Gary Ballance Blog: Interesting opener including a Test maiden

Here I am having a bowl ©Sky Sports Twitter.

I didn’t think my blog after the first Test would be based on bowling for my country but that just headlines what a strange Test Match it was at Trent Bridge.

The game was going nowhere on the last day so Cooky gave himself a bowl then I got encouraged to give it a go and I was pretty nervous about it to be honest but it came out alright. It was a bit slow but it was nice to get an over in and it was a Test maiden so I’ll take that!

After seeing Cooky’s first over that made me feel a little better because it couldn’t have gone much worse than that! To be fair to him he got a wicket in the end but I was quite chuffed I had the opportunity to have a bowl and you never know I may get a few overs in further down the line.

I don’t really bowl at all in practice, I do a little bit in the nets up at Yorkshire but when I’m with England I just focus on my batting to try and get that right. I might start to work on it a bit more from now on in the nets and see what happens.

It is nice to have another option but my batting is the more important thing for me. When I get chance in the nets from now on I’ll definitely have a little bowl though.

It was an interesting game, we bowled well in the first innings but they still got a good score. Then we got off to a really good start until we had a really bad session but we fought well with that partnership with Jimmy and Rooty which was unbelievable to watch.

Then the bowlers came and did well to give us a chance of winning. Overall we are proud of our efforts on that pitch and hopefully we can take that confidence into this game.

It was an interesting game away from the middle too because when you’re in the field for long time you get to sign some interesting things but it is all good fun. At one stage I was even signing a pink princess cup for a fully grown man! The crowd was fantastic up in Nottingham and a good laugh so hopefully it’s similar again this week.

Now we’re back at Lord’s and it’s great to be here again, especially with this weather. It’s an exciting feeling after what happened here last time so hopefully I can take that past experience and use it to some good in this game.

It felt great to go into the home changing room and see the honours board but I had actually seen it before because somebody sent me a video of it being done (I’ve posted that video on my Facebook page and you can watch here). Hopefully I can get up there again in this game.

Another strange thing happened this week, I found out that I am the only England Test Match player to be called Gary in the history of the game which is pretty remarkable! It’s interesting but Gary is clearly not a common name but it’s a great stat!