Picking Murali's doosra

Well, there’s no excuse for me not to blog tonight. It was a day with the feet up, one to rest and recover after a couple of hot, hard days in the field. It wasn’t quite as I’d have preferred it though. I’d have rather not had to put the pads on let alone get out there and bat. I love batting, don’t get me wrong, I was just hoping that we’d bat strongly throughout the day and we could have another ‘batting’ warm up tomorrow. Not to be though, we’ve got ourselves in a little bit of trouble, and are going to have to work hard to get ourselves out of it. It might also be fair to say we haven’t quite had the ‘rub of the green’ in a couple of the decisions; you take the bad ones with the good and that’s just the way cricket is.

The rain this morning was amazing. If you had of said we would have got through 70-odd overs today at 10am this morning I would have laughed at you! There was no way that was going to happen; but it did. The groundstaff have done a great job with the ground; covering and uncovering. They’ve worked as hard as we have in the middle and it’s paid off in us being able to play.

The crowds at the ground have been really good, a small smattering of Kiwis here supporting, NZ flags pop up in different places, black t-shirts and jandals . The occasional “C’mon Kiwi” shouted out, it’s been good to see and hear the ex-pats in the crowd. It’s just a pity we haven’t given them more to cheer about more often.

I got to bat tonight; I had had a good hit in the last warm-up match and have been feeling pretty good with bat in hand. We were six down at tea and I had some ‘knock-ups’ outside on the ground. I found the middle of the bat in defence, hit a couple of drives and headed back up to the changing room happy.

It became my turn to bat around 5pm. The light had just started to deteriorate and SL had quite a new ball; brilliant, just brilliant!? I had been watching the pace of the quicks, both on TV and live, and was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be their pace that was going to be my undoing. In fact I wasn’t really too worried about the quicks; it was these two spinners that were causing me some head problems. Before bad light stopped play on the third day I had faced nine balls and scored three; a good start.

I faced two balls from Murali; I picked them as an offie first and then the doosra. When I got back upstairs to the changing room I re-watched the footage to see if I had got it right. In fact I got them both wrong. It was the other way around. I’ll work had on trying to pick him tomorrow, but more importantly work had with Dan and try to bat for as long as possible. I’ve got a target I’d love to get to, not a run target but a balls faced target. If I get close then I know Dan and I will have put on a partnership of note.

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