Seriously proud of Matt

I am seriously proud of little Matt tonight; I took him to the other side of town to sign up for the Milo In2Cricket program which starts here in Cairns in a few weeks.

We got there early to the sign on and they were setting up a bowing machine and the tables for kids to sign up, Matt was playing on the swing and climbing gym in the park.  While on the swing, he was watching the bowling machine and wanted to go over, but I told him that it was still 15 minutes till the sign on started.  He wanted to go and watch anyway, so we went over.

The guy setting up the bowling machine asked if he wanted to have a hit and Matt couldn’t wait to get into the net.

He faced 3 balls from the bowling machine and all 3 bounced without him getting bat to ball, so they decided to underarm them to him.  He missed the first one and then the second one he got in behind but took his eyes off the ball and got hit just under the eye.  He was startled and the bottom lip started to quiver from the shock of getting hit in the face but of his own accord, he moved back and faced up again.  I expected him to want to get out; but he didn’t, considering that he is only 5 and has never been in a net, faced up to a bowling machine or had a ball come down at him with a rogue bounce, it took a lot of guts to do that.

The next 3 balls, he connected with all of them and middled one right in the sweet spot of the bat resulting in a really nice pull shot.

After he came out I asked him if he was alright and if he still wanted to sign up, to which he emphatically replied yes, so we went over to the table and signed him up.  So in the next week or so, he should get his In2Cricket kit comprising of a hat, shirt, bat, ball and bag.

He’s already if we can go play cricket again tomorrow so I promised to take him to a field where we can take a bat and ball; looks like I’ve unleashed a monster