Yea that and GI Joe's saying that "The team builds it's game plan from the roles of it's players"
Every team I've played for has held next to no weight to what the player says about themselves. We watch them play, give them a role accordingly. I described myself as a player who can do a bit of both but ended up playing as a pure bowler/fielder who batted at 10/11 because thats how I fit into the side.
From my experience, when a new guys shows up for nets he always bats last. Everyone bowls while one or two guys bat, so new guy gets to bowl right away. We always have the first XI guys bat first in roughly batting order, followed by the reserve players. So if the new guy is rubbish at bowling and/or insists he's more of a batsman, he'll get pushed up to bat ahead of the other fringe guys, as soon as the first XI is done. If he's **** at that too, he's taken out quickly.
But yea I suppose other sides will do things differently. But I don't think describing yourself as someone who does a bit of both is necessarily a bad thing.
Normally I would just acknowledge your post with by liking it, as it is a good one, and then move back to the book I am reading, but as it is a slow night and my book is yet to hit its straps so I will respond.
Club cricket is quite hard - and batting is actually quite difficult. Don't be fooled by Michael Clarke making batting look easy when he scores a triple century. It is very difficult to get a fifty and some of my team mates have never scored one in their lives. In my humble opinion, in club cricket you need to be a specialist batsman to be good enough to get a good score, anyone who is just handy with the bat will probably average about 9 or 10 for the season if they are lucky. We keep an honours board for our team and you go up on it if you get a 50. About 7-8 guys will go up on each year. We have never in 7 years had anyone below the number 7 spot in our batting line up make the honours board and the number 7 has only made it once.
Now maybe this is Aotearoa conditions where the ball seams around like hell, and every week it is a green top. But team scores of 200 are considered a good effort in
lower grade Wellington cricket.
Look obviously if you say "I do a bit of both" and then turn out to be as good as Corey Anderson when we look at you in the nets then we will let you open the batting and bowling. So yes how you look in the nets is far far more important than any words you can say. So thank you for making that point because I didn't point that out to be fair.
But if you have hopes of batting up the order or opening the bowling or even bowling first change you will get yourself off on the right foot if you manage the first phone call well.
We once had a player called TK join our team. He said he was a bit of an all rounder and said he batted around 6 or 7 in the batting order and could bowl a bit too. I rolled my eyes and thought ok here we go again. Then I was shocked when he had his net. He actually played a proper forward defence to the first ball he faced. And I thought wow he really is a number 6 or 7 batsman. Then he played a couple of cover drives out of the middle of the bat. His bowling looked handy but nothing to write home about but he looked like a major discovery. We had a chat about him and discussed where to play him and because he had said number 6 or 7 and because we already had a set top order we slotted him in at number 6.
He batted just ok for us for years, got an 80 once, but admitted he really wanted to bat at number 3 or 4 to me once because our top order took forever to get out and he didn't get much of a turn at number 6.
He never got his break up the order and he doesn't play for us anymore due to work commitments. He really should have been an opening batsman looking back on it. But that's not how he positioned himself.
I won't do an Aesops Fables on you and draw a moral from that story - but all of the above in this post makes me think how you introduce yourself is a factor even if, yes, only a small one.