By John Ashdown/The Guardian

In the distance the bowler stands at the end of his run, barely within shouting distance. The batsman shuffles his feet in nervous expectation - the sense is that pretty much anything could happen from this point.  There are, however, three certainties: one is that the bowler, whether eight or 80, is imbued with a wild-eyed fervour and will attempt to send down a delivery at ferocious speed. The second is that the batsman, again regardless of age or ability, is going to attempt to smash the ball into next week with an ugly flat-batted swipe.
In fact, the bowler is not just going to attempt it - there is a certain part of their brain convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they are the bionic child of Statham and Shoaib. Nor is the batsman anything other than certain of his or her capacity to launch whatever is offered into the stratosphere. And why would they be, chirrups some small corner of the subconscious, when they have been momentarily and miraculously possessed by the spirits of De Villiers and Richards. This truly is a monumental battle between bat and ball.
Then the third and final certainty. The bowler will indeed bowl an unhittable delivery but this will be because it arrives at the batsman at the third bounce. Or arrives several yards over his or her head. Or arrives at a perfectly reasonable height but not really in the same postcode. Or doesn’t arrive at all. The batsman will, regardless of the delivery’s trajectory, swing in a fashion so agricultural as to be worthy of an EU farming subsidy but will miss by anything up to six feet. The delivery will zip - or, more likely, trundle with all the zip of an asthmatic gerbil - through the netting that should be acting as a wicketkeeper. And the bulk of the next half hour will be taken up in forlorn search of the ball in the various brambles and nettles behind the pavilion.
This is the beauty and the curse of the occasional net. In this technological era of Hawk-Eye, Snicko and Hot Spot, there’s something reassuring about the fact that the primary practice tool for cricketers remains a few square metres of netting and frame from which to hang it, even if, for many of us, the relationship with this stalwart of the game is something of a love-hate affair.
The love comes from their simplicity, their convenience and their magical alchemic quality. Perhaps because they offer the freedom to experiment, nets have an irresistible knack of, just for a moment, transforming you into the player of your choosing. The illusion will be shattered almost as quickly as it forms but it forms nevertheless - anyone who has ever bowled in a net has also spent several thankless minutes trying to retrieve an attempted leg-spinner from its roof (I like to imagine whoever services the bowling machines at indoor centres sometimes arrives in the morning to find the odd ball mysteriously dangling from the ceiling netting, even the machine unable to resist the temptation to channel its inner Warne).
The hate? Where to start? They have improved immeasurably over the years but the surfaces of outdoor nets available to all were not always the comfy, carpeted affairs you see more and more of today. The net at the ground where I played my first games was a thing of terror - an inch-thick rug of rubber laid across a slab of concrete behind what passed for the pavilion. Anyone with even a modicum of pace could land the ball not far short of a length and send it trampolining past the batsmen at nose height. This was both uncomfortable for the batsman - who would rarely be wearing a box, never mind a helmet - and unhelpful for a bowler who, drunk on net bowling that made him feel like Malcolm Marshall, would look to bowl similarly vicious lengths during matches and find the ball sitting up to be smashed, the illusion of pace sucked away by a soggy Derbyshire featherbed.
Another option was the linoleum-like strip of plastic of the sort that often also acted as the de facto square on public grounds, the bounce-destroying qualities of which must still be baffling ballistic scientists today. Even a dead cat bounces but that hated stuff would suck the spring out of an army of deceased moggies. That is, of course, unless it had been laid in such a way - as it almost always had been - to allow water to seep underneath and create little ridges and bubbles in the surface. Over after over of pea roller could be followed by a groin-bothering delivery that spat from the right spot.
The surface is one problem; the netting itself another. Watch an indoor net session at any county HQ and you’ll see a driven ball disappearing into the pillowy embrace of the net wall, the giant billowing curtains absorbing the sting, the ball gently cupped and fondled until its fury has been soothed away. Alternatively, in the more rustic nets to be found creaking and overgrown in the corners of fields strewn about the world, you’ll find the occasional metal pole positioned just so, in order to reward the exact same cover drive by pinging the ball back at the batsman at frightening speed.
But far from fading away in the modern era, you could make a case for nets being as important as ever at the top of the game. With international players playing less county cricket, the net session has a renewed value. Though there was a time when net sessions were an almost political issue with the England team. The position of Organiser of Net Sessions was once a genuine issue on tours - for example, Mike Denness offered the job as something of an olive branch to Geoff Boycott for the West Indies tour in 1974 after the Yorkshireman had been overlooked for the captaincy. Boycott refused because (in his words): My personal standards are high as far as practice is concerned, far too demanding for most cricketers and I knew I would end up in rows and frustration.”
At the other end of the scale, though, they remain the most accessible entry point to the game, for kids, casuals and the committed. Over the winter, the plucky part-timers will hope for the odd bright morning for a chilly - and often a bit boggy - outdoor session. The serious will have headed indoors for sessions warmed by central heating. And as sure as Punxsutawney Phil pokes his head out of his burrow, at some point in early spring the first emails entitled “NETS, THIS THURSDAY” will head out to club players across the land.
They’re part of the furniture. So let’s take a moment to pay homage to the cricket nets. They are a thing of brilliance and beauty. And, on occasion, of more than a little terror.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I personally feel that I used too much brain in this format” - MS Dhoni tries to explain India’s poor performances after South Africa took an unassailable 2-0 lead in the T20 series in India. The second T20 match was twice delayed by crowd trouble in Cuttack on Monday .