I did have a chuckle or two at the recent net critiques of Messieurs Bones and Downing. An inimitable double act whether intended or not, I think there may well have been a couple of points clearly missed by my esteemed colleagues.

Firstly, unless a possible catch is an absolute gift which would entail the bowler suffering no ill effects, it would seem most foolhardy to attempt to catch a ball driven fiercely by the batsman. Speaking as someone who knows what it’s like to severely injure my hand on several occasions (Hyper-extended thumb, broken hand, bent bone in hand, loss of top of finger and dislocated finger with the bone breaking the skin, all but one due to sport), I would not recommend any motion toward the ball in what is effectively a no-win situation.

Fielding practice is no place for the indoor nets but is indeed an area to work on outside. Therefore I think Bones should maybe veer from the hard line and allow the bowlers the grace of mincing out of the way. To be honest, if you can’t catch a ball at the age of 30+, having a solid object fired at you at 80 miles an hour is no place to start. There will be nothing to gain should the bowler catch the ball in the nets. The batsman will not be out, the Pinks will not win the game and Eva Longoria won’t be there to kiss the stinging hand any better. A small amount of machismo may well be present in such an event but in a sport where dislocated and broken fingers are commonplace, I’m going to echo the words of my fallen brothers Zammo McGuire and Roland Browning and “Just Say No.”

Moreover, I think Jim has defected to the ranks of batsmen, shunning his former colleagues and their bowling requisites. If we are to bowl balls constantly mindful of the batsman’s shot selection, we would do no more than a slow, straight ball outside of off stump. This is a net for batsmen and bowlers and I like nothing more than to try to vary the bowling for my benefit. Therefore when I saw Kiwi Graham absolutely smash all and sundry, my aim was to bang them in short and stop him swinging the bat. I appreciate the right honourable’s need to cut out bad balls from the nets but I’m sure nobody actually tries to bowl a wide.

My aim, as I’m positive is the aim for all us full tossers, is to get the batsman out with every ball, whether it be by hitting the stumps, forcing a nick or unnerving them with a short ball. The experience we glean here will be taken out into the field and thus any dumbing down is detrimental to both batsmen and bowlers. The opposition are not going to bowl easy balls so moderating the attack in practice simply cheapens the strokes performed by the recipients of these balls.

I can just imagine Geoff Boycott shouting at his peers, “Any chance of bowling underarm for a while?” followed by a barrage of expletives…