I last played cricket 20 years ago when I was 12. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much.

Inspired by Bryce McGain’s big comeback, I figure I’d jump the gun and start playing a few years younger than he did. So I headed down to North Shore Cricket Club for their net session on Tuesday.

You see I’ve been keeping my form up with beach cricket, a swing king and a lot of beers. Figured I could bowl a bit and was old enough to play for Australia.

My first ball came out backwards. No, not the back of the hand like Warney, I mean backwards, as in behind me and away from the batsman. It seems in my desire to deliver a full ball that I didn’t release it until the arm had gone over, and around, and down, and back again.

Next up came 3 or 4 wide beamers down leg. One even hit the side net before it got to the batsman. Needless to say I was impressing my future team mates with my control at this point.

I decided that my run up completely sucked, since we were using a discarded apple core to mark the back foot line. So I did my run up in reverse and marked out a purposeful 7 steps.

This made a huge difference as I could now actually run in without half stepping, allowing me to actually concentrate on bowling. I slowed it down a bit too, in the interests of landing on the pitch, and while it was still all over the show most of the balls could now be called legal deliveries.

After I’d been bowling for about 40 minutes my mate Tomm showed up, and I actually started to bowl half well, so much so that unlike everyone else there he didn’t know that I was complete shíte.

I started to pitch it up to the batsman at a reasonable medium pace and was thinking I should start bowling quicker now when Tomm who actually played last year informed me “That’s a pretty good ball. 6 of them would be a respectable over”.

Challenge Accepted. 6 of them. And you know what? 6 came out pretty well. The last one was a bit short and the batsman spanked it back down the track, however the nets have a back wall so you don’t have to run after it.

All up I bowled for around 90 minutes, at first in a rotation of 4, then 3, then the last 12 balls as the only bowler left.

Now I’m left with the pain, which starts in my left foot’s big toe and escallates through my body to the focal point of pain – the right shoulder. Breathing is laboured and laughing intensely painful. The pain spikes are the left bottom rig, right back shoulder blade, and right groin.

This post is bought to you by Nurofen Plus.

Share on Facebook