The KCC

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The picturesque Keighley cricket club can be found on Hard Ings rd right next door to the keighley cougars rugby league stadium (pictures wil be on my shutterfly website www.shutterfly.com/gkintheuk, within 3 hours.).
KCC field 7 teams, 5 junior from U/9 to U/17 and two senior teams. all of the treasm play on turf on the same oval. U/17 play on wed evening, 15's onm sat morn and the senior teams both play on weekend afternoons.

It is home to some of the niest guys you sould ever like to meet. One fo the reasons for my early departure from oz was to come upo for the pre season social that was being held last sat evening. IT was massive. I met every senior player, bar about 3 or 4 who were missing on the evening, an amazing percentage fo players turning up for a fuinction pre season!+ It is a different way of drinking with these boys, ity seemed s though the oys were constantly drinking and only stopped to talk, but as soon as the last syllable was out fo their mouth the glass was at the lips again!! THey were drinking (warm) pints and i was only drinking spirits (i.e one shot of bourbon, with half a can of coke) and i was falling behind!!! On top of that they are the most generous guys in the world so if they were heading to the bar and i had anything but a full glass in my hand i had another nought for me. I drank all but about 3 shots out of a bottle of bourbon starting at just after 8 and finishing at 4am and i spent: 1 pound. seriously, 1 quid down at the end of the night. it was amazing. im sure i made a great impression on my new host family, stumbling in the door at 4 am blind drunk and crashing my way thrhough the house to the bathroom and back again to my bedroom!!! no wonder they kicked me out.....onmly kidding, i was emant to leave (well thats what they told me)

I have changed house now and am living with the bottomleys. THey have a fantastic house and i am living in the attic (its not nearly as bad as that may sound) I have quite a large room with a desk to set up my laptop (so am always ready to reply to your emails, or to skype you...) Other highlights of this house are an outdoor, 6 person heated spa. THe bottomleys are going away for a month later in the summer imagine the damage o could do to that! They also have Sky Tv so i am currently watching the aussies and the lankans do battle, kal and shiv will both be getting abusive emails when we destroy them in the next few hours, your not going so well early, that sangakarra nerd is overrated!

Anyway, in between staying out til 4am and drinking so fast it hurts we do actually run out on the firld and play cricket. We have been training twice a week, and training is very long over here, we went for over 2 hours last thursday and only 7 blokes had turned up (tue training is compulsory and thur is optional!). Last sat was our first match, albeit a friendly against cross town rivals steeton. We made 189 and had it allover them and they needed in excess of ten and over for the last 5. We missed a stumping 2nd ball of the over, and then all got a minor case of whiplash as ur leggie was struck for four consecutive sixes!! amazing. 2 of them actually hit the far side of the cougars stadium roof and landed inside the playing arena!! if you have a look on google maps, youll see this is no short hit!

warning - cricket dross to follow

The standard here is pretty good. the bowling and the batting is good, certainly ill be neither out of my depth or belting hundreds every week. I have found batting quite difficult so far as the ball tends to come off the wicket quite a bit slower than it hits it, so its hard to go down the ground (the only area i can hit) When the pitches are new though it is not as pronounced and batting tends to be close enough to home, having said that we have had only goos weather and i was warned that they play in ALL condition up here. tHe fielding is where i have seen the biggest difference. We had miss fields, over throws and dropped catches aplenty form both teams on th weekend. THey dont do much tat training, and when they do they dont do it under pressure they tend to practice getting down behind the ball (easy) rather than practicing getting run out (hard). it was only the first game though and theyd only been training outside for the week so i guess ill give them the benefit of the doubt early and see if it improves through the season.

Was good fun out with the boys, they talk some good dross whilst on the field, and are not afraid to have a laugh. we ended up playing on a day where the temp got up near 20 (an amazing oiccurence here in april!) so at one stage during the day i think there were near on 200 people here. There were people scattered around and making a solid wall of supporters around about half of the ground. THe biggest cheer of the day though went to the skipper dropping an absolute pizza that had travelled up high in the air and he managed to spill one that would have landed on his head. THe next biggest cheer was for the fourth six hit by their player in a row. the fans always appreciate a slogger!
THe onyl other notable occurrence was rattas, local nice guy and clown, who top edged a ball into his own chin, drawing blod and forcing him to retire hurt, leaving me a two ball innings! he had to take himself off to hospital where the three lovely nurses all simultaneously stitched him up!


Real cricket starts this week and we play in two different types of competition:

The league.

Every saturday between now and sep 8th. 50 overs per side, maximum of 15 per bowler.
20 points available to a team per game broken down as follows.

10 points to the team that wins.
1 point for 125 runs, then another point for every 25 runs up to a maximum of 5 points.
1 point for every 2 wickets (5 points for bowling them out)

the emphasis seems to be on getting as many bowling ponts as possilbe each week, obivously you always want to make as many runs as p[ossible but this rule means that you dont play a normal 1 day cricket tactic of trying to squeeze the opposition and just dry up the runs, the pressure is also oin you to be attacking and create wickets, and the other team might just shut up shop and try to bat it out and not let you get wickets and therefore keep you from gettin any more points.
Not really sure why they do this, i guess it gives you the opportunity to try and build an innings over here due to their lack of two day cricket. Dont know why they dont just play some two day cricket, maybe its the weather and their inability to produce a wicket that is reasonably similar one week to the next (we do it in melbourne though...).

We are in the 2nd division of the league this year and are very keen to finish i the top 2 sdo we can be promoted up toi the first divisiopjn, something KCC achieved 2 years ago.

The cups

We play in two cups, the heavy woolen cup (the oldest running cricket cup in englang or something) and the priestley cup.
They are played on sundays. they start the next two weekends. then on set weekends finishing in august pending you getting through (they're knockout)

i think this is real 50 over cricket. the team that makes the most runs lives to play another day! that sounds better.
You can play anyone form a lowly 2nd div side, to a first division side paying over 20,000 pounds in wages!! w e have copped a very good side in the heavy woollen cup this weekend.

I have also worked out how these clubs can afford to pay us...... theres no secret they just run a good business. KCC is just like one of the aFL clubs, they have members who pay their fee top join each year (think its 10 quid), they run their bar after every training, during the whole of the game (it opened yesterday at 1 (game started at 1.30) and didnt shut til after9pm) and at one stage there must have been 30 people sitting inside the bar, which looks more like a small pub it would be bigger than the foirnt room at naughto's. KCC finds sponsors if there is a big cost or gets grants of the gov etc.. they bought roll on cover last year costing 4,500 quid and it costs the KCC bank accout nothing, they are replacing the wooden slats on all the seats for the spectators, and they are asking members to sponsor a seat for 40 quid and they get their name on a plaque on that seat! it creates a wonderful atmosphere whenever you down the club!!

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Comments

[Joshi]

Hey Grego, just because they invented the game, doesn't mean they remember how to play it (most runs = winner!) Good job on the blog so far, (i bet the proof-reading must be irritating!) - keep it up!

[k town!]

weather
It isnt relly that cold.