Blakey’s Blog – 27 May

My weekly blogs have become a monthly occurrence – hopefully the longer time frame will give me more to write about, though I now have time on my hands as I hobble around with a torn left hammy. Unfortunately, I went down last week whilst bowling in the game against Loughborough UCCE. Tearing a hamstring isn’t the nicest of feelings I can assure you, but I’m working with Nimmo (physio) and Pete (S & C) each day in a bid to try put my name in the frame for Twenty20 selection.

In my last blog, I wrote about my week in the second team, and it seems a lot has happened since then. The lads have settled into the new changing environment, there have been mixed fortunes on the pitch, Cricket AM have come and gone and of course a first outing for the new floodlights.

Cricket AM came to the St Lawrence Ground with their challenges for the team on possibly the windiest day of the summer so far, which made for a slightly tricky filming process, not to mention throwing darts into a gail-force head wind at a dartboard rocking from side to side. Who am I to speak though, I didn’t take part; I was responsible for getting the team to take part! The three lads lucky enough to take part in the Ultimate Sportsman competition were Geraint Jones, Joe Denly and our very own version of Warren from the film ‘Something about Mary’, Matt Coles. As I’m sure many will have seen on Cricket AM last summer, they were set three challenges; scoring penalties, chipping golf balls into targets, and finally scoring as many as they could with 3 darts. I won’t say too much more as you’ll be able to see for yourself in a couple of week’s time, but it should make for good viewing.

The other half of filming was for the show’s Brain v Brawn. Finding a ‘brawn’ was no problem in Ash Shaw, but getting a ‘brain’ out of our changing room was a slightly more difficult task! Anyway, Chris Piesley threw his CV into the mix, a slightly debatable candidate, but a candidate nonetheless. So hardly spoilt for choice, we went for the lethal combination of a brawn from notorious Crewe, and a brain from the sunny Isle of Sheppey. We had to win! In fairness to Pies, he did spend the three days prior swatting up on the history of Kent Cricket and came to the conclusion that ‘Tich’ Freeman took a few wickets in his time. So he approached the quiz in a quietly confident mood, just a shame that question didn’t come up! I won’t tell you what they scored, but I can tell you that with Shawsy being the bruiser that he is, he broke the record for the amount of time he held the dumbbell up. Good effort. I would also like to congratulate my housemate on his heroic championship debut – I’m sure I won’t hear the end of it, but getting five in your first outing is a top achievement and Usman Khawaja as your first scalp isn’t the worst either!

Sticking with the cricket side of things, we obviously haven’t been doing as well as we would have liked in recent weeks and it has been tough. It’s important that all of us continue to stay positive though, it’s a long season and there’s plenty of cricket to come.

The Twenty20’s are fast approaching which is always an exciting time of the summer, and if we can get on a good run in that then it may just be the kick start that we’re looking for. Aside from that, I joined the ever-popular world of twitter a couple of weeks ago. There have been a few lighthearted exchanges between some of the lads in the dressing room as I’m sure some of you tweeters have seen. That sort of thing is always good for keeping spirits high and has generally kept me highly entertained so far. Follow me on aj_blake10 if you fancy keeping up with the daily proceeds from the Old Tannery and also an insight into what goes on in the Kent changing room! You can also follow Kent Cricket on Twitter for Club news as well. That’s all for now, see you in a month.