Pace Bowling Practice in Argentina

In the absence of a bowling machine in the north of Buenos Aires I try to recreate the intensity of facing fast bowling by throwing the ball as hard as I can from 16 yards. However, with the amount of throwing I was doing my arm was close to falling off. I was also developing a back of two half’s. One half, the throwing side, resembled the muscles of a Shark and the other side, the non-throwing side, had the definition of a Walrus. Combine this with a hunchback from years of keeping wicket my new nickname is ‘Quasi’

During a trip to the UK last summer I came across a gadget sent from the cricket coaching gods. It is a plastic stick with a handle at one end and a cup that holds a ball at the other end, it is also used by dog owners for a game of fetch.  I can now achieve maximum speed with minimum effort.

Britsh Argentine Ben Precious gets prepared to face the music................

Due to the extra pace the gadget generates holes have appeared in the net. This has caused a new problem altogether! Stray balls are now flying through the net into car park.  The first few times the porter passed the balls back but when a brand new ball narrowly missed a Mercedes Benz he reacted more aggressively. He said, waving lots of arms and mannerisms that you may see after a car crash, ‘you can only have the ball back when the nets are mended!!’ I have obviously mentioned the situation to the ground staff and it has been added to the list of things to be fixed.

The show must go on, batters need to learn to play pace better in South America! But, after the tenth decent ball went through the net I needed a plan to keep costs down. The string I tied had not held the net and the rugby players soon took back their tackling bags which I used to protect the holes.

Thinking outside the box I came across some baseballs in a shop in the US. Twelve balls for $20USD, bargain I thought. And I took as many as I could back to Argentina. We only use baseballs for throw downs now and we still lose the same amount of balls (because the nets have yet to be fixed) but it doesn’t cost as much. But what if one of these balls goes though the net?? Baseballs only weigh 5ozs so I have achieved damage limitation!