Sleepypete's Pillow

There’s been some big stories prowling around the sports media over the past few days, all about who becomes the next Captain of the England cricket team.

What’s happened is that the pressure of being In Charge has gotten to the two people who had the job last week. Michael Vaughan had that pressure steadily grinding him down to the point where he couldn’t get the consistency going with his batting and Paul Collingwood could barely score a run for all of this season. And when that happens to a player, it undermines their position in the team, let alone their ability to lead that team. They’re both excellent captains with their tactics but the pressure does get to players after a while.

I’ve had the captaincy job a few times in my cricketing life, in fact I had an absolute ball running the indoor team that we had going in our project for a few years. We always punched above what we should have done and I had a lot of pride in leading that bunch of players. I had to lead that team by example too, as it was when I could take a full part with my bowling. Nowadays, I’d have had to be a non-playing captain because my bowling is That Bad.

Indoor cricket tactics* are pretty much limited to who bowls or bats when though, there’s no subtleties with fielding positions. There’s a certain amount of pressure involved, as the skipper has to keep track of the bowlers to make sure his weaker ones don’t get absolutely murdered. However, most of the work came before a game to make sure there was a full side of six players turning up. Which could often be a challenge …

(Kinda appropriately, the last iTunes track was “We Are The Champions” and the current one is “When I Was Young” by River City People – spooky)

So, I’ve had a little taste of Captaincy, albeit with much different pressures than the two who have just stepped aside for England. They had selectors doing the chasing thing but I don’t envy them having to talk to the media. I’ve also never had my exploits on the cricket field analysed in a National newspaper, although I did get my name in the local paper fairly regularly due to putting in bowling that did lots to further our side’s cause in games.

I can fully understand why Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood have stepped aside. Captaincy is a great honour and a blast while it lasts however there’s a definite Hump where it becomes a chore instead of the rush that it should be. For me, I think running around before games to scare up a team was getting noticed by The Bosses, plus work itself was getting much busier. It was detracting from the day job, so I needed to step aside and hand on the reins. For Vaughan and Collingwood, the Captaincy was detracting from their day job (getting heaps of runs batting).

They’ve both been excellent Captains, setting a high standard for the next guy. That’s Kevin Pietersen and if he carries through the fresh approach that he has with his batting, then we’re in for a few High-Octane, Fun years as England supporters. Let’s hope there’s a good few Test wins in amongst the spectacular, plus I’d like to see a change in England’s ability in one day games too.

*I appear to have been knocked off the top of Google for searches for “indoor cricket tactics”, so I think I’m honour bound to attempt to regain that position.

LOL @ #4!!!

Thanks for playing, hope you have a great weekend 🙂

Not done one of these for a while, so here goes ! For more Friday Fill-ins, please see Janet’s site here.

1. If I could travel back in time, I’d go to when some idiot broke his shoulder and tell him not to play silly badminton shots, or the 60s so I could try and get into the astronaut program.

2. Give me popcorn or give me a low fat torture diet!

3. I am listening to the end of a Deep Space Nine episode, although I’ll break out iTunes later.

4. Somewhere, someone is thinking nefarious thoughts about the ice-cream they have in the freezer.

5. I’ll always be up for helping out the team just one more time, no matter how tired or sore I might be.

6. My idea of a good time includes good company and a good game.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to chilling out to some sci-fi, tomorrow my plans include watching the cricket while hoping my aching muscles decide to relax and Sunday, I want to make a dent in finishing Look to Windward by Iain M Banks !

Tonight was my first game back with the cricket, after a break of about 2 years …

I thought I was ready to come back in but unfortunately my shoulder is pretty much Toast. Ah well, that just means I can’t bowl any more and it keeps me away from doing boundary fielding. I’m not actually too fussed by that, as I’m far better at closer fielding anyway and as a nuggety opening batsman I can take the sting out of the better bowlers to set the stage for the big hitters.

On that close fielding thing, think Shortstop position or more likely Second Base. Shortstop needs a decent throwing arm, which I’ve never really had. But I do like scaring the people batting by running in, swooping on the ball and pinging it back to our wicket keeper to try and get them out. Did I mention I got a grass stain tonight ? I’m never happy on a cricket night unless I get at least one grass stain, because earning one means I’ve been diving around and putting the effort in. I don’t like just turning up, I love having an influence on the game.

I was approaching tonight’s game with a bit of trepidation because the team selection meant I might just have to be civil to the poor guy who’s now going out with my ex. I suspect he had something to do with the breakup, so I flat refuse to talk to him now. Oh, he knows I’ve seen him when we’re in the same 10metres or so but he will never get a response. Does that make me a vindictive person ? Probably not because I could do a lot worse than just the Big Evil Stare. I’m usually pretty good at forgiving but I occasionally make exceptions, like when I don’t want the other person to know I’m not still angry with them.

And this fella was in the team for tonight.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to be civil to him at all, as he disappeared fairly quickly when we gave up on the other side turning up. It was pretty damp here yesterday and Monday, so we didn’t think there was much chance of a game. Today, however, was very dry and the sun even came out to make it a very fine evening. A few people thinned out, including Mr Idiot, leaving us with 8 people to have a knockabout. So that’s 2 people batting, 4 running around in the field, 1 person bowling (we took turns, except me!) and a wicket keeper standing behind the stumps.

This was the first time I’ve played in 2 years and I’m not exactly what you’d call the most fit person on the planet. I’m overweight and have damaged most parts of my body. But I ain’t quit yet. Muahaha. Although I think I will have to see a doctor relatively urgently because I didn’t realise just how bad my shoulder is. My bowling turn was first and we had to give up on me because I could barely get the ball on the right pitch, let alone get any consistency. I think I must have injured the shoulder in another event, as well as the dislocation because I’ve gone from occasionally being able to bowl and bowl pretty well too, to being absolutely terrible.

So – we’re having a knockabout, I’m relegated to fielding only and it comes to my turn to bat. I was actually pleasantly surprised, as I didn’t get out at all. There was a pretty close Leg Before (ball would have hit the stumps but your legs are in the way) but I think it missed after a good look. I hit a few boundaries, tapped a few around, although I’d have had a lot more trouble if it was against match bowling. I was glad to take the pads and helmet off in the end cos it was getting rather steamy under the lid.

Fun night – and I didn’t even have to resist the urge to fling the cricket ball at Mr Idiot’s head when his back was turned. Which would have been kinda painful due to the state my shoulder is in. I nearly blew up a calf muscle too but I think I’ve gotten away with that. And one of the various captains seemed to want me in the team next week, which must be a decent sign.

I’m now chilling out with stuff off tape, wondering if I’ll have time after Top Gear (recorded) to munch through some popcorn before sleeptime.

It took me two goes to switch to Firefox … The first time, I ended up not using it at all because it didn’t seem to give me anything decent over and above what Internet Explorer already did.

However, Internet Explorer can’t have those addons installed on top of it to get rid of the popups …

I have recently encountered blogs with pop-ups! the minute that happens I just close the site. I don’t care if I’ve been told it’s blogger of the month with the secret to happiness, I can’t deal with ads inside ads.

I think I’m going to switch over to Firefox. I just hate changing anything, I like getting through my day on auto-pilot 😉

Short post this time …

Just been looking up something Warcrafty and was cursing the site I was peeking at due to them being infested with popup ads. I hate these, they’re intrusive, they tend to resize a browser window that I’m happy with and they also carry the risk of infection by trojans.

The advertising people have figured out a way of getting around the popup blockers built into Internet Explorer and Firefox, which is where more extreme measures come in. I use two :

Flashblock – this stops Flash windows from loading until you say they can load.
AdBlock Plus – this one just stops adverts loading. Any advert … any suspicious website, it’ll block it totally. And you can add undesirable sites to the list too.

That’s Adblock Plus by the way, there is an “Adblock” out there which does half the job. I’ve just switched this machine over to Adblock Plus, because “Adblock” wasn’t doing the job.

There’s all sorts of nasties that can come from uncontrolled adverts, including keylogger trojans and other malware. Best way to protect yourself is by blocking them at source, which means having software like Adblock Plus and Flashblocker active to have a better chance of keeping the unwanted stuff away from your browser. Anti-virus protects a little but the various people I’ve known to have account information stolen have been running competent anti-virus products. Seems like AV is not as good a defense as the people selling that would like you to believe.

The two mods I’ve mentioned above require the Firefox browser, which is well worth a peek anyway as a replacement to Internet Explorer – even if you don’t intend to use the features that Geekdom raves about.

Had an unexpected call up earlier, the Warcraft guild needed people for a raid and even though my character is nowhere near ready yet they asked me to come along :-).

It’s been a while, I think the last time I did any Warcraft raiding was near the start of March. So that’s almost 5 months without knowing the buzz. Solo play is fine, I get into a routine where people probably mistake me for one of the automatic bots that the cheats get banned for. I don’t use bots but I do figure out the most efficient ways of playing games extremely quickly. When going into group work, I kick up a few gears. Think total focus, tunnel vision and getting far more out of the character than anyone has any right to.

Enough that I was managing to keep up reasonably well with the damage with a character that’s very short on the best equipment and which is actually heading for a different role than it’s in at the moment. I’ve been used to doing my part in a raid by dealing massive amounts of damage to targets, which was the role tonight. However, what I’m aiming for is the job I’ve never really done before, which is healing.

Anyway – first time back tonight and it was really good to be back. I’ve missed the banter that makes a raid group interesting. We didn’t achieve that much but that’s partly because we only had the 2 hardest encounters left in the place that we went to. Understrength, makeshift group including one person who hasn’t raided for so many months but in the end only beaten by sheer bad luck. Excellent effort, it was great to be along. I’m now looking forward to more, especially as NWR seems more of a team than the Mercs used to be.

Currently chilling out to Batman Begins. Raiding is fun and a good challenge but it revs me up so much that I need to have a few hours away from the PC in order to be able to sleep. Is that healthy ?

The other callup is a little more expected, I’ll be playing cricket again on Wednesday (weather permitting). Should be interesting, as it’ll be my first game for two years. Hopefully the captain that night will take the rare step of believing me when I say I have the shoulder problem and keep me on the infield instead of the boundary. I’m better close up anyway. Wednesday night is normally badminton night but that’s gone off the menu because I’ve been worsening the damage to my shoulder playing that.

PS Was so revved up I completely forgot to take screenshots !

It’s been something they’ve promised to fix or quite some years now – one of the problems they’re battling with is that the players have escalated the battles faster than the servers can cope with …

Maybe they need one of those IBM Deep Blue supercomputers 🙂

I’ve never played Eve but I know about it. That lag thing is really bad if you are charging people to play.