Scotland international Jack Jarvis is spending the winter in Brisbane, Australia, continuing his cricket development with Redlands Tigers.
The 20-year-old all-rounder will be detailing his experiences down under throughout the winter on cricketscotland.com:
Last weekend I lost my first game with Redlands which was frustrating, but I guess to get to the middle of November before losing for the first time isn’t too bad!
We posted 275 in our innings, which we felt was a decent enough total, but they chased it down six wickets down before batting on to about 350 and declared, and we then finished on 100-3.
It wasn’t our best performance, but no one seems too down about it, we’ve trained well this week, and we’re looking forward to bouncing back this weekend at home against Sunshine Coast.
One thing that’s different playing in a new environment is I don’t know that much about the players I’m coming up against, whereas in Scotland now I know most of the players we play each week, so you get an idea of their strengths and weaknesses.
It’s been more of a learning process here, speaking to the guys who’ve played a lot of cricket against the same players, and just trying to soak in the knowledge so that I can get an understanding of what I’m wanting to execute.
In terms of developing my bowling, I’ve been working on my alignment at the crease and strengthening my action whilst I’m out here.
The aim is to bowl quicker, whilst maintaining my skills, so there’s a lot of physical work that goes into that, as well as working through various bowling drills that I’ve been given.
When I’m not playing cricket, a lot of my time is spent on my university work, as I’ve got two assignment deadlines coming up in the next couple of weeks.
The course is great because I’m able to draw on a lot of my experiences from cricket to aid my work, whilst I can also then apply a lot of what I’ve learned to life outside of cricket.
One of the modules is focused on professional development, so that is focused on future careers, and what someone can do after cricket, such as coaching, business administration etc.
The fact I can learn about the business side of sport whilst I’m involved in cricket is great, and hopefully that will help me out further down the line, but it’s not something I want to worry about too much for a while!
I’m currently doing Movember alongside a few of the other players from Grange. Finlay McCreath and James Dickinson are running 70km on Saturday to raise money, so we decided we’d do Movember and donate to their run, to support their efforts!
My effort’s not going too well, as you can see!
