By Matthew Fisher
With my injury situation, I unfortunately won’t get the chance to share a dressing room with Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root over the next couple of weeks. But I’ve been around them at training this week, and it’s been brilliant.
It’s good for everybody in the squad to see how they go about things, and I feel like I’m someone who really takes it in when they’re there.
The biggest thing for me is the intensity with which they train, whether it be little warm-up drills, fielding or batting. They do it all at 100 percent.
They might not do lots of it, but everything is done to a good standard and flat out.
If you train like that, you will improve every single day.
That, to me, shows why they are the best players.
You can learn about the ins and outs of the game, which I feel I’m fairly good at. That means I don’t necessarily need to chat to them a great deal and pick their brains. I can just watch them go about their business and pick things up that way.
For others, it may be far more beneficial to chat and ask lots of questions.
The fundamentals you need to take into practice are purpose, honesty and intensity.
Honesty comes from looking at every ball and thinking ‘can I have played that better?’
That’s what the great players do. They can always be better.
With Rooty and Jonny, they’ll still be looking at parts of their game where they can improve even if they’ve got a hundred.
There might have been something as small as a five-ball period where they didn’t get it right.
At the end of the day, they are perfectionists.
I feel like I have that in my game, but it’s about showing it in games.
Batting is something I’m working very hard on, and even just watching them and hearing the noise the ball makes when it comes off their bat helps with your own game.
Batting is massively important because it can be the difference between getting in a team and not. If you can bat and the guy next to you who they’re thinking of picking can’t, it’s a no brainer.
Look at the England team at the minute, every single player can bat.
Each aspect of your game helps the other as well. There’s no doubt about that.
If you go out and don’t bat so well, at least you have your bowling. If you go out and bat well, it can help boost your bowling. And vice versa.
With that in mind, it’s important I get plenty of time in the middle, and it looks like I’ll playing for Sheriff Hutton Bridge away at Clifton Alliance this weekend.
I was hoping to play last weekend and had ticked everything off. But it was just a bit too soon.
It was just before the three-week mark since my side injury, which is what we had pencilled in to come back as a batsman. We didn’t want to risk it just for an extra week of club cricket.
It was the right decision because I’m now fully confident of being able to play.
Hopefully then I’ll be able to play in the three-day game for the seconds next week. I’m obviously not ready to bowl yet.
Bridge had a good win on Saturday against Woodhouse Grange. The standard was brilliant. I went down, and it was a really good game.
My brother, Mark, did well. He got 70-odd and three-for.
It puts a bit of pressure on me for Saturday!
I’d hope we get a decent pitch that comes on a bit more, though. Because of the weather, they’re a bit like puddings at the minute.
We’ve got a really good team this year.
Karl Carver plays quite a lot, and we were missing my brother Adam, who is working away for the next four weeks, and myself. We’ve also got the new overseas coming in later this week from Sri Lanka. We don’t know too much about him, but we’re hoping he’ll be alright.
Even without the lads I’ve just mentioned, we still beat a good Woodhouse team.
We had Sam Rainbird as our overseas last year, and he was a legend – an absolute beauty.
In fact, he plays for Hobart Hurricanes as well as Tasmania, and he sent myself, my brothers and my cousin four Hurricanes shirts in the post the other day.
We’re all choosing which top we want. He sent a playing shirt, polo shirt and training shirts, and I think it’s going to be rock paper scissors for the best one!
Going back to Yorkshire matters, and Jonny and Rooty will play in the next two matches against Essex and Surrey, and it’s clear they’re desperate to be a part of two wins.
They may be preparing for the international summer ahead, but they’re Yorkshire through and through.
To have them against the champions is great.
Jamie Porter and Simon Harmer are big threats for Essex along with Peter Siddle. On paper, it’s probably the best bowling attack in the country at present.
But I’d back our batting line-up, and I’d hope they’ll be more worried about our batting than we are about their bowling given it’s going to be Lyth, Pujara, Ballance, Root and Bairstow. It’s not every day you see that strength in the Championship.
I haven’t chatted to the lads about the Somerset defeat, but it sounds like our first-innings batting let us down. That’s what Andrew Gale said in interviews.
But it’s one game, and I think we’ll keep our belief.
Fingers crossed, we bounce back pretty quickly and we’re chatting about a win in next week’s column.
