Wednesday, 12 February 2014

Embarrassing!

Being the eternal optimist, had great hopes for at last cracking indoor bowls and putting in a decent performance tonight in the match against Sawtry. Surely daily practise since December on keeping a straight arm, and more recently on restricting my backswing for better length, must start paying dividends soon. Even more important because, looking at the league positions, there's only a few points between 2nd, 3rd and us in 4th place.

Welcomed with the worrying news I was to play number one for the first time. So no hiding place, particularly because I was up against a pretty good bowler. Was a bit desperate when straight away things went Pete Tong. Not only was I still struggling with the length, each end dropping one of my two bowls into the ditch, I was also forgetting about keeping a straight arm. Their number one was peppering the jack with his bowls, whilst it looked for all the world as though I was trying to get as far from the jack as I could. Couldn't have been a great disparity of skills on display if you'd tried. And boy, was I trying. Highly embarrassing!

We were half way into the match before I started to put things together and get at least one bowl within two or three metres of the target. In fact, on two ends my bowl nudged right up against the jack. Didn't do any good; their number three was particularly good and both times played a drive to get rid of my bowl. So I'm consoling myself that two cracking shots in ten ends is an improvement, and if I can just get up and running sooner in a match I'll make a better (or should I just delete the word 'better'?) contribution.

We lost 17-12, so may now slip down to 5th place. Got another week off before I embarrass myself again in the first of a run of four matches in six weeks.

Here's the league positions before tonight's disaster...


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