Gordon Goudie Blogs #1
Scottish pair, Gordon Goudie and Craig Wallace are currently out in India getting acquainted with Sub-continent conditions, before joining up with the National team in preparation for the ICC T20 World Cup Qualifiers. Gordon Goudie reports on the first few days of their stay.
Delays leaving Edinburgh, due to the recent storms, meant that our eagerly awaited month long trip to India would be held up by the time reached Heathrow. We missed our connection to Mumbai by only a few minutes, so we booked onto the next flight the following morning and got a hotel to stay in near the airport. The next day saw no more delays as we set off, not knowing if there would be someone to meet us in Mumbai and take us to Pune...
We arrived in Mumbai just before 1am and it took another hour and a half to clear passport control and wait for our baggage to arrive, which we thought had no hope of coming through the longer we waited. Eventually all our bags arrived and we went through customs to find out if someone was waiting for us. There must have been a hundred people holding names up and on our first walk around we couldn't see "Goudie" or "Wallace" anywhere. Eventually one guy started waving and pointing at his sheet of paper with our names on it. He went and got the car as we started our two hour drive to the hotel. Somehow Craig Wallace (Smilo) managed to sleep the majority of the journey, even with all the beeping and weaving through lorries and cars. It was an eye opening experience for me and a really interesting first few hours in the country. We got the hotel around about 4.30am, quickly got checked in and headed to bed.
The next morning we weren't really sure what our schedule was. After breakfast we tried to get hold of someone from the Global Cricket School to find out what was happening. It was proving harder than we imagined, but eventually got hold of the coach Umesh who told us he was waiting for us to come down for lunch, then headed to the ground for training at 1.30pm. It was a pretty light session for us as we were both absolutely shattered. I had a bit of a bowl and then myself and Smilo had a good long bat. It was back to the hotel after training to get showered and dinner, before we headed for an early bed.
The next morning we went to training after breakfast. We started the session with some batting drills. We had to play 50 cuts and pulls to under arm feeds and were given a few pointers on playing them. After that I had my first proper bowl on Indian wickets. Surprisingly there was enough in the wickets to keep the bowlers interested and I bowled quite well, nicking Smilo off a few times.
Bowling coach Umesh had a chat with me and gave me some coaching tips on what he had seen of my action so far. I went back into the nets and put these tips into practice and saw some immediate results. After lunch we returned to training for more net sessions (both batting and bowling), amazingly the wickets had transformed in the afternoon as they became much flatter.
As the week went on, our training schedule has been the same- training twice a day, morning and afternoon, with batting drills and skill work mainly in the morning and live netting in the afternoon. The time between getting back from training and going to dinner has been spent in the gym, keeping up with our training programmes that Smudger (Simon Smith) Scotland’s fitness coach had given us. The facilities in the gym weren’t the greatest, but we can get by.
Friday saw the first game of the trip against the local Poona club. I was asked to captain our side, something of which I wasn't looking forward to. I find that when I captain, my own performance is affected, as I find that the clearer my mind is the better I seem to bowl. However, I took up the challenge and we managed to come out on top, winning by 68 runs. We made 298 from our 50 overs.Smilo was the star of the show. Needing 10 off the last two balls for his hundred, he hit both balls for 6 to bring it up in real style. The locals started well despite losing a wicket in the second over and the game looked like it would get pretty close, until the middle order collapsed and we bowled them out for 230. I managed to take 4-38 which was pleasing for my first game in India.
We have now been here for a week and have really enjoyed it and next week will see us playing games on Monday and Wednesday, followed by another week of training before more games towards the end of the trip. I am looking forward to learning more about bowling on sub-continent wickets and get a lot more batting done.
I'll keep you all informed.
16 January 2012
