3) Sledging is worse today than it's ever been (he said it's always been there but it's more 'personal and aggressive' now.
oh and the sledging is pathetic, banter between yourselves is fine but why people feel the need to attack me personally I don't know. Sod off and play your own game fellas.
I prefer mind games over direct attacks when I'm sat behind the stumps. 'Has he changed his backlift lads?' - helps to get the batsman thinking about anything but hitting the next ball.
If I receive the personal attacks when batting I normally ignore it, total blank, however if I do respond it's usually along the lines of "you're mistaking me for someone who gives a _____ mate"
Our winter nets start next week, being a batsman it will be nice to face some of our better bowlers for a challenge. But overall I feel I get more benefit out of the bowling machine in the shop, there are plenty of pie checkers at my club, myself included.
Our biggest problem is numbers, we have a general club net on sundays, which is all but a waste of time for the first team in terms of improvement/a challenge. It's a good social meet though and I'm not one for being elitist at all. Being on the committee, we've set a goal to get our 2nd team up the leagues to make the jump from 2's to 1's easier when we need to take a player. They are never going to understand the standard required if none of us are netting with them, which is why i try to always attend. i would say only about half of the first team squad go to these regularly though. And as I said, numbers can be an issue, we lost money on these last year.
We also have 1st team nets on Wednesday evenings. It's a loose term as we usually invite some of the more promising youngsters too, to get a good look at them. The numbers for these are smaller obviously, but higher in terms of a percentage of the people invited.
We generally just have a 'fast' net and a 'slow/spin' net. The 2 batsmen then swap halfway through. Myself, robin and a couple of other senior players try to offer some advice, especially with the kids.
I think most of us regard them as a social meet more than anything, numbers are decent to start with, then drop off a little before basically everyone turns out for the final couple of sessions, trying to get a game in a friendly before the season starts. The problem is retaining interest in the middle period when everyone's got to know each other again but the season isn't quite looming enough to make people think they HAVE to net.
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Topic: Winter nets setup (Read 9772 times)