All things cricket..

Another year of county cricket comes to an end. J has had a good season. He's enjoyed himself and I think the pressure he put on himself in previous years is a little less now. He still gives it 100% but at thirteen years old he should be enjoying it too. He got a good number of wickets overall this year but didn't see much action with the bat. I don't think he minded much, he batted at club level and retired pretty much every game (they have to retire at 25 for under 13 club cricket).

He's also played one heck of a lot of men's cricket this year; most weekends for the firsts and seconds. He's got quite a haul of wickets for them and a few runs too. He's most probably learnt a few other things whilst playing for the men's teams too, I dread to think. He played for the Saturday seconds today and got three wickets and he's playing again tomorrow. Is the end of this cricket season in sight? I hope so. I love it but boy does everything else get neglected!

The team photo above is blurred intentionally. It was taken at Culford School, the venue for this year's cricket festival. I have to say that M and I much preferred Holbrook by comparison. Culford School were not very helpful with directions to toilets for the spectators, and for Lincolnshire that is parents and grandparents, siblings and friends. From pitch one the walk was considerable so we ended up having to drive! The only on site refreshments were vending machines, which was poor compared to how hard Holbrook worked to provide tea and coffee all week long. Luckily I received a tip off that I'd need to take extra flasks (thanks J!) and so we were well equipped.

We stayed at a lovely caravan site which was about a fifteen minute drive from the school. E joined Mum and Dad at a cottage for the week, which meant M and I had a lovely peaceful week! Well almost peaceful, we still had to get up and walk the dogs of course and they were rubbish at settling down on a picnic blanket while the cricket was going on. They ended up sleeping in my boot and having lots of frisbee sessions when the breaks were on. Harvey is obsessed, be it frisbee, ball, stick. He would fetch all day long. Riley has a short concentration span and soon gets sidetracked, and this meant trotting casually off to see if anyone had left any picnic food behind. Little devil.

Embarrassingly J had to wear his green training tracksuit trousers on one day because it was a little chilly. I had no idea they were so ridiculously short! He really should have worn his new training shorts and shoved the trousers back in his bag. He has grown yet again and we need to get new school trousers, his current ones are suddenly well above his ankle, how did that happen? I got him to try on his jacket and that looks a little silly too, why they don't invent stretchable uniform that grows with you I don't know!