Follow the progress of our Academy athletes by reading Chris Morton's Academy Diary.  He will give us an insight into the sessions and the progress he makes during his time at the Academy.

CHRIS MORTON’S CRICKET ACADEMY DIARY

The cricket academies have begun. As one of the lucky athletes selected for the Academy I am very excited about the prospect of becoming a better cricketer. I am going to keep note of everything that I do in the Academy and note it in this diary to keep everyone informed on what is going on.

Our coach is Australian Steven Fryer. He is currently the coach of Dunfermline Cricket Club, but has been chosen by Cricket Scotland to coach the talented youngsters from the Forth Valley area.

Our first session took place on the Sunday the 11^th at Dollar Academy. After getting up early so I could get to training, which began at 10am, Steve got all the athletes and talked to us about the Academy programme. We were given our own personal folder, in which we were to write in what we did at training and keep a record of what we did in games.

Steve then decided to give us Strength and Conditioning workout. This workout lasted for at least an hour and was the most painful experience I have ever had. We did Bridges first of all, which is when you get into the press up position except you are on your elbows, you then have to hold that position for a minute which was really hard. We then did another Bridge, except you had to lean on one arm and lift yourself up. After ten minutes of extreme pain Steve told us that we had to do 2-3 times every week, which was greeted with moans and groans. We then spent a good half an hour doing Lunges. This wasn’t as bad because we had all done these before, but not to the extent of what we were about to do. We did three sets of 20m Lunges and then had to do another three sets, only this time with a basketball in which we had to twist from above our shoulders down to our waist while holding the Lunge.

We then started our session. Steve focused on bowling and separated the group into fast bowlers and spin bowlers. Being the only spinner there my exercises were adapted to help the only Wicket keeper in the Academy, Graeme Taylor. While the fast bowlers worked on their run ups I was spinning the ball as hard as I could between two fingers to generate lots of spin. Doing this for 20 minutes really hurt my fingers and the seam on the ball was beginning to tear away the skin on my fingers. My next exercise was that I had to throw the ball while spinning it so it turned from one side of a line to the other. This was quite hard but I managed to do this on a number of times, and on some attempts surprising Graeme with the amount of spin I was generating.

My final exercise was the hardest of them all. I had to bowl the ball properly whilst trying to spin the ball between two targets that had been set out. As I was doing this Steve came over and told me to bowl quicker which would result in me generating more spin. This worked instantly as soon as I started to bowl faster the ball was spinning more and spinning between the two targets on a regular basis.

With 15 minutes to go Steve stopped us and gave us a break. He told us that he was very pleased with how well we had worked today.

Rob Hardie from Sportcentral then arrived and talked to us about a Strength and Conditioning programme that is starting in January. He also talked about what opportunity we have been given and that we must work hard so that we can achieve our goals from the programme.

I was pleased with the first session and I hope that I can continue to impress Steve, and continue to train hard, even enduring the pain from the Bridges during the week.

I’ll keep you informed of our progress

Chris Morton