Your Backyard Cricket Pitch

[Quagmire]

If you play alot of cricket in the backyard on the same surface each time the grass eventually starts to die and the dirt starts to get harder, which is very good for bounce and spin, also you get alot of movement off the deck when your bowling pace.

[sittingduck]

Originally Posted by smickel

Has anyone got any good tips on making a pitch in your own backyard?

Mow the pitch real short than cover with paving tiles or bricks for a few days to kill the grass off

(ensure you have parental consent beforehand however)

[smickel]

Thanks for the idea sittingduck, might try it one day.

[Holden]

I use to play cricket in the backyard alot. Now i moved. I live near a park where it has a cricket net and play there with my cuzin.

The thing thats annoying about playing backyard cricket is when the bowl goes over another person's property or in the roof:@

[Lemming]

Originally Posted by Holden

...cuzin...

What on earth is one of those?

As a kid I always played cricket on concrete and with a tennis ball. To score any runs the boundaries were always directly behind the bolwer. As Mongoose said in his earlier post, we used to play in our back garden, but runs behind square were only partially possible.

As a result I don't cut well or flick off my legs well. Due to only really playing with tennis balls (which are bouncey) I'm mainly a back-foot player with my best shots being the drive off the back foot. If I'm in form I can step for forward and drive on the front-foot. My best form ever - I think I never lost my wicket for about 11 continual innings, when playing at mine and Mongoose's place - was when I was really nicely balanced, waiting for the ball and playing it under my nose without getting forward at all really.