A life in a day of Cricketer Dillon Pennington

Born in Shrewsbury, Dillon Pennington, 20, plays professional Cricket for Worcestershire County while studying a Sports degree at Worcester University. He started playing from a young age and now he travels to train and play games across the globe. He lives with Adam Finch, who plays for the Worcestershire Academy Squad. He spends most of his free time with family or girlfriend, Eleanor as well as going out with friends from University. The all-rounder has played for England in the under 19’s World Cup and trains continually throughout the year.

I get up at 6.30 on a normal training day. At the moment I have training five days a week, so Monday to Friday is pretty full on. I’m definitely a morning person. You have to be when you start so early. We have an off month which was in October this year. You don’t get much more time off as we have to train ready for the pre-season in March. Going back to getting up early and going to the gym was a bit hard but you have to get back into it. The first person I speak to is usually Eleanor – I’ll message her before I eat breakfast. Breakfast is something high in carbs. It’ll be oats or something like that. Or I’ll go the other way and eat food high in protein, like scrambled eggs. Then I head out for training at 7:30 for an 8am start.

I prep for the session whether it be power, strength or stretching. I was lucky that I went to a school that played a lot of cricket, so I started training from a young age. I started playing for my local county, which was Shropshire, for under 11’s and then Worcestershire picked me out from there. I usually finish the first session at 9 and I’ll eat breakfast. Again. I’m still working on my cooking – it’s all kind of new to me. It’s hard to get into a routine of cooking when I go away to train sometimes. I have trained in Spain and South Africa and then played in the under 19’s World Cup in New Zealand too. Next March I will be going to Dubai to train.

The day continues 20 minutes down the road for Cricket training. Each player has a specific regime. I bowl for half an hour and then bat for half an hour. I actually got into cricket because of my dad. He loved cricket and played for a minor county. I think he should have played a bit higher as he’s probably better than me. After cricket practice we go for lunch. This is basically eat as many carbs or anything that’s going to source you energy for the afternoon as you can. During pre-season we have a skinfold test, which measures body fat. The club set a certain level that they want you to achieve and if you don’t reach the specific level, you have to go to fat club. Luckily, I’ve never been part of fat club, obviously you’re not fat, it’s just what we call it.

In the afternoon I do a gym session. I’ll either do a double session which means that if I did an arm session in the morning then I’d do another arm session but a different part. Or I do legs in the afternoon, so it’s just training different parts of your body. It’s quite intense on your body, but you get used to it. There’s a lot of pressure playing professionally so young but counties now a days try and contract younger people so there’s people my age around, this kinda lowers the pressure. Counties will take a risk on people like myself and then hopefully they benefit the county in a few years. It’s a gradual process and you go through different stages. I have learnt from the best though. Moeen Ali, who plays for England as well as Worcestershire, is great to learn from. He was my favourite cricketer growing up so now playing with him is so weird. He’s such a chilled out man, a pleasure to play with.

I finish training for the day at 4. To relax, I go to the gym and use the sauna and hot tub. The Cricket club have a membership there, so I go to recover from the day. Lots from the club use the facilities. Most of my uni friends are from cricket because I’m part of the cricket society, even though I don’t play cricket for them. You’re not really supposed to play for more than one team. It’s quite different with friends from home. I have no school friends that played cricket, in fact they were completely the opposite and didn’t like cricket. Which was good because you don’t have to speak about cricket all the time and do cricket all the time and because they didn’t like it, we never spoke about it.

Once I get home, I eat a lot of food. Then I relax and shut off. Well in my case at the moment, I am usually writing essays. I’m doing a full degree, but I’m just doing it part time. Basically, a year will take me two years. I’ve done one year and I’m doing my second year at the moment and then I’ll complete it next year. I think I’ve been relaxing too much at weekends though as I haven’t done any uni work. I’m struggling with it because I’m getting back from training and then doing the work. I am trying to balance it.

Sometimes it can be quite difficult to try and balance everything though. Trying to stop on top of essays as well as training five times a week can be hard going. I try to spend time with family and Eleanor too. They’re all really supportive and come along to games. There are some things I can’t do such as extreme sports like skiing, ice-skating, things like that. Playing professional cricket and going to uni is a bit of a weird experience. I’ve met Kane Williamson who is a New Zealand batter as well as Dale Steyn who is one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time. It’s all quite surreal when I think about it. They were such friendly people.

I like to go out too, everyone says in professional sport that you’ve got to shut off and do your own thing and if that’s clubbing then I’ll do it. I’m still at uni so Cricket doesn’t stop me from drinking and going out to enjoy myself. On training days I’ll go to bed about 10.30pm to make sure I’ve had enough sleep ready for the next day. I try to shut off and relax before I go to sleep. I’m quite a laid back guy anyway so this isn’t too difficult.