The Left and Right Spectrum

As I arrived at Newdigate Street this Saturday, and drove through the entrance, I nearly turned straight back around and left. My heart sank after gazing out across the field and seeing the wickets pitched at the far end of the square. The 30 yard circle almost kissed the boundary, and I immediately stomped across to stride it out myself. At its closest point I estimated it was just 35 yards, and as a spinner the alarm bells began ringing in my head.

In the end, any fears I had were dissipated by two mesmerising knocks from Andy Platts and Mick Blatherwick, which took the game away from Wollaton, and enabled us to bowl with the confidence of a large score behind us. With a tough score to chase, Wollaton had to come hard at us, and with a plethora of early breakthroughs we were able to secure the positive result we wanted.

One thing that was very noticeable on Saturday was the lack of left handed batsmen in the team (just me unfortunately!). Obviously, when you have one short boundary it is nice to have at least one batsman at either end who is able to exploit it. With us only having right handers at the top of the order, and the umpires offering a generous interpretation of the wide law outside off stump, it enabled the opposition to employ a negative tactic to make it difficult for us to score to the short boundary.

Brian Lara on the drive

It does pose an interesting question. Is it of a distinct advantage to be a left handed batsman? This has been a much debated question over the generations. There is no doubt that a number of the best players of all time have been left handers (Sobers, Lara, Pollock, Border, Lloyd, Gower et al.). Indeed, a look at top eight teams in the Test rankings tells you that of the 48 batsmen that regularly make up the top six in each team, 15 of them are left handed.  Considering only 10% of the population are deemed to be left handed and this represents 30% of the total, it is a clear overrepresentation. But why?

Well firstly there are some obvious advantages. Generally it is much tougher to get a left hander out LBW. Right handed bowlers bowling over the wicket have to get the ball to straighten if they are to induce the umpire to raise their finger. Left arm over bowlers are an increasing rarity, so the left handed batsman does not have to face the same issues as the right hander.

Secondly, bowlers in general just aren’t as good at bowling to the left hander as the right hander. They perfect the away swinger to the right hander in the hope of forcing an edge to the keeper or slips, but this proves less effective to the left hander as it becomes an in-swinger. In addition, slip fielders at club level rarely practise catching to the left side. Most feeds prepare them for fielding to a right hander and so they become less comfortable moving to their left.

Some bowlers employ the tactic of bowling around the wicket, but more often than not they are uncomfortable bowling this side as again, they do not practise it enough during the week. Perhaps there is a sense of arrogance amongst the bowlers that they will not change their plan. But all this does is often feed a batsman’s confidence when a bowler is forced to come around the wicket as ‘plan B’.

Scientists have argued that left handers also have a biological advantage. The possession of right brain to left side wiring gives them increased special awareness, and the capacity to think and react quickly to three dimensional moving objects.

I also argue that it is an advantage being a natural right hander, but left handed batsman. This means that your top hand is your strong arm, and as a result it resists the temptation for your bottom hand to come through and create ugly shots!

So should we get our young right handers to turn around and bat left handed to increase their chances? One of our close family friends , Ian Whitehouse, was a talented all round cricketer who was right handed but batted left handed. The reason for this? Well his father, a talented bowler in the Yorkshire leagues, hated bowling to left handers. So as he brought up his son’s (and grandson’s for that matter), all were turned around and told that ‘this is the only way to bat!’ All of them went on to be talented players, and certainly gave support to the argument that left handers are the scourge of many a bowler.

Let’s just hope that both our left handers at the top of the order (Dan and Akhil) in the 1^st XI can continue to show the form that suggests they can dominate the Premier League scoring charts for the season.

Weather to rearrange?

Could I say it? Might I risk it? It looks like the dreadful weather that we have been experiencing might just be starting to turn the corner. There I’ve done it. Now before you touch wood, cross your fingers or spill salt over your shoulder, whichever superstition you prefer, it is important to consider just impact the weather has had on our cricket season already.

As I write, two of last year’s title challengers in the Nottinghamshire Premier League sit in the bottom four of the table. This is wholly due to the fact that they have only managed one completed game between them. West Indian Cavaliers, have yet to bowl a ball in anger and Welbeck Colliery have only managed one outing, last week’s home defeat to high flying Cuckney.

While this has really thrown open the league this year so far, it does beg the question, can this be fair? Surely, for a team to be over 40 points behind the leaders, having yet had a chance to get out on the pitch, it seems a little harsh. Yet how on earth could we do it in such a way that would avoid such disparities, when the circumstances are beyond the control of any of us?

Kimberley Institute has its own mangle to save us from the rainy days

Coming from a multisport background, my experiences playing and coaching hockey and rugby through the winter months opens up some suggested solutions. It is quite common during the winter for our hockey matches to be lost to snow or frost (occasionally a waterlogged pitch too!). Yet, we do not go down the route of an abandoned game with equal points awarded. We have set slip dates, Sunday’s across the season, on which rearranged league matches are then played. If the slip date is also off? Then another date is scheduled. Indeed, this year we needed to extend our season by a week in order to get our last match in.

So why can’t we just do this in cricket? Well firstly, we all know that cricket loves a cup competition (PK Riley especially). There is the 45 over National KO, the County Twenty20, the Derbyshire Cup and so on. So our Sunday slip dates are already mostly booked, and in addition, where would the slip dates for the cup games be?

Secondly, and probably most importantly, the incentive to play a match on a damp day would quickly evaporate. As I eluded to in my recent article, the hard work of ground staff, players and volunteers to get games of cricket on in wet conditions, often produce some of the most exciting games of the season. However, if we move to a culture of slip dates and rearrangements, you would see more and more people, who are less willing to play on a wet day, ‘when we could wait for a better day later in the year’.

So how can we solve the problem? Well one option is to alter the points so it is not such a big difference between an abandonment and a win, however, we would suffer from many of the issues just mentioned with it proving to be a disincentive to play. Another, more pragmatic option, which has been used by some leagues in the past, is to call off all league matches on a particularly wet weekend, and fix a date for all the block fixtures to be played later in the season. While it may hit a little friction in that there may be cup clashes, it does seem a sensible solution that perhaps could have been used during round one and particularly two of the Nottinghamshire Premier League fixtures.

The fact is, with a game which lasts for a full day, and that is so dependent on the elements, including the daylight hours, there is no easy solution when the weather intervenes. So reach out for the table, get those fingers crossed, or throw that salt over your shoulder and let us that hope May and June bring a little more sunshine than those dastardly April showers.

Scoring high results behind the scenes

With all the rain that has engulfed the country during the last couple of weeks, it was remarkable that we managed to play almost a full game on Saturday. This was only down to the hard work of our ‘ground staff’, as they are most commonly referred, but in reality, they are just volunteers who kindly give up their time to ensure we get to play some cricket.

Cricket clubs are wholly reliant on volunteers to operate. Whether it be the secretary who co-ordinates the membership, the Welfare Officer who ensures the Junior Section runs efficiently, or the many people who kindly work on the ground during the week, all of these people give up their own time for the fulfilment of others. It is this selflessness that can easily be forgotten by the players who turn up on the Saturday and expect everything to be in place.

One of the most important aspects of your game on a Saturday is the scorer. I played for two seasons recently at Premier League level where our side failed to have a regular scorer. Not only was it embarrassing, it was also less than helpful when trying to organise your batting order and your scoring rota at the same time. Kimberley are blessed with a fantastic scorer in Rob Nayler. His dedication to the job goes beyond the cause, and he is always quick to assist a bowler keen to spy his stats or a batsman looking to brag about his strike rate (JT?). Rob is particularly excited this season to be able to use a computer based system which is able amongst other things, to produce wagon wheels for both batsmen and bowlers. Despite Jimmy’s disappointment that these were not edible, this feature will no doubt prove extremely useful in analysing and improving individual player’s performances, as well as providing useful information on opponents. I really hope we can harness this facility well as the season progresses.

With two matches to look forward to this weekend, I am hoping the forecast is correct and we get some dry weather, which should hopefully ease the burden on our ‘ground staff’ to again work miracles. However, when you do arrive for your game, just spare a thought for the people that make it happen each week, without them, league cricket just simply wouldn’t function.

STOP PRESS

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