Previous post some could construe as borderline blasphemous. Anyone reading the following who is connected with the U.S. Army I don’t wish to give any similar impression.
Wood (left), Jones (centre), Pasley (right), discuss tactics at Palm Beach cricket ground (2014-15)
No, it’s not.
A junior, myself, Stuart Wood, and Dave Pasley trying to hold down an HPPCC annexe/tent threatening to fly off in a mid-afternoon storm – weather conditions not unknown to Gold Coast Cricket!
Apologies to the US Army 1969 (Mekong Delta). Top Photo L. to R. (Lieutenant Colonel David Hackworth, Brigadier General Julian Ewell, Colonel Ira Hunt).
I received a telephone call on a Friday night before the Saturday match a few weeks into the season…”Doug can you play tomorrow?” From two mums of the Club. Asked to front up in the new Helensvale Opens team composed of…15 year olds!
Coralling and controlling junior cricketers. How to do it? Don’t take my advice. But for anyone who finds themselves in such position, some questions to put.
1) WHO TAUGHT THEM?
Often this can be used to say…”no, this is terrible technique/practice/method” but with HPPCC juniors 2014/15 I have to admit…”really good batting technique especially defensive.” Better than my blocking batsmanship which I think provides no angle between bat and pad (a belief belied by being bowled enough times during the season, though, usually the result of going for the hit!). Nope, the older Helensvale cricketers, still teenagers themselves probably, taught them well when they were 12/13/14.
2) ARE YOU STRONGER THAN A 15 YEAR OLD?
To borrow from “Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?” Mark Burnett’s top rated reality tv show…the answer is YES! The art of batting requires a single through the inner-ring of fielders. I can do it with a defensive stroke into a gap. Junior cricketers can’t. If the sport was Rugby; Probably not. 15 year old Tongan/Maori Rugby players of Helensvale Rugby Club would wind me.
3) “HE’S NOT THE MESSIAH, HE’S A VERY NAUGHTY BOY.”
From Mark Burnett to other English film producers, Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’. Alex, one of the better batsmen among the 15 year olds (in bad light and windy conditions) took…88 balls to score 11 RUNS! That’s almost half the innings, more when you consider his partner would have had some of the strike. I was impressed at this grim dogged batting display. “WE HAVE A NEW BOYCOTT REBORN, HALLELUJAH.” (confusing Buddhist and Christian theology since Geoff Boycott still, lives).
One of the Mums vehemently disagreed – not that I put any religious/cricket spin on this to her (well maybe a cricket-spin re Boycott), I was just curious – Reply to me: “No, Alex is fat, he’s lazy, and he’s selfish. That’s why he doesn’t run.”
With the advent of computerisation of scorebooks in Australian Club Cricket via the My Cricket website it’s become easy to see what results each individual on the field is getting.
For the U.S. Army in Vietnam (1965-1971) it was more difficult. It became a case of statisics, estimates, and guesswork.
Brigadier General Ewell versus Lieutenant Colonel Hackworth.
“If you’re not getting 10 to 1 you’re not in the game.” (Brigadier General Ewell taking the Australian Army to task, Phouc Tuy Province, 1969).
“By that measure the Australians were a great disappointment to Ewell since they were only measuring 3 to 1.” Paul Ham. Australia in Vietnam.
What to make of Ewell, the foremost American Army General (1968-70)? Definitely a combat leader, parachuting with his batallion of the 101st Airborne on D-Day into Normandy, 1944. In the Battle of the Bulge, at the forefront. But by the 1960s, had Secretary of Defense Macnamara’s (Ford Motor) statisical analysis, through IBM computer mainframes, brought on a complete reliance? On the body count.
Lieutenant Colonel Hackworth thought so. Disclosure. When a schoolboy, in Sydney, Hackworth gave us a lecture. It was real anti-nuclear time in the 80’s. Didn’t know that he was a Gold Coast property developer! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hackworth
I’m pleased to report that the Helensvale 15 year olds have shown definite improvement on the mathematical, computer mainframe measurements. Couldn’t make it to a hundred runs on first innings, now they can. Didn’t look like bowling the opposition batsmen out, (with good batsmen lurking in the lower grades).
After a season of cricket, now the bowlers do!
My own Weetbix Cricket ratios. http://mycricket.cricket.com.au/common/pages/public/rv/cricket/viewplayer.aspx?locx=PLY&playerID=802658&eID=2186&entityID=2186&seasonID=0
(odd, looking at them, bowling average equals batting highest score equals number of wickets.) 28.
Ham ‘Australia’s War in Vietnam’. http://www.smh.com.au/news/book-reviews/vietnam-the-australian-war/2008/02/08/1202234148357.html
General Ewell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Ewell
Boycott advises Cook his successor as England Opener. No doubt talking about the score rate. That’s Clarkson, Boycott, and the England Cricket Board Chairman, Graves’ for you!
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