Even though I have played cricket in the past, I never played professionally or with a coach, especially not with a hard ball. I’ve only played outdoor cricket with friends with soft balls. After using the hard ball for the very first time, I realized how much more difficult cricket actually is. One of the biggest challenges of playing with the leather ball is having to wear extra equipment for protection. Wearing those makes you feel very heavy, and creates difficulty for us to have a free range of motion. Having to wear a helmet with face guards that overlaps my glasses, is another challenge, as it makes it very difficult for me to track the ball with the extra railings from the helmet and the frame of the glasses. The worst part of it all is the immersive back pain that comes once every session of batting, from the additional weight of the bat and equipment.
However, cricket is not all about sadness and difficulties, it’s mainly about improvement and fun. Those difficulties might cause cricket to sound horrendous but trust me, once you leave all the pain and difficulties behind, cricket is a very enjoyable sport. Like in every sport, overcoming these difficulties is what makes it fun, feeling that self-achievement and satisfaction is what it’s really about, as they say, “At the end of pain is success.” Even though the practice session is fairly short, going home after this session is a very therapeutic process, knowing that I overcame all the pain and improved myself, creates a sense of satisfaction. Throughout the activity, I am also able to improve my teamwork skills, as I collaborate with all my peers by sharing feedback, taking turns and building conversation.
My cricket skills have been significantly improved, however, there are still many skills that require further improvements. As we haven’t yet gone into fielding, the two main skills I need to improve are batting and balling, the two most fundamental skills in cricket. Mr Russo, our coach, gave us many tips and opportunities on how to improve my overall performance. As he analyses our performances throughout the session, he is able to give more individual and specific coaching points. Starting with batting skills, he instructed me to follow the trajectory of the ball and move with the ball to get a more accurate shot. Furthermore, moving to where the ball hits the ground, disregards the spin of the ball, making it easier to get a powerful shot. As for balling, I was instructed on how the ball should be held, and how I should coordinate my body to carry and build up the momentum throughout all the movements. This prevented me from chucking the ball, which was the main fault in my ball handling. As a result, with in 3 lessons, I can already identify significant improvements, especially with my balling skills.
