From Dexter to Sinister

It was rather a shock when I saw the look in my consultant’s eyes. The fact was that he really seemed to be looking forward to getting me on the slab. He insisted on explaining how it used to be done in quite graphic detail, only to assure me that keyhole surgery was far, far better. Still, a type 6 slap lesion, encompassing 360° of my left shoulder, sounds quite bad. And so it is. Hence his unalloyed joy – it’s an opportunity for him to show just how good he is. This pleaseth me as it means he’ll do exactly that. In a youth, this would lead to fear, as they’d overplay their hand, but I suspect this will not be the case in this instance. I’m confident a great job will be done.

Such an injury (sustained in a ju-jitsu training session where instinct took over from training) takes a lot of recovery time. Four to six weeks with my left arm in a sling. Ouch. Life is going to be rather hard. Then three months of rehab before I can do any real training. Ouch once more. That means I’ll be trying to regain the strength on my left arm as the season starts. Ah. That’ll be awkward.

But lo! A solution presents itself.

For the past two years I have been suffering with a lack of control of my bat because the top hand, the left hand when batting right-handed, controls the bat. The PD means that the grip in my left hand is gradually but markedly weakening. I lose control of the bat.

Well, fuck it, say I, I’ll bat left-handed. I’ll change my entire batting style. This, I immediately perceive, will have three benefits:

  1. My top hand will be my right hand, a hand holding onto the manly grip needed to use my monstrous beast (of a bat)
  2. It’ll really piss the bowlers off.
  3. I will be able to learn from scratch – proper technique from the get-go.
  4. Finally, number four is simple – I’ll have an awesome switch-hit.

This is the difference:

It’s bloody hard. This will detail my trials and tribulations.