{"id":442123,"date":"2026-01-28T04:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T04:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/442123\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T04:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T04:12:15","slug":"grace-ballinger-column-winter-pre-season-at-trent-bridge-with-seam-bowler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/442123\/","title":{"rendered":"Grace Ballinger column: Winter pre-season at Trent Bridge with seam bowler"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Whilst cricket is a team sport, it is unique in having isolated skills and roles. Team dynamic is key, but not as integral as in football, for example.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Some team-mates will go months without seeing or working with each other. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Whilst some are in England, some are operating on the other side of the world in a completely different time zone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">You may not cross paths until a couple of weeks before the season begins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But there is sunlight at the end of the tunnel. Many sides end their long winter grind with a pre-season tour to get some much anticipated game time in. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">These tours are usually in March, to warmer climates such as the United Arab Emirates, South Africa or India.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tours allow for time on grass to implement the skills you have (hopefully) gained over the winter period.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They allow teams to try different players in different roles, and perfect your first starting XI ready for April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For now, with the weeks filled with early morning conditioning sessions and fielding in winter gloves, time on grass in warmer temperatures certainly feels far away. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whilst cricket is a team sport, it is unique in having isolated skills and roles. Team dynamic is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-442123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}