Why some teams don’t take much notice of me
Sussex Cricket Obviously, you want to play every game in the tournament, but I was aware that with Rashid around there was a chance I wasn’t going to be involved at the start of the Blast. I had experience of that from last year and the key is to make sure you’re ready when you do get the nod.
A lot of that is just making sure I’m bowling the volume of balls to James Kirtley – who has a great cricket brain and who I get on well with from playing with -and talking through what deliveries, what lengths and what plans to different people will work well. That builds up your trust in yourself and your ability to perform when needed.
My first game was on a dust bowl at The Oval and I couldn’t have asked for a better wicket to play my first game of the comp on.
Taking three wickets at under a run-a-ball gave me confidence and allowed me to grow into the tournament where things have gone well for me so far.
It might have been different if it has been a flat wicket that night and I’d gone none for 40!
It also helps joining a side that have been playing such good cricket. It’s easy to fit in pretty seamlessly because everyone’s doing their job so well; that takes the pressure off your own performance a bit. A lot of the attention is on a superstar like Rashid, so there’s a chance for me to go under the radar, as well. I think a lot of teams might just see that Rash has gone home, relax a bit and not take much notice of Will Beer. That lets Will Beer forces Phil Salt to leap out of the way during the Sharks’ Vitalit y Blast defeat at The Oval
me surprise a few people!
A big part of what works for me is reading match situations.
I’ll speak to the seamers who have bowled in the powerplay, check to see if slower balls have gripped to get an idea as to whether the ball is going to turn or not.
Likewise, Danny [Briggs] quite often bowls the over before me so as we run between overs I might just check with a quick “spinning?” or “pace?”, and if we’ve batted first then I’ve had that innings to read the pitch a bit. I want to be clear what my plans are before I even bowl a ball.
We’ve been playing really well as a unit so far and it’s really important we keep doing that now we’re into the knock-out stages.
It’s about recognising that your success has been set up by the work of others earlier in the game and thinking
more along the lines of ‘we as a team only conceded x number of runs in that period’ rather than looking at which bowler went at six an over and which went at eight or nine. It goes beyond the playing XI on any given night as well.
We’ve used eight bowlers or something so far, rather than relying on the same five or six. That shows that we’re playing this tournament as a squad, that we can afford to rotate players or rest anyone with a niggle.
We had a good bus trip down to Cardiff last weekend having booked a quarter-final at Uxbridge.
We knew we had a day between matches, so we had a few beers and a good sing song, which included Ben Brown’s Elton John impersonation. He does it very well being small and ginger! Mark, our coach driver is brilliant, he’s put a little oven and a fridge at the
back of the bus and looks after us really well. He’s always in the dressing room cheering us on and gets involved in the team song when we win, so he’s as big a part of the team as anyone else.
Dizzy always tells us we’ve got to enjoy our wins, as they’re hard won. It’s not about going over the top, but we make sure we toast our success as a team.
Hopefully we’ll be able to do the same on Friday after the quarter-final in front of another full house. I think my quarter-final record is won two, lost two, so it’d be good to swing the balance the right way.
Last year’s was a bit of a weird one up at a halfempty ground in Durham with everyone in jumpers. Hopefully this year there’ll be a rowdy full-house at Hove, with everyone cheering us on an being the 12th man that gets us back to finals day.