"Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time"
~Voltaire (1694 – 1778) French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher.
Over the last month or so I have been training with the guys from the club at official training on Thursday nights at an indoor net in Clayton and Sunday afternoons in in a more unofficial capacity - but still club sanctioned - training at Melbourne High Schools nets. It has been wonderful getting in so much practice in and I can feel my game improving faster than I initially anticipated which brings me to that word:
Expectation.
Both from others and from myself.
The idea of having a social hit on the weekend has changed as my mindset has altered its thought processes wanting to make a contribution to the team effort. This subtle change has come about due to my realization that I would not be as deficient as I first thought I would be.
So now, on top of my usual training, I have booked in additional training for an hour at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a bowling machine at the Indoor nets in Hawthorn. This will be for the next three weeks and thereafter I will probably have an hour with the bowling machine each Friday afternoon to get my eye in for the weekend.
Yesterday was my first session with old Happy from the club feeding the balls into the machine as well as passing on encouragement and useful technical advice. It was alot of fun pitting my skills against a machine that never gets tired and is far more accurate than your average club bowler.
I also brought my movie camera and tripod to film my session so I could watch myself batting and to make technical adjustments as necessary. I had never seen myself bat and it was quite fascinating watching myself and noticing some minor technical deficiencies - but more importantly, over the course of less than five minutes batting, I auto corrected myself and then for the rest of the tape my bat was nice and straight and my footwork quite good.
Some things that did stand out were that I looked very, very solid on the back foot - whether defending against the short ball or playing back foot drives, cuts and the occasional pull shot. When we pushed the machine to bowl a much fuller length, I found that getting on the front foot to fast bowling exposed some glaring technical short comings that I had never really noticed before -but was there plain to see on the tape.
While I find it easy enough to take a big stride down the pitch to defend against a spinner, to a fast bowler I tend to play from the crease. This can be dangerous and the only thing that probably saved me from strife in the past was the fact that I always bat a foot out of my crease to fast bowlers which negates to a certain degree LBW's.
In any case, I have resolved to iron out this deficiency in my technique over the next few weeks. I also want to regain my old ability to pounce on any loose balls short outside off stump. If I can consistently get my cut shot to work every time as well as my square drive and cover drive off the back foot - I will be able to keep the score board moving along. I can still play all these shots rather well, but I do play and miss outside off stump more than what I used to.
I am very confident with this specialized work load of multiple sessions with a bowling machine before the season start proper, I should be in reasonable shape by the first game of the season.
I have been thinking in recent weeks about the kind of role I would like to play in my team this summer. When I first started out as a ten year old, I played as a very patient and careful batsman with hardly any full blooded strokes that involved any kind of risk. I could grind out innings on demand, but I must have been rather boring to watch. In any case, I was effective in my role and as I opened the batting in my first few seasons, I at least gave the batting some spine - though that was not at the fore-front of mind to be honest as I was more concerned in not disappointing my brother by getting out for a low score rather than actually having some great team plan in mind.
At some point of time in my second season, after a string of good scores where I was feeling good about myself, a bloke by the name of Richard Owen who was a father of one of my teammates David Owen - told me to play more shots as my slow batting could bog down the whole team. I also had copped a ribbing from time to time by other kids in the team who felt that I was batting for myself rather than the team. This was somewhat unfair as every time I top scored (which was alot) - we won. We were successful and premiership contenders - and my solid starts at the top of the order was surely a key component of that. Also, which twelve year old is 100% team oriented in their every waking thought? At that age when you are batting, about the only thing that is going through your head is - "don't get out".
In any case, the following week, I went out and blazed my thirty not out in double quick time. Keep in mind a batsman in Under 12's those days had to retire once they reached thirty. While it was never explained why, I always understood it that it was to give all the other kids a go rather than a couple of kids putting on a century open stand and nobody else batting.
Thereafter that season I started playing more and more big shots which was not a bad thing as I was still playing technically correct. By my first year of Under 16's practically all the guys in my team could smash a six clean out of the ground. Naturally, with testosterone running high, I wanted to be able to do this too. Retrospectively, I now know that this was never my game - I am a touch player who strokes effortless boundaries and I should have stayed the way I was...but alas, I succumbed to the temptation of trying to whack sixes every ball.
I then proceeded to spend the next two years playing cow shots at training to every ball I faced - and there was no-one there to correct me. My coach in my first year of Under 16's was a quiet man who managed the team - he didn't coach it. In my second year of Under 16's we didn't have a coach at all - so this madness went unchecked, with the net result that my formerly almost pristine technique was drastically altered.
I had no idea those days as to what "trigger movements" were/are. I just trained without any thought as to what I was trying to accomplish. Infact, I accomplished nothing other than going backwards.
Through repetition the brain and the body combine to create a synergy of movement in response to a familiar situation. If you play correctly constantly at training and train as you would wish to play in a match - your trigger movements will be honed to follow your brains instinctive commands. If you thrash about at training like a lunatic as I did for two years - your trigger movements are thrown out of synchronization. So when you get into a match situation, no matter how hard you try and correct yourself and play to your technical strengths - you can't - because your built in computer inside your head is spitting out the faulty data that you fed into it in the first place.
Practice does not make perfect, but perfect practice does make perfect. All sporting superstars in their chosen craft would tell you that is exactly how it works. I am now in the process of recalibrating myself and my batting and rediscovering what is already within me - but has been dormant for many years.
It is all very challenging, but I am having a fantastic time doing it.
Vic Nicholas
Melbourne
~Voltaire (1694 – 1778) French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher.
Over the last month or so I have been training with the guys from the club at official training on Thursday nights at an indoor net in Clayton and Sunday afternoons in in a more unofficial capacity - but still club sanctioned - training at Melbourne High Schools nets. It has been wonderful getting in so much practice in and I can feel my game improving faster than I initially anticipated which brings me to that word:
Expectation.
Both from others and from myself.
The idea of having a social hit on the weekend has changed as my mindset has altered its thought processes wanting to make a contribution to the team effort. This subtle change has come about due to my realization that I would not be as deficient as I first thought I would be.
So now, on top of my usual training, I have booked in additional training for an hour at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a bowling machine at the Indoor nets in Hawthorn. This will be for the next three weeks and thereafter I will probably have an hour with the bowling machine each Friday afternoon to get my eye in for the weekend.
Yesterday was my first session with old Happy from the club feeding the balls into the machine as well as passing on encouragement and useful technical advice. It was alot of fun pitting my skills against a machine that never gets tired and is far more accurate than your average club bowler.
I also brought my movie camera and tripod to film my session so I could watch myself batting and to make technical adjustments as necessary. I had never seen myself bat and it was quite fascinating watching myself and noticing some minor technical deficiencies - but more importantly, over the course of less than five minutes batting, I auto corrected myself and then for the rest of the tape my bat was nice and straight and my footwork quite good.
Some things that did stand out were that I looked very, very solid on the back foot - whether defending against the short ball or playing back foot drives, cuts and the occasional pull shot. When we pushed the machine to bowl a much fuller length, I found that getting on the front foot to fast bowling exposed some glaring technical short comings that I had never really noticed before -but was there plain to see on the tape.
While I find it easy enough to take a big stride down the pitch to defend against a spinner, to a fast bowler I tend to play from the crease. This can be dangerous and the only thing that probably saved me from strife in the past was the fact that I always bat a foot out of my crease to fast bowlers which negates to a certain degree LBW's.
In any case, I have resolved to iron out this deficiency in my technique over the next few weeks. I also want to regain my old ability to pounce on any loose balls short outside off stump. If I can consistently get my cut shot to work every time as well as my square drive and cover drive off the back foot - I will be able to keep the score board moving along. I can still play all these shots rather well, but I do play and miss outside off stump more than what I used to.
I am very confident with this specialized work load of multiple sessions with a bowling machine before the season start proper, I should be in reasonable shape by the first game of the season.
I have been thinking in recent weeks about the kind of role I would like to play in my team this summer. When I first started out as a ten year old, I played as a very patient and careful batsman with hardly any full blooded strokes that involved any kind of risk. I could grind out innings on demand, but I must have been rather boring to watch. In any case, I was effective in my role and as I opened the batting in my first few seasons, I at least gave the batting some spine - though that was not at the fore-front of mind to be honest as I was more concerned in not disappointing my brother by getting out for a low score rather than actually having some great team plan in mind.
At some point of time in my second season, after a string of good scores where I was feeling good about myself, a bloke by the name of Richard Owen who was a father of one of my teammates David Owen - told me to play more shots as my slow batting could bog down the whole team. I also had copped a ribbing from time to time by other kids in the team who felt that I was batting for myself rather than the team. This was somewhat unfair as every time I top scored (which was alot) - we won. We were successful and premiership contenders - and my solid starts at the top of the order was surely a key component of that. Also, which twelve year old is 100% team oriented in their every waking thought? At that age when you are batting, about the only thing that is going through your head is - "don't get out".
In any case, the following week, I went out and blazed my thirty not out in double quick time. Keep in mind a batsman in Under 12's those days had to retire once they reached thirty. While it was never explained why, I always understood it that it was to give all the other kids a go rather than a couple of kids putting on a century open stand and nobody else batting.
Thereafter that season I started playing more and more big shots which was not a bad thing as I was still playing technically correct. By my first year of Under 16's practically all the guys in my team could smash a six clean out of the ground. Naturally, with testosterone running high, I wanted to be able to do this too. Retrospectively, I now know that this was never my game - I am a touch player who strokes effortless boundaries and I should have stayed the way I was...but alas, I succumbed to the temptation of trying to whack sixes every ball.
I then proceeded to spend the next two years playing cow shots at training to every ball I faced - and there was no-one there to correct me. My coach in my first year of Under 16's was a quiet man who managed the team - he didn't coach it. In my second year of Under 16's we didn't have a coach at all - so this madness went unchecked, with the net result that my formerly almost pristine technique was drastically altered.
I had no idea those days as to what "trigger movements" were/are. I just trained without any thought as to what I was trying to accomplish. Infact, I accomplished nothing other than going backwards.
Through repetition the brain and the body combine to create a synergy of movement in response to a familiar situation. If you play correctly constantly at training and train as you would wish to play in a match - your trigger movements will be honed to follow your brains instinctive commands. If you thrash about at training like a lunatic as I did for two years - your trigger movements are thrown out of synchronization. So when you get into a match situation, no matter how hard you try and correct yourself and play to your technical strengths - you can't - because your built in computer inside your head is spitting out the faulty data that you fed into it in the first place.
Practice does not make perfect, but perfect practice does make perfect. All sporting superstars in their chosen craft would tell you that is exactly how it works. I am now in the process of recalibrating myself and my batting and rediscovering what is already within me - but has been dormant for many years.
It is all very challenging, but I am having a fantastic time doing it.
Vic Nicholas
Melbourne
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