Out In The Middle With Scott

Rain Rain Rain

Rain, rain, go away.

We’ve certainly been dogged over the past few weeks by the weather on the cricket pitch.

It’s tough and it’s disappointing because a six match series leading into the World Cup would be the perfect preparation especially against a sub-continent team with a couple of fantastic spinners which what we’re likely to face.

By the looks of things, if the weather forecast is right, we might struggle on Saturday in Christchurch as well.

So with all this talk of rain I thought it would be a good idea to give you an insight into what happens when the weather strikes on game day.

What tends to happen is Dan Vettori as captain and John Wright as the coach try to make it as simple as possible for the guys.

They don’t want the players burning mental energy worrying about whether we’re going to be out there or if the game is going to be shortened or how it’s going to work.

So they just tell the guys to go off and relax, play cards, have a coffee, read the paper do whatever you want to do whilst they deal with the umpires and the match referee to find out what exactly is going on.

That takes it out of the players’ hands and you can relax as best you can.

In Queenstown  when it became apparent that the game was off both teams hit the gyms and completed their various workouts, some guys ran back to the hotel which was about seven kilometers and everybody made that they at least got some sort of sweat up and got their fitness work done in preparation for the next couple of months.

On game day there isn’t a lot you can do.

A lot of guys enjoy a game of cards.

And when you head to the sub-continent you tend to play a fair bit of cards.

For security issues we aren’t allowed to leave the hotel between training and games.

So there’s a lot of downtime and you find guys like Dan Vettori, Brendan McCullum and myself all get into it.

In the days gone by guys like Craig McMillan, Nathan Astle and Chris Harris enjoyed a game of cards.

There’s always a few people keen.

And of course there’s always a bit of competition involved and a punt of some sort.

There are a couple of guys who lose their shirts or more likely their tour allowance but that’s part and parcel with what goes on.

Unfortunately rain is one of the things we face as cricketers, it would be great to have guaranteed sunny weather but we all know that’s not likely all the time.

We deal with it as best we can and make as much of the chance to get in some sort of competition – no matter what it is.

The weather has been pretty good leading up to the first two games so we’ve been able to train and get some net work done.

We’re obviously in the last phase of getting geared up for the World Cup but the focus is definitely still on the series against Pakistan.

We would be foolish to be arrogant and to look too far ahead and disrespect Pakistan with the players they have.

But there are protocols and strategies that John and Dan want to work on in preparation for the World Cup and afterwards.

There’s a lot of focus at the moment on making sure everyone is aware of what is expected of them to perform whatever role is in front of them.

The Knights finally got a game completed yesterday against the Otago Volts in Whangarei although it finished up in a draw.

The boys are still in the hunt for the playoffs and are sitting in fourth spot on the table.

So it’s all coming down the wire in the last two games, I really hope the weather comes to the party so we can see some cricket.

It just seems like it’s been one of those seasons where the days in between games have been great but then match day is awful and raining.

We played on a fantastic wicket in Invercargill and it was nice to get some runs for the Knights there and unfortunately we were rained out and couldn’t get a result.

But hopefully this might be the start of a good run for the next couple of games.

The Knights go up against the Firebirds on Sunday and they’ll be up against some tough opposition.

Jesse Ryder and James Franklin have been released to play for Wellington this week but that will make the day even better for the Knights when they beat!

And just to finish off it’s great to hear today that the Knights were announced as the Team of the Year at the Waikato Sports Awards last night.

That’s got to be a great way to fire up to take on the Firebirds on Sunday!

 

Cheers, ScottY