Paul1979
11-04-2008, 06:01 AM
Here is a quick update / diary from my point of view playing for the Norfolk Team.
Its saturday morning, 4.30am and I am for some strange reason awake! This reason is that I need to leave and drive 3 hours to Nottingham, England soon for the 2008 Inter County Championships. I am playing for the first time for my county (state) Norfolk, having qualified for the finals back in September against 12 other counties.
The finals consist of 12 teams from around the country who qualified in September. Around 30 teams entered the competition to begin with.
So we arrive at Nottingham at 9am, after a quick stop off to pick up a few of my team mates.
When I arrive I can basically spot nearly everyone who is ranked in the top 100 in the country around somewhere, and a friend mentions to me it looks like all the counties have brought out the 'big guns'.
We have a 6 man squad and this is basically everyone available to our team out of the whole county, we have around 8 / 9 to choose from in total.
We have a fair amount of games to get through over the weekend, 5 games on saturday and 6 on sunday.
The teams at the event were.
Norfolk
Surrey
Dorset
Peterborough
Derbyshire
Lincolnshire
Buckinghamshire
Yorkshire
Devon
Warwickshire
Berkshire
Middlesex
The first day went pretty well with myself averaging around 200 and clean and one of my team mates averaging 250 over the first 5 games. At the end of the day we were sitting in 6th place out of 12.
Day 2 was alot more intense. The games on the fresh pattern were by far the best for me as games 2 and 3 seemed to dry out a fair bit and I was struggling to get the ball down the lane.
So as the day progressed we began moving up the table, beating teams who on paper, we never should beat. We had a couple of games near 1200 which for a 5 man team aint that bad at all!
Going into the last game we were in 3rd place. Our nearest rivals were Surrey, in 2nd, Peterborough in 4th and Yorkshire just behind us all in 5th. Dorset by this stage had already basically won.
We had to play Buckinghamshire in the last game, and although they were in last, given the situation this was still not an easy game (as you will see!)
To stand any chance we needed to beat Buckinghamshire and for Peterborough to help us out and beat Surrey.
All we could do was to concentrate on our game, this was the 3rd game to be played on the pattern so it was basically dried out. Buckinghamshire started out really well and by half way we were 80 pins down on them. We all tried to rally round and bit by bit we caught up. We went on the 10th frame down to the anchors and they had a spare going into the 10th and we were on a double. They were around 27 ahead of us. A win also game 100 pins bonus as well.
It was basically strike for the win and I am glad I didnt have to bowl it as the pressure was riduculous. They 9/ the tenth and then struck so we basically HAd to strike out. The task fell to James Tidd. Some of you may have heard of him before when he beat Belmo in the masters. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he struck out perfectly and we win by just a few pins, the bonus 100 pins meaning we stood a chance!
By this time Peterborough were thrashing Surrey and beat them by a mere 300! Surrey managing to bowl 851 after averaging over 1000 all weekend.
The results were entered and Peterborough were 3rd with 11,411 pins. Norfolk were second (YAY!) with 11,423 pins, and Dorset won with 11,800odd.
This was probably our best finish in this and I want to say a personal congrats to James Tidd. He averaged 247 over the 11 games and played brilliantly. Well done mate.
Paul
p.s if youve read this far, thanks for reading!
Its saturday morning, 4.30am and I am for some strange reason awake! This reason is that I need to leave and drive 3 hours to Nottingham, England soon for the 2008 Inter County Championships. I am playing for the first time for my county (state) Norfolk, having qualified for the finals back in September against 12 other counties.
The finals consist of 12 teams from around the country who qualified in September. Around 30 teams entered the competition to begin with.
So we arrive at Nottingham at 9am, after a quick stop off to pick up a few of my team mates.
When I arrive I can basically spot nearly everyone who is ranked in the top 100 in the country around somewhere, and a friend mentions to me it looks like all the counties have brought out the 'big guns'.
We have a 6 man squad and this is basically everyone available to our team out of the whole county, we have around 8 / 9 to choose from in total.
We have a fair amount of games to get through over the weekend, 5 games on saturday and 6 on sunday.
The teams at the event were.
Norfolk
Surrey
Dorset
Peterborough
Derbyshire
Lincolnshire
Buckinghamshire
Yorkshire
Devon
Warwickshire
Berkshire
Middlesex
The first day went pretty well with myself averaging around 200 and clean and one of my team mates averaging 250 over the first 5 games. At the end of the day we were sitting in 6th place out of 12.
Day 2 was alot more intense. The games on the fresh pattern were by far the best for me as games 2 and 3 seemed to dry out a fair bit and I was struggling to get the ball down the lane.
So as the day progressed we began moving up the table, beating teams who on paper, we never should beat. We had a couple of games near 1200 which for a 5 man team aint that bad at all!
Going into the last game we were in 3rd place. Our nearest rivals were Surrey, in 2nd, Peterborough in 4th and Yorkshire just behind us all in 5th. Dorset by this stage had already basically won.
We had to play Buckinghamshire in the last game, and although they were in last, given the situation this was still not an easy game (as you will see!)
To stand any chance we needed to beat Buckinghamshire and for Peterborough to help us out and beat Surrey.
All we could do was to concentrate on our game, this was the 3rd game to be played on the pattern so it was basically dried out. Buckinghamshire started out really well and by half way we were 80 pins down on them. We all tried to rally round and bit by bit we caught up. We went on the 10th frame down to the anchors and they had a spare going into the 10th and we were on a double. They were around 27 ahead of us. A win also game 100 pins bonus as well.
It was basically strike for the win and I am glad I didnt have to bowl it as the pressure was riduculous. They 9/ the tenth and then struck so we basically HAd to strike out. The task fell to James Tidd. Some of you may have heard of him before when he beat Belmo in the masters. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he struck out perfectly and we win by just a few pins, the bonus 100 pins meaning we stood a chance!
By this time Peterborough were thrashing Surrey and beat them by a mere 300! Surrey managing to bowl 851 after averaging over 1000 all weekend.
The results were entered and Peterborough were 3rd with 11,411 pins. Norfolk were second (YAY!) with 11,423 pins, and Dorset won with 11,800odd.
This was probably our best finish in this and I want to say a personal congrats to James Tidd. He averaged 247 over the 11 games and played brilliantly. Well done mate.
Paul
p.s if youve read this far, thanks for reading!