Custom Bats Cricket Forum
General Cricket => Your Cricket => Topic started by: imogzyboy on June 05, 2020, 05:48:25 PM
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Strange question I know but what was it that made you want to get involved with cricket? What moment made you want to start?
For me I was a young lad brought up in the valleys of wales only knowing rugby but moved to England during the 2005 ashes, playing in my mates garden and watching the 2005 ashes having the memories of KPs woodworm bat, it was at this point I was hooked and started playing for my local club and never stopped since apart from the injuries and coming in and out of retirement!! Haha
So what was it for you??
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Cricket bats of course.......
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I've played since I was about 5 (22/23 years) but definitely 2005 is where I completely fell in love for the game!
The woodworms of the era, gm purist and maxi, strauss' catch "Jones.... Bowden..... Kasprowicz the man to go" then watching Bowden and koetzen take the bails off at the oval, I was in year 8 at the time! What a summer!
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Ashes 2005 - KP with the bat and Flintoff
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Strange question I know but what was it that made you want to get involved with cricket? What moment made you want to start?
For me I was a young lad brought up in the valleys of wales only knowing rugby but moved to England during the 2005 ashes, playing in my mates garden and watching the 2005 ashes having the memories of KPs woodworm bat, it was at this point I was hooked and started playing for my local club and never stopped since apart from the injuries and coming in and out of retirement!! Haha
So what was it for you??
I was gifted a coaching video called "Cricket, The West Indian Way", featuring Holding, Kanhai, Lance Gibbs, Jeffery Dujon, and Sobers. Narrated by a very young Tony Cozier. Its a mix of basic coaching, and highlights of the players mentioned above. I was in awe, that Sobers featured in all parts of the video (fast bowling, legspin/chinaman bowling, orthodox spin bowling, batting) except wicketkeeping.
It is still my favorite cricket video to watch - really wanted to be West Indian throughout my childhood.
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My uncle & grandad were very good and keen league players and we used to watch them a lot with a family picnic in the summer and from a young age 6-7 they would throw balls And teach me etc.
Then my uncle started a colts section for his club an I started there at about 8 and played ever since, made my senior debut on my 12th birthday and played ever season since then so 25 seasons this year
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Being born in pakistan in the 90s i guess. Cricket is your birth-right :D
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My Dad was always into cricket but only used to play socially at work (beer matches), so I never got to see him play when I was a real youngster.
We'd always have England's games on the TV, but my first real memories of taking notice was the tour to South Africa in 2004/05.
Flintoff got runs and wickets in the Test series, then this new bloke called Kevin Pietersen came into the ODI side. He had a blonde streak in his hair, and uses a bat with funny grooves in the edge to smash boundaries. Basically he was the opposite of the "cricket is boring" stereotype my friends had at the time.
That series sparked an interest, then the 2005 Ashes really got me interested. A local club came and offered coaching after school in the summer of 2006, I ended up joining and am still playing there to this day.
I wonder if I'd have been half as keen on cricket if it weren't for KP...
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Watching the ashes in 1981 combined with Somerset at the same time. Botham, Richards and Garner got me interested in the sport and was then lucky enough to develop this interest at school. Still going 39 years later!!!
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1998 Atherton vs Donald in that iconic battle in the fourth test. Atherton was a tough man whereas Donald had serious bad intentions. Got be hooked as if Atherton had gotten out, he did but he didn’t walk, Donald probably would’ve run through us. We ended up winning the series. Was incredible
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I was quite simply born into cricket. My dad, grandad and uncle all played, my mum did the teas etc....
So I was at the club from the day I was born literally (my dad played the Saturday of the week I was born).
I grew up playing catch with my dad and the other players, then in the nets practicing etc... when I started playing colts I used to take my whites to the games as unofficial 12th man!
My dad was a wicket keeper so watching him meant naturally I became one.
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Grew up in Mumbai, India with no facilities, grounds, or real equipment. We played in any place with any ball (Plastic, table tennis, tennis, hard tennis, tape, rubber, leather etc.) we could get our hands-on until we were kicked out.
Best times!
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Grew up watching my dad at our local club, then became scorer, before playing in the 1st team together before he retired. When I was 15 we opened the batting together and both batted through the innings putting on about 220, I scored a ton and my day ninety odd. Great to have that memory!
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I'm a child of the Warne debut ashes era.
I don't necessarily remember it being a night-and-day interest ignited by 'that' delivery...But until then interesting spinning was an entirely foreign concept. Sure you had defensive English ploddy spinners, and subcontinent guys had their bizarre movements that couldn't be figured out even with all the slow mo's in the world...And along came Warne, a non boring guy, who out-foxed batsmen. With a physique that was, erm, relatable.
In school, if you weren't quick you weren't anything. As an early developer, I was quick at 12 years old, but then everyone kind of caught up and overtook, and I was bored of bowling. Bowling effective spin (only off breaks by then) took too much practice, and too much luck of having a generous deck.
But warne changed all that. Tbh I couldn't give a damn if there was a batsman there in the net (how bonkers is that, to consider?!). I just wanted to put it 'there', and see some turn. Any turn. And, tbf, I studied Warnes wrist, and I managed to 'do' it. Maybe not every ball, but I couldn't care less. Every over I had 6 chances to pull off a sporting move that's the equivalent of the Trevor Sinclair overhead.
I then took too long out the game post Uni, and killed that muscle memory by flipping rolls of sellotape in the office thinking it was similar to the real thing. I also had a wrist condition that means I don't dare dream of taking it up again (my hands make me my millions! Cant afford to risk them).
But those few summers, if I found a captain patient enough to give me a a go...Beating a forward defensive on the outside edge meant EVERYTHING!
So I had 10 or so years out the game, and, sad as this sounds, was walking into a sports shop in Essex for the missus buying some shoes, and started nosing the bats (as you do - it never leaves you!). And I saw a M&H Distinction (first generation). I'd never heard of them before, and the craftsmanship, beauty, and stonking size of it made me take the game up again, and I sought out my local club.
Now I'm needing a third spark. I've moved out if the area, and fortunate to have a place to eventually set up a net and Bola, and hopefully that should get me 'back in the game'
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My dad was a footballer and got me into that very early but cricket I found via the BBC and the 1985 Ashes series. I remember stumbling across the live day's play of Gower's 215 at Edgbaston. By the end of that summer I was hooked and by 1986 me and my mates were playing 'test matches' on oir school field throughout the summer.
To this day when people ask about my work I always say football was my job, cricket is my passion...
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I didn't really know anyone who played cricket. I played a bit in PE at school aged 8/9, but didn't really get it or enjoy it. That would have been it, except I one day I randomly watched a bit of the 1991 Headingley test on bbc2 out of school summer holiday boredom and became hooked (watch the highlights of that game on the bbc this weekend, you'll see why).
The quality of visiting teams in those days was inspirational. Watching Wasim and Waqar in 1992 convinced me to be a swing bowler. Watching Warne and May in 1993 changed my mind and I took up spin instead. I played a lot in the back garden with my dad or with friends, practicing turning the ball square; however I was still not particularly good in an actual game setting, and only just scraped into my school team as 4th choice seamer.
Then one summer (94?) everything clicked - I switched permanently to spin and got more confident batting, and in the space of a month I took my first 5-fer and scored my first 50, became 1st choice spinner and moved up from 9 to 3 in the batting order. Then dad and I started turning out for his work team and at 13 I was already one of the better players, and that was a really fun team to play for and we won a load of games. I think that was the point where I was "hooked".
I've always loved those very casual t20 games where even if you score a duck you generally still have a fun evening. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with longer format league cricket; it can be great if you have a good team spirit and everyone is contributing, but it can also be pretty painful if either of those things are missing. I've moved around the country a lot and have dipped into league cricket here and there for various teams and at various standards but keep playing T20 stuff year in year out. Including school and university teams I think I've turned out for about 20 different sides over the years.
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I played cricket as a junior but got into senior cricket via hitch-hiking. The person giving me a lift was the skipper of one club who had received a call another skipper asking if he had any spare players that weekend. The chap went home, passed my number to the other skipper who then phoned me up. My first ever match senior match was on FA Cup final day and took a catch, got a couple of wickets and was at the crease when the winning runs were scored. I wasn't fully conversant with the rules and didn't realise the match ends when the winning runs are scored. I took it quite literally that both teams bat 40 overs and since I had just arrived in the middle, I was looking forward to hitting a few runs. I mean it was a nice evening, I was happy to continue batting, I just couldn't see the problem.
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When I was a kid, just looking at three stumps and a rule of the game where you try to use a ball to topple those stumps made me fascinated. Another thing that I really liked about the game as a kid was the rule to catch the ball before it bounced on the ground to get the batsman out - I remember I used to feel so elated whenever I could catch a ball before it hit the ground, it felt like the greatest achievement. Right now these rules might seem second nature and taken for granted but I remember when I first didn't know anything about the game, these rules particularly made me fascinated about the game and had me hooked since.
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Watched my first cricket in 2005. I was 8 years old and my older brother got into it and went training a few times but dropped out due to football commitments. I went to a couple of sessions that winter but the clubs head of youth was only interested in the 2/3 youth players at the club who were ‘promising’ and the rest were an inconvenience to him. As it was my first session I obviously wasn’t at that level, so I never went back. I play for that club on a Sunday now and thankfully he’s long moved on, but I was one of, if not, the best sportsman at my school at that age, so Its not too much of a stretch to say I would be a much better player now if I had received proper coaching from age 8 onwards.
Anyway fast forward to 2015 and my A Level PE exam. We’d all finished but had to wait a few hours to get the bus home. I went to have a hit with some people on my course who were cricketers and I really enjoyed it. That summer I started walking down to their club to watch, and then the 2015 ashes got me completely hooked. I had nothing to do for my long summer, so I watched every test match, watched and read as much as I could about cricket and joined the forum.
The next year I started playing before I went off to uni as a seam bowler. I joined the uni team when I got there and made mates that I’ll consider friends for life, as half of my social life revolved around our social nights out. I ended up turning to spin whilst there, but was still batting 8/9 and not bowling much. Then in my second year at uni, me and my much better mate spent 2 hours a week at the cricket asylum on the bowling machine. I went back to my club that summer, promptly got bumped up the batting order after a few scores and subsequently scored my first hundred batting at 3. I still bat at the top of the order now and have started bowling spin again as I discovered I can still give it a rip!
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Great post @NT50 really enjoyed reading that.
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For me it was playing every free minute of the summer with my two brothers in the garden from the age when we could all walk. I was also luckily growing up at the time in Cheshire that the game was played at primary school and secondary school and with a huge number of clubs for the population size with excellent facilities. It is only as I have got older that I have really appreciated how luckily i was to have a set up like this.
Growing up watching England in the 90s, you had to make your own passion from the game from playing rather than being inspired by the national team.
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I grew up playing and watching football. My dad played semi professionally and early memories are of me being watched by a random club bloke while my dad played and usually shouted at referees.
He'd never played cricket but i was 10 innthe summer of 1985. Switched on the tv one day to catch the back end of David Gower's 215 in the Ashes at Edgbaston. I was hooked. The sun, the floppy sunhat, the GN bat with the blue grip. Two of my mates who lived on the same street watched that summer as well and we were out playing before the summer was out with a cricket set bought from a high street sports shop in Coventry.
By the 86/7 Ashes i was collecting newspaper cuttings, watching the news for those 30 seconds of highlights and recreatimg the scorecards. Been playing now for 35 years!
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For me, it's a who rather than what. My elder brother . He needed someone to bowl to him at home for practice, so he taught me how to bowl and used to make me throw wet tennis balls for him so that he could practice . Learnt to bowl by the time I was 7 -8 years old and really loved fast bowling .Running in fast , cutting through the air , aiming for the spot I will land the ball at . Was a pathetic batsman till maybe around age 10 -11 and then started to concentrate more on batting and in school cricket moved from no.7-8 batsman to opening slot by the time I was 14. I still love to bowl and my mind is probably the clearest when I'm at the top of run up and settled on which ball to bowl next. I'm considered a better batsman than a bowler by my team mates, but fast bowling was and is still my first love and got me hooked to cricket .
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Chris Broad and Duncan Fearnley bats and watching Steve Waugh as a club professional
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From an early age (around 2 or 3) I went with my mum and dad to watch cricket at my local village team, and never stopped watching them until I played for them and some 45 years later I am a life member. In those days it was something a lot of the villagers would do on a Sunday, and continued for many years but sadly that link between the village and the cricket club seems to have gone!