Engineers vs Architects – it’s just not cricket

I am forever bored of engineer vs architect debates.  They are just not cricket.  That is unless they are about cricket.  Tomorrow I will make my cricketing debut with Expedition Engineering (www.expedition-engineering.com), the company with which I am in the middle of a four week placement.  We will be playing against a team from Wilkinson Eyre architects (who were the architects on the Gateshead Millenium Bridge www.wilkinsoneyre.com). 

This will be Expedition’s third match of the season.  Last night the team went down to the cricket nets at Paddington Rec.  The great thing about cricket nets are that they funnel the ball towards the wicket.  Given my bowling looks more akin to a throw one might use when lobbing a grenade (a technique I picked up during my extensive army training) – that is, up and over and not long and straight – I was grateful to the nets for guiding my ball towards the wicket.  As the session wore on however, I found I no-longer needed the nets, and the ball found its way close to the wicket of its own accord.  I say close becuase I never actually hit the wicket.  The batsman always gets in the way.

 Then it was time to bat.  A cricket ball is undeniably hard.  A ball deflected from my bat hit the roof frame and landed hard on my head – the noise was not unlike a walnut being cracked open.   I use a defensive stroke.  That is, if the ball is coming anywhere near me I intend to wallop it to minimise the chances of it hitting me.  If I can however, I just prefer to jump out of the way.  The problem is that this in turn leaves my wickets wide open.  I intend therefore to use a combination of the two techinques tomorrow.  I will jump out of the way while vaguely leave the bat infront of the wicket in the hope that it might protect my bales, so to speak.

 I have to say that my technique is not in line with the rest of the team.  It is a fifteen over match and we are gunning for a score of 100.  (Since I currently have no readers on this blog, I am confident that I am not giving away our tactics to the Architects!)  Work will be on the back-burner today.  Strategies needed to be plotted, and maybe even plotted out using AutoCad.

Stay tuned to find the latest.  Unfortunately, this blog won’t allow me to provide readers with a constantly updating score board for your computers.  Sorry about that.