Ollie has been working in the nets all winter. His club (Read CC) have really pushed things this season with a new guy running the juniors. So they have been doing "out of season" nets. It's keeping the boys engaged and involved, and looks to be having a positive impact. Winter nets start next week (same as out of season nets, but included in the price of our membership). Best of all for Ollie, adult nets have started up, and he loves being involved with that. You can see in the last couple of weeks the senior players recognising he's not as fragile as they think (he's 12, so 2 years younger than the other juniors that train with the adults), and they are not taking as much off their bowling as they were!
No wicket keeper training yet- and I remain concerned about the level of specialist training available for 'keepers. Ollie has actually had a lot- but it's all been organised by me finding people to help- and it's all outside the normal coaching. (For clarity, it is people involved in the club that have helped him- but it's depended on me asking them rather than the keeper training being built into the structure)
A new indoor net has opened in Manchester, so yesterday we went on a longer drive- and paid a bit more for a lane hire- because they have bowling machines. TBH it was just a fun session, and he enjoyed it. Started off at 45mph, he ran out of talent at 70! It was strange actually- he played 65 reasonably comfortably, but couldn't get a bat on 70. I was surprised at the cliff edge drop in performance. I asked him about facing balls like that, and he said he wasn't scared at any point, but just couldn't hit it. We also thought about the fastest bowler he normally faces, and he thought he was about 60mph (which is about what his dad says)- so it was good to push the edges and Ollie loves a challenge. I told him internationals face about 90- so he has a target! The funniest part was dropping the pace back to 45 and watching him play his shot as the ball was halfway down the pitch- he couldn't hit it!
As I said, the bowling machine was some fun. We'll do it again, but with some better focus. He can pick a shot to practise, and we'll just do 15 minutes using the accuracy of the deliveries to help.
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Topic: Your indoor nets 2022 (Read 11461 times)