With the season almost here outdoor nets will start on Thursday 29th March, 6pm at the club.

First games for each side are:
Sun 15th Apr 2012 3rd XI Homes vs Middlesbrough CC - 3rd XI
Sat 21st Apr 2012 1st XI Homes vs Bishop Auckland CC - 1st XI
Sat 21st Apr 2012 2nd XI away vs Wolviston CC - 1st XI
If you haven't seen the fixtures yet they can be found on the play-cricket site http://redcar.play-cricket.com/scoreboard/fixtures.asp. 

Pre-Season training started some weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon 1pm-3:30pm for the seniors at Saltburn. We are about 6 weeks from the start of the season and the drive to training saw us heading into a fairly strong snow Shower!

Once inside we were welcomed with Stevey Hutch showing of his latest eBay beauty. Most of the lads spend hundreds on "reasonable" bats, and Hutchy time after time buys one for £50 on eBay which turns out to be an absolute gun, his latest Adidas Sachin Master Blaster appears to be another one.

If you've never batted at Saltburn, lets just there's plenty in it for the bowlers and I don't think any of the batsmen got away today with taking at least one to the hands or body and there will be some great bruises developing over the next few days. And I think I will be leading the way, because somehow whilst batting i decided it would be a good idea to onto the bowling machine.  

After facing a basket at 75mph, which after the first couple (first one knocking my middle pole out) I started to find the middle with fair consistency, then for some bizarre reason I suggest we up the pace to 99mph. I think I could have stayed in there all week and not got bat on a single one, but I must have scored a decent 30 or so off my left pad though!  The pinnacle being me charging the bowling machine only to get a 99mph in-swinging yorker right on the top of my left foot, OWCH!

So that just about sums up the first blog, hopefully we will get a couple more written before the season starts and I'll also see if I can persuade a few different lads to write as well.

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Written by
Ollie Rodgers