The Roaming Reporter Returns for #odogashes
On 12th October, whilst the rest of the sporting world was pre-occupied with England’s successful World Cup qualifying campaign, those in the know were making their way to The Spitfire Ground, St. Lawrence in Canterbury for the Kent Cricket Board’s One Day One Game - Ashes Edition.
Following on from the success for the first One Day One Game event back in March, confidence was high that the Ashes Edition would be just as successful as both England teams were this summer.
Obviously it wouldn’t be a trip down to Canterbury if I didn’t experience issues with my commute and this time was no different. After a scenic tour of various South East London train stations, I finally found my way to the ground a mere one hour late but hey, what’s an hour between friends? Sadly I missed on David Leighton’s introduction to the day and to make matters worse, I even missed out on the free tea and biscuits on offer!
With so many presentations to choose from, I made my way to CricHQ’s piece on ‘Using data for coaching & analysis’. As a lover of stats and a man who checks Play Cricket every week during the season to see what my average is, I was very excited to find out what they had to offer. The presentation gave a great insight into the growing importance of data analysis at grass roots level. Not only was I impressed with the level of statistical analysis, with more wagon wheels and charts than you can shake a stick at, my chin hit the floor when they announced that their system could actual work out the Duckworth Lewis score during a game!
As a blogger and semi-regular tweeter, it would have been very poor form of me to not check out the presentation on Social Media & the Twittersphere. Kent Cricket’s very own Abi Hiatt-Gipson led the presentation, ably assisted by myself as I explained to a room of slightly perplexed older gentleman the notion of a retweet! The piece was packed full of great advice on how to make the best use of social media to enhance your team’s coverage, it even gave me the idea to create a Kent Ramblas YouTube account! Although we would first need some videos to upload first, ideally of me executing a text book cover drive for four rather than being clean bowled for a duck!
I also got a chance to watch a coaching session hosted by former England Women’s head coach Mark Lane on Batting vs Spin. It taught me lots of valuable lessons, the main one being that batting against spin isn’t all about closing your eyes and going for a massive heave to cow corner. Apparently there’s a lot more to it than that, who knew? With a helping hand from Kent captain James Tredwell, people got to see the thought process that goes on in both the batsman and bowler’s mind for each ball bowled. It was an excellent piece and fingers crossed I can use some of the lessons learnt next season!
Sadly, with so much going on, I didn’t have time to see every presentation and there were a couple I missed that I was particularly disappointed about. Firstly was the discussion about the ‘HMRC & Tax for clubs’ as it has wide ranging implications for clubs around the county. Even the mighty Kent Ramblas have to consider the issue so I will be keeping a close eye on this topic in the coming months! I also missed out on CricHQs presentation on its online scoring system, which would have been of great interest to me as my team’s scorer-in-chief, especially as when I go out to bat, the scoring can occasionally go a bit pear shaped! That said, I’m not normally at the crease long enough for it to cause too much trouble!!!
As with the previous One Day One Game event, it ended with a Q&A with James Tredwell, Geraint Jones, Chris Tavare & Mark Lane. Clearly taking advice from the Social Media presentation, people were offered to tweet in their questions to the panel as well as taking to the microphone. Amongst the topics were discussed were the growing stature of the women’s game and how increased television revenue is playing its part, what it’s like to play in an Ashes series as well as the all important Ashes predictions. Whilst no one was bold enough to predict a 5-0 white wash, there was a huge vote of confidence for England as everyone believed that they would leave Australia victorious.
The event was another resounding success for the Kent Cricket Board and it was really encouraging to see so many representatives from so many clubs throughout Kent. It really does go to show how much passion there is for cricket in Kent and I was very proud that I got the chance to represent my club at the event. It’s just a shame that Geraint Jones has decided to stay at Kent for another season, the Kent Ramblas are always on the lookout for new players…
If you missed out or want to check back on the day, you can do so with the following link...
