da cassino： The end of a very frustrating week
Stephen Fleming04-Jul-2001The end of a very frustrating week. The little finger that I dislocatedlast week didn’t improve enough for me to play this week’s championship matchagainst Sussex.I was confident of playing this match and warmed upaccordingly. I was nervous about fielding and knew I would probably have torelinquish my beloved first slip position.I haven’t been catching that well this summer, spilling several that I wouldnormally get. A lot of it is concentration and it’s something I’ve workedvery hard on controlling, especially when I’m captain of a side.Without theleadership pressures my concentration is not as intense, it is something Iwill be working on as I hate nothing more than dropping a catch.Anyway, I didn’t have to worry about where I was going to field as I didn’tmake it through the net session. The jarring from ball on bat was enough totell me I wouldn’t be able to function well enough to play the next fourdays.Once that decision is made it’s a case of sitting down and mapping out thenext four days.The first thing is treatment, the second thing is fitness,then comes skill work (if possible) and finally the category of ‘other’.Inthis slot I quickly penciled in ‘Rugby’ NZ v France and The Lions v Australia. Both turned out to be great games but I especially enjoyedGraham Henry’s interview after the match. He was obviously delighted, butwas so focused on, ‘keeping everybody’s feet on the ground’, in particular theEnglish media. They will always love a winner and also love a loser as theycan then give it both barrels.Seeing Graham Henry reminded me of an event two years ago during the World Cupwhen we were playing Australia in Cardiff.The game had been going forabout 10 overs when all of a sudden the crowd on one side of the groundstarted going mental for no particular reason, cricket wise that is. Theythen started chanting “Henry, Henry, Henry” and we watched in amazement asGraham walked past the crowd to his seats, which were up by the players’area. He is very good friends with John Graham our manager at the time, sowe were privileged to have his company at the end of the game.But the thing we took away from this day was two points from the win but alsoan insight into the passion of the Welsh rugby. You can imagine the feelingover here after Saturday’s win. The optimism shown towards the Lions is notbeing shared with the English cricket side who play the first Ashes Test thisweek. Australia have had great preparations and even named their side threedays early, continuing to send strong messages to their opposition.There will be huge interest in this series and I look forward to sharingsome of my observations with my Kiwi team mates in a couple of weeks time.They will be at present trying to keep warm as the heating at the Academy inLincoln struggles to cope with -5 degree frosts. Nothing like a frosty unitto warm you up boys!!!