter and whether the new boys can cement places or they will have to keep looking for replacements for some of the greatest players ever to wear an Australian cap. Fingers crossed they don’t find the next Shane Warne before next summer!!

I was back in the 1st team again this week and was back in the wickets. We played at Keighley who are up for promotion. I bowled 1st change and took 3 wickets for 2 runs in my first 3 overs, which I was very happy with then i came back on at the death and kept it tight. I finished with 3 wickets for 26 runs in 10 overs.

Everything feels as though it has clicked into place with my bowling over the past few weeks. Just bad timing, it’s come right at the end of season.

Looks like a might be having a net today, weathers not too bad.

I need to get working on my run up becaue i think thats where my problems have been with my bowling. I havent felt like I’ve had any rythm for  while now. If you dont have any rythm its hard to be consistant because each ball feels different when you release it. The key to fast bowling is rythm and every ball should feel the same which is down to kinesthesis (which is the ability to sense the psoition and orientation of your body and its parts, A-level P.E. has its uses!), if it doesnt feel right then whatever your doing it isnt going to happen right!

So fingers crossed I can get some work done on this tonight!

Well I ended up in the first team this weekend because of 3 people dropping out on Friday night which was not really the way i wanted to make my return to be honest! I’ve just started to find form with the bat again and was hoping for another week in the seconds to get a few more runs but it wasn’t to be.

We played Farsley who are top of the league and got beat convincingly. I didnt get chance to get on to bowl before they had knocked the runs off which i was a bit annoyed with. Hopefully I can get a good practice session in on Thursday if the weather holds off and then get bowling back in the seconds so I can get some confidence back and end the season with some more wickets!

Well im losing my patience with the English summer. I havent been able to properly train for about 3 weeks because of rain, so I’m feeling more than a bit rusty. I want to be netting about 2 or 3 times a week if I can to try and get more rythm with my bowling and get back in the 1st team, but the weather is conspiring against me so it looks like i won’t be back in the first team this season now. But im planning on a hard working winter so I can be injury free next year and back in the 1st team. Its going to be gym, gym and more gym for me this winter.

No Cricket for me this weekend, bit on the damp side on Saturday. Good to see England winning, and with KP at the helm i think it could be a prosperous new era. He’s got the right attitude and doesn’t seem to fussed about what people think, he’ll be his own captain and hopefully put a bit of fire in the players bellys!