coaching

#3millionstories

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a sportsman all my life – a sportsman, not a salesman. So it doesn’t come naturally for me to Big Up what I do for a living, which is coach cricket (to children, mainly, for Cricket Wales). But I’m about to make an exception.

And this is not about me. It’s about the thing we do, which is simply offering a game.
In Wales there are about a dozen of us Community Coaches going into Primary Schools to deliver cricket sessions. In our case we’re sponsored by Cricket Wales, Sport Wales and @Chance2Shine – the cricket charity. We’re trained to go in and put a smile on children’s faces, show them the game, get them moving. But there’s more.

Would you believe we’re also hoping to make children better listeners, to stimulate numeracy and develop social skills? And guess what? We think about lighting up every single child with a few words of encouragement – we get right in there amongst those bobbing and weaving faces and aim to make them feel listened to – heard.

Does it sound a bit pretentious if I say that we try to offer both a kind of release and a way in to academic work for children that we coach? That in offering opportunities to devise games we’re looking to delve into really quite complex issues around
‘What works for everybody… and maybe not just me?’

We’re trying to do all that. We’re trying to inquire into levels of understanding and generosity and difficulty. Get this: I often think half of what I do is about coaching the sharing of the bat; because everybody wants to bat, right?

This all sounds a bit ‘dry’ maybe. Like we coaches are obsessing a bit about Physical Literacy Frameworks or some or other ‘target’. We’re not. I’m pret-ty confident the kids in our sessions are too busy running or hitting or catching or building something to feel like they’re in some academic exercise. They’re not.

Instead, they’re expressing their talents. They’re having a laugh – they’re thinking. In the end, they’re unfurling their stories – some a little clunkily, some with that magical, uncomplicated joy that sport can unleash. We’re just there to help.

So because I see this stuff – these revelations – every day, I can do the sales pitch thing. I can look you or anyone in the eye and say ‘Yup, I’m happy to be making the case for cricket. Because I know people – young and older – are being transformed by it, every day.’

@Chance2Shine are Bigging Up the fact that three million children have now been through sessions with their coaches – with me and my mates. @Chance2Shine know that with every child there’s been impact; something learned or shared or maybe some giant leap forward made. Opportunities to build games, build confidence or take wickets/hit runs! They know that there really are wonderful stories here so they’ve adopted the #3millionstories hashtag, to share all this around.

I’m happy and proud to share it too.

#3millionstories.

It’s got to feel like you.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

There are no constants. Everything is mitigated by circumstance or context. For all our efforts to gather in meaning or truth, glorious, nose-thumbing reality intervenes. On the one hand to remind us we’re only human – only individual – and on the other to deflate our pomp. In life and in sport.

So (for example!) we’ve recalibrated our cricket coaching; we speak of Core Principles rather than Technical Models. We question and we question to unfurl answers, decisions, ownership from within the player. We throttle back our opinion, our ego, our instinct to contradict, in order to facilitate. We’ve become model humans; wise, generous, liberal, humble. In theory.

In practice we moan and bitch and pull our hair out at the sheer incompetence just like always. But we keep a lid on the bollockings – mostly, probably. We rant about the ECB coming over all generic and politically correct and ‘forgetting’ that cricket IS unique. Its complexities. Its predication upon repeatable skills, skills which must deny the encroaching possibilities, the errors which will be punished. We coaches battle with or against this need to prescribe for excellence and the higher impulses towards player-centredness.

It’s not easy but it’s fabulous. In the sense that a) it’s magnificently challenging b) it’s fun c) it’s perversely right to shoot for individual brilliance over theoretical alignment. Coaching cricket is absolutely wonderful because… it makes you wonder about stuff. Not least this balancing of how much freedom to offer, when you may know that discipline (possibly of the technical variety) will, pound for pound, probably enable greater success than (say) allowing Player X to continue to ‘play by instinct’. Maybe.

An example of this gorgeous conundrum might be as follows: young(?) Player Z has an extraordinary eye and a capacity to take the game away from the opposition with the bat. Because he or she swings freely and quite simply generally connects – beautifully. However, you have observed both in practice and in matches the tendency for the front foot ‘clearing’ to (either) draw the head inside the line of the ball early and/or affect balance. Meaning mistimed strokes or miscues and trouble.

The issue is compound. Coach should probably say something (but is this re philosophy or technique?)

Wrong to be the style-cramping miserablist but also wrong to leave innocence un-warned, unadvised. Few would now row entirely against the tide for dynamic/counter-attacking batting but in my experience few coaches would be content to keep schtumm when they can see that some of the risk might be mitigated by a few words around form or base or head.

One model might be to ask the player questions about the implications of being less than balanced (even) when playing aggressively. Then bring out the sub-Churchillian stuff. Make clear that it’s the player’s moment; they choose, they act. We can theorise all day about agility, belief and commitment but in the moment the player must be the expressor of all that. Which brings me back to my title.

Another, more personal example. I was a decent bowler; like the rest of the universe I was told aged twelve I should look to be playing First Class Cricket but a zillion things intervened, including my lack of that kind of ability. But I could bowl quickish and I could also bowl quickish leg-cutters by doing something weirdly akin to the back-of-the-hand thing even when bowling swiftly. Nobody taught me; I found this weapon. I loved finding things, especially on those very rare occasions when I had a proper cricket ball in my hands – a brand new cherry, incidentally, was completely unheard of.

I grew up on the fringes of the game rather than right in it so this may mean I had less exposure to coaching. But the facts that I went to a relatively humongous state school and that coaching barely existed back then also weigh in here. However they do not alter the feeling that my love of bowling results mainly from faffing about; running in and trying things with my mates. Bowling, in fact; in our case at a block of wood in a disheveled net on the British Legion field down the road.

I labour these points because it strikes me there is no substitute for at least some ‘free practice’ and because more importantly I’m clear that only I knew how this particular delivery really felt. It was my process. This is not to say that it couldn’t later be broken down and ‘understood’ by others skilled in coaching or analysis; it surely could. But inevitably it remains unique. Which is surely part of the magic? Stay with me.

I have a concern that pace bowlers (maybe in particular?) are sometimes ill-served by coaches who want to direct them towards their understanding of best practice. (In other words, change their action). This may be the result of over-zealousness or quite frequently because these coaches feel the breath of other, more senior voices around them. You legitimise yourself, you puff out your chest and say something you imagine sounds powerful – authoritative.

God it’s tempting at my amateur level to tell a bowler all you know about bowling when his dad (who played for Glamorgan) or another coach is edging into earshot. Instead all parties might be better served if a few friendly questions are asked, leading the player towards two or three (not 42 or 43!) checkpoints for when they’re bowling. Two or three things to return to before clearing the mind, concentrating on the stumps and running in freely – like a kid on the field with his mates.

There’s no wider agenda here. I’m not alluding to alleged failings at Loughborough or revisiting Finngate. I don’t know the circumstances or the relevant individuals. However I am chipping into the debate because I’m a bowler and a coach and I recognise acutely some of the issues. To plunge again into the general, I would be very loath to change the action of a bowler significantly unless it was absolutely nailed on that injury had been the direct result of that action. Instead, mostly, I would be saying this to the seamer(s) in my charge –

Hey mate you know what things keep you in order – what your checks are. So focus on them. Then calm yourself, run in with energy, follow through.

I’m happy enough with that. I have on board the (compound) idea that yes we should be offering Core Principles and – reference those batting skills – yes we can rightly encourage positivity whilst (also) playing the match situation. But ultimately, ultimately…

It’s got to feel like you.

There’s a welcome.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 4 Comments

Last night I was buzzing. I’m going to bore you with it – the detail of some of it, too, – because (who knows?) it may be either relevant or it might, in an abstract way, ‘cheer you up’. Plus I’m still buzzing.

But what follows, with its adrenalin-fuelled odour of Mission Statement, is not supposed to be some model, some icon of good practice. It’s just another contribution to the debate. If it’s unusually detail-heavy, that’s because I’m imagining other sports-peeps with similar interests or concerns may be perusing.

Now we’re talking cricket but please don’t be put off by that. We’re also talking – really talking – #inclusion, #development, #sport, the human. Big Things; proper Guardian-reading adult hashtags; but in the context of wee humans, mainly, so don’t tell me you’re not interested. It’s for the kids.

Okay so there are Test Matches and Big Bashes and bawling crowds and trampolines and trumpets and y’know – glory. But there is also the tiddly, inconsequential stuff. Let’s call it the grassroots – even if a fair portion of the resultant grassroots action takes place on a Leisure Centre floor, or on what most of us call an ‘astro.’

Last night, in a hall that has the feel almost of an old-school gymnasium, 16 kids turned up to one of our cricket hubs. Hardly earth-shattering, so for that to mean anything I’m going to have to explain some stuff. Let’s take a deep breath together.

In the search for alternative ways to offer up cricket to children aged 6-11, we (Cricket Wales, Pembrokeshire Posse) came up with the cunning plan to deliver in a ‘non-club’ setting and then secured three Leisure Centres. But… why now, why midwinter?

Firstly it felt worthwhile to extend the profile and availability of the game locally – whilst accepting entirely the primacy of clubs. Secondly, as L C’s are often simply unavailable to us in the summer (and weather then theoretically at least supports outdoor cricket!) it made enough sense to crack on in the cold and dark. I should add that this is something of a pilot scheme but also that we believe it’s important – possibly crucial – to broaden our appeal beyond the keen, ball-tracking eyes of the gifted.

That then, is some of the why. The how was less of a novelty for us, in that I then went into local primary schools and delivered some ‘taster’ sessions and/or spoke in assemblies to try to enthuse children towards the activity. Which is kindof what I generally do.
With an unhelpful(?) break over Christmas, we really weren’t sure if we could maintain sufficient numbers to continue into the New Year. The centres have been very supportive but clearly there’s an economic reality of sorts even here, in the joyous, energising land of play.

With children going free if they already have a membership and paying two to three pounds if not, the project is vulnerable should less than about ten or a dozen children attend each one-hour hub. (Naturally we’d prefer more – 15-20 ideally.) Cricket Wales fund me and the Leisure Centres have to pay my partner-in-crime, Craig. Nobody’s making money here; it’s about opening up opportunities – to either play cricket or inhale the culture of physical activity in a particular space – or both.

Pre Santa’s delivery of new Gray Nicholls or Ni-kees, so attendances predictably had begun to dip slightly; hence we were conscious we may need to pull out all the stops to find enough bodies. We got on twitter to promote the hubs again, as well as re-sending posters into schools. My suspicion is, however, that the notices delivered via facebook – for a smallish fee, to all users in a particular post code – may have been key to refreshing and re-booting the return to action. (This was another first, for us, by the way. Forty-odd quid that I expect will make several weeks or possibly months-worth of cricket possible.)

I feared or expected only six children might turn up for the first post-Krimble session. We had sixteen. I appreciate this may not sound like a triumph but I know just how powerfully these sessions can act on children – maybe particularly children who get left behind when the alpha males/females are choosing teams in the playground. Cue the brief appalling digression…

In ‘Just one experience’, I wrote about how impactful (even) very ‘loose’ or profoundly non-technical sessions can be. (http://cricketmanwales.com/2015/12/15/just-one-experience – Go back a coupla posts on this site – you’ll find it.) Lots of people liked it – got it – that sense of a young human lighting up, opening up, through sport. Like most coaches that’s what drives me – and if that is revealing of some intrinsic arrogance then so be it. I love to play a part in that inching or lolloping towards expression and movement. It’s massively inspiring for me to see children blown away or buzzing with what they’ve done; it’s my privilege and responsibility to offer up the game and do it well in the knowledge that this might change something.

Anyways, back to that sixteen – those sixteen kids.

They make a glorious dollop of change and inspiration possible by making this hub viable – and this was the difficult one in terms of numbers. As it happens in the last 24 hours more people have come back to me on twitter and are committing their kids. From the Sports Development Militia point of view, it’s also important that we may have found another way of reaching people.

Weirdly, this latter point – the facebook option – feels like a watershed moment, given one of the intentions was to open this up to children who might find the club environment waaay too challenging to contemplate. There’s something about the part-private, part immaculately ‘populist’ post-code slam-dunk blanket-coverage-wallop that I like and it looks to have worked, or helped.

In this particular centre last night eleven of these boys and girls were ‘new’ – meaning they didn’t attend prior to Christmas, when the project started.

New attendees are clearly the gold dust, the holy grail and the bees knees when it comes to the Key Performance Indicators that S D Militia everywhere cherish. I can see why, but as the front man in much of this, gifted the role of interacting with and hopefully encouraging children towards something I know to be fabulous and growing, I’m probably a whole lot less interested in the numbers than I’m sounding here. Yes I’m chuffed that it was sixteen not six… but I’m more bothered by how these sessions feel to the kids.

So, whilst this blog is about the circumstances around capturing these young cricketers, do not, my friends, get side-tracked into thinking that anything is remotely as important as the quality of experience in that sports hall. Migrations mean nothing if the sessions are dull or inappropriate.

A final thought. It hasn’t escaped our attention that the children who fall(?) into the ‘Na, not a natural’ category may quite possibly still offer up 40 years of wunnerful service as an administrator/scorer/groundsman at a cricket club they patently love. Possibly despite never having represented it on the pitch. This phenomenon clearly becomes more likely if they have a great experience of knockabout or festival cricket games – say using a tennis ball or windball… in a local Leisure Centre.

Broadly, the point I am making is that we cricketpeeps need to offer many things. And we’re looking to do that. The game is sensational but it can seem dauntingly technical or structured or dull, actually, from the outside, or from knee-high to a grasshopper. And we need – we really need – to welcome folks in.

Just one experience.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 8 Comments

Disclaimer; certain things have been changed here so that (I believe) no-one could be undermined by the following story. I’d like to think that wider interests – much wider than me or mine or Cricket Wales’s – might, can and arguably should be served by recounting what follows. It’s healthy, it’s heart-warming and it really happened.

Right now we’re test-driving a project that (rather than gathering children and ‘migrating’ them into local cricket clubs) is offering them an indoor knockabout. The kids get @cricketmanwales, his partner in crime, C****, a hall, some kit and then we play stuff. Once a week, for a few weeks; out of school hours.

I don’t want to get bogged down with the whys and tactical wotnots but (because two of you may be interested) we’re doing this for the following reasons, amongst others;

• The Leisure Centres are available to us now.
• Local cricket clubs don’t have the capacity for us Cricket Wales peeps to drive yet another clutch of budding Under Nines or Elevens into their hands – or at least they’re telling us they can’t accommodate a new team – fair enough.
• Some kids just don’t or won’t feel comfortable in the club environment – maybe they aren’t ‘good enough’ (or don’t think they are) to make anybody’s team? Maybe they’re a wee bit scared that they’ll have to face a Proper Hard Cricket Ball? Maybe Mum or Dad says it’ll cost too much?
• Simply, we wanted to offer a different opportunity and, without actually targeting any particular group, without remotely abandoning the idea that clubs are rightly at the centre of what cricket is, see what a mildly alternative space and proposal might offer.

This may have the sound of a fringe project, an experiment and there’s some truth in that view of it. A little. But though I confess to indulging in occasional meetings about all this strategic stuff, rest assured, dear friends that I/we are about the cricket – the act, the action that happens when a daft bugger like me is let loose with a bunch of kids. These weeny earthlings don’t feel part of any project. They’re too busy moving, catching, stopping, starting.

We’ve called the sessions ‘cricket hubs’. We didn’t, on the poster that ultimately my daughter cobbled together, specify ‘beginners’ or anything else other than ‘Boys and Girls, 6-11’. I then did some sessions in local schools and Bigged the Thing Up in an assembly or two and then off we went… we knew not where.

At the Leisure Centres, as a familiar face to the arriving children, I ‘lead’; which is a posh way of saying it’s me that does most of the shouting. Given these young ‘uns do turn out to be anywhere from six to eleven years old and do have a fairly alarming but fascinating range of abilities, the sessions have to live off my sense of what they can do – what they can have fun with – and maybe what’s possible to learn.

At one particular centre a boy I’m not going to describe or name joined us. When I say joined us, he slid in with what felt like an unremarkable degree of reticence. After a welcome to all I ran a warm-up game. Amongst the giggly anarchy I saw that maybe we needed to place a few balls – asitappens, we were using anything from teddies to beach balls to foam rugby balls – into his hands rather than either let or expect fellow players to lob things at him. He was involved on the periphery, neither happy nor unhappy but with his hands unconvincingly outstretched, at risk of either failing to acquit himself or being bypassed by ‘better players’.

Don’t panic. This post isn’t going to be about the quality of my coaching. It’s about the quality of this wee lad’s experience. Sure I’ll take a modicum of credit for getting fairly early on that he wasn’t, in the dangerously contentious phrase, a ‘natural’; that the games were going to have to come to meet him. I reckon I probably also intuited something about the appropriate level of fuss he’d most effectively ‘respond to’ and just quietly kindof revisited him now and then, to show tiddly things, without focussing on this fella as the Possible Struggler in the group.

Interestingly – and unusually – the boy’s dozen compadres were mostly children who clearly found catching and co-ordinating movements generally a challenge. Maybe this helped. We played simple games – yup, including that ole chestnut hitting from tees! – which everyone could do and I hiked the technical info with certain individuals when they needed to extend. It went okay.

This went on once a week for four weeks. The boy attended every week and to my knowledge did not speak a single word to either myself or one of the other children – even when asking for a pass, a catch. He simply got marginally more proficient, more convincing at the body language, the shape of the movements, in proffering those arms. In time he tried throwing, bowling, all of it; they all did. Skills, in between or in and around what we might call small-sided games. He managed, found a way through, without either busting the proverbial gut, or getting frustrated, or making spectacular leaps forward. He was it seemed in that undemonstrative middle-ground.

The fifth week comes and the boy arrives a tad late. His mum (whom I‘ve seen, watching discreetly but never met or spoken to) does that ‘would you mind if I had a quiet word’ gesture and we step out of the hall momentarily. She says something very close to this;

Look I just wanted to thank you, really. I don’t know if you know but my son has really significant confidence issues – really significant.

I say I had an inkling but…

No they’re really debilitating. And I just wanted to thank you because he’s NEVER EVER done anything like this. He just can’t. So he never does anything.

I say something crass like ‘that’s genuinely lovely to hear, thankyou.’

No, thank YOU. It’s remarkable – are you going to be able to keep on going with this? He got up this morning and asked what day it was and when I said xxxxday he said ‘Oh great – cricket tonight! Believe me he NEVER says anything like that!! So thank you.

People, I was more than a bit choked. I managed to blurt out something about the cricket going on again after Christmas and then went back in to join C**** and the kids.

On the How Rewarding Was All That?-o-meter this ranks pretty high. Maybe because it felt both literally (eek!) awesome and a little mysterious. How could this lad’s seemingly non-animated engagement with our cricket-thing turn out so… profoundly? I’m delighted but also shocked, almost, that he’s found it so enjoyable – frankly it didn’t really seem like he was having that much fun. Whatever that unknowable process, we find ourselves reflecting on a stunning example of the fab-you-luss-ness of … what? Games? Movement? Interaction? Those few encouraging words?

Good to reflect, for one minute. Because I’m thinking this is evidence of the power of sport. This young boy has now bounded more than slid – albeit in his own, magical, ghostly-silent way – into a new, expanding universe. He is both denying six years of absence and disengagement and bulleting towards possibilities previously unthinkable. Why? Because he enjoyed the movement, the encouragement, the sporting challenge. It acted as a trigger.

We may never understand quite why this worked. It may not matter. But the fact of it matters. The quality of this boy’s experience was such that things were transformed.

This I suppose is anecdotal evidence. We can’t ‘map’ it or prove it so as to legitimise ourselves in the eyes of local authorities or funders. It’s pretty much non-measurable. But know what? To me it feels like a really great bit of work.

Sport Transcending.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

 

Minor aside. I was going to write about football for bowlingatvincent.com but couldn’t summon the mood. There are subjects out there – the Chelsea Void, the ongoing van Gaal splutter-which-might-somehow-incredibly-lead-to-a-title, the wonderful Vardy nonsense – but something about the context, the deflating averageness of the Premier League undermines my conviction to really plunge into the stories. Temporary this, I hope.

Then I thought on the obvious; the Buttler Transformation. Magic but na.
Instead I’m going to recount stuff that I hope might just strike a deeper (sorry, pretentious gitdom alert), more inspirational chord with some of you. As I sit looking out over Swansea Bay in sharp sunshine it just seems right to blaze away on Bigger Themes rather than pootle around with transparently forced hypotheses around elite-level footie. And Buttler, Buttler’s been covered.
In any case, sharing something of the small fabulousness of grassy, grassrooty sport feels worthier and more pressing; so that’s where I’m going.

Friday I got up at 6.50a.m. as per and did usual the family stuff. (Dunno about you but this generally involves maybe 20 minutes of washing up whilst cobbling together medium-decent brekkie for t’other three, plus a swift jaunt to ‘look at the sea’ with pooch.)

Critically for me it also meant both trying to picture where a particular school is… and then rehearsing ideas for a first session of cricketstuff for (probably) two groups of kids (probably) aged seven to eleven. Hilarious but true it could even be that I’m visualising ‘capturing’ kids whilst stirring the porridge. In fact I’m pretty certain I am.

I’d not been into this school before. I’d spoken to the Head – whom I’d never met – and he had sounded right up for my pitch re delivering a couple of taster sessions with a view to inviting kids up to further cricket action at the local leisure centre. He’d also skilfully gently inferred that because of the ‘nature’ of his posse, it might be a challenge to actually achieve the transfer of children from (free) school knockabout to a leisure centre charging a not unreasonable £2.50 for the hour. I remember rating his honesty and generosity around this but was clear that there is real value in showing the game(s) at his place irrespective of any targets. I told him that and think this made us mates.

We’re a one-motor family so it was a scramble to get people to various terminals of departure before I could boot down towards the school. I arrived, very nearly a tad late, carrying big, unhelpfully decrepit bags of clobber in coolish drizzle, to be told I ‘needed to be round the corner at the Junior School’.

Given that I’m kindof Old School about being timely and gathered and stuff, this was not good. However, arriving at the destination proper turned out to be one of those rather lovely, confirmatory moments which denied any residual fluster.

The Gaffer met me and was friendly: there was clearly no rush. Within seconds two different people had offered me a brew and a ‘hand with ‘anything.’ The ambience spoke of proper welcome and the environment was visibly (whatever this means – we know what it means!) encouraging. Minor note; I’m a fella with very few prejudices but I’d walked in there wondering, just a little, about baggage in the ether – ‘reputations’.

Because of the tiddly specks outside and the availability of a spanking new and perfectly adequate hall, I bundled my kit inside. Another teacher came to say hello and offer help. Whilst we chatted it became apparent that the weather was breaking for the better and that though it might remain marginal we could go for it outside, on a new, tarmacked space. Outside is better; we engaged Plan B sharpish and I re-gathered to think about first outdoor introductory sessions for feisty kids. It’s cold. It’s grey. It’s okaaaay, actually but best get these guys at it.

So, movement and maybe teamwork and a few giggles. The setting out of a friendly, challenging-in-a-good-way matrix through which we can gambol. Pressing that ‘earthlings you’re gonna have to listen because the games are gonna change’ button. Making even these instructions engaging/dynamic/part of some irrepressible bundle. Do all that pal.

First group comes out. Mix of Year 5 and 6. I launch likeably enthusiastic geezer mode, with a deal based around F.U.N. for ‘top, top listening’.

I think they get me and we shake hands excitedly-metaphorically on a guaranteed smiles-for-listening agreement then off we go. Twenty-five boys and girls passing teddies, beach balls, (spongy) rugby balls and other assorted unthreatening globes to each other as they jog across the space and back, Emily having set the tempo by demonstrating a treble-fabulous and stylish jog immediately before the happy stampede.

It’s chaos but manageably so; it’s undeniably smiley. They do get me. Of course Jonni and Marc are hogging the rugby ball and the expressed aspiration to get everyone in the game is missed, first time out (so reinforce that). But this is great.

‘Earthlings, looking spookily good. But I told you my favourite word is TEEEEEAAAMMM so we have to get the guys who didn’t catch a ball or a teddy in the game. Let’s go again and this time we must pass within three seconds. Go!’

Some thinking going on and some great, energetic movement. Still some daft overthrows but blanket engagement and strikingly good catching – really good catching!

I’m weaving in and out to get those words of encouragement into their faces. ‘WODDA CATCH!’ ‘Ooooff –how’s your nose?!?’ ‘Great hands!’ ‘Blimey, that’s pass of the century!!’

They’re fizzing, almost uniformly – what was that cobblers about ‘challenging kids’? Somebody film this quick; show the Governors, show The Government, show our funders, show EVERYONE!! You watch this develop, now!

‘OK. Next up we can’t go cuddling that teddy; remember how many seconds before we have to pass? Three! And this time we can’t throw to the same partner all the time. This Frankie-Millie/Frankie-Millie/Frankie-Millie thing is now… a no-no. How many seconds before we pass? OK. Go!!’

We shift forwards through a one second interval; in other words catch and pass immeeeeediately. ‘How can we make that baby work, people? What can I do if I don’t have the ball? YES! Communicate! What might I do with my hands? Yes, show them! Because I’m joining in with the team.’

Enough on that warming up, switching on thing. Ball each. ‘Show me some basketball – show me some control as you go. There/back. Tell me what works, how you get some control’.

Then catches and bounces of a zillion kinds, whilst moving – must be moving to crack the cold, to crack the smiles.

I’m in the mix of strikingly co-ordinated ease and refreshingly willing flap, constantly, cos I’m charged with bringing the personality here. The game is everything but I am Agent of Boogie, encouraging fringe-players to break through into the song ’n dance of it – defying them all not to enjoy this daft, doable thing. We’re all lost in the swirl of it and it’s magbloodynificent.

Fifty minutes-worth and done. Revert to pitch about *also* coming out to play at the leisure centre, Tuesday nights. Reassure them Yes! I am here next week. ‘Course I am. They’ve been wonderful.

A break and another, similarly zaptastic group. Teacher asks if some kids from ‘the unit’ can join in – meaning children with issues I may need to consider – and I emphatically assent. Without singling them out I scatter some further encouragement as the group flies around, engaged. It’s magbloodynificent; they are.

It finishes (or actually I call it) after some booming hitting from tees. All of them brimming with their own enormous or enormously minor triumphs. They shared, they clouted, they caught, they couldn’t believe they connected. Take the me thing out of this, here was an absolute model, a goddam advert for the case for sport transcending.

Forget the Premier League. It’s been simply overrun, overshadowed, shrunk – if only for a moment. The world got better here, because these kids accepted my (Cricket Wales, asitappens) offer. They invested in it; they threw it forward and then they caught it. They listened, they were thoughtful and busy and strategic and inventive and there was barely any drift. As they go back in, a teacher is beaming back at them.

Skilled work.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

On coaches and crowds…

The Rugby World Cup has been/is a triumph for sport, yes? Not just for rugby but for sport. Superbly dramatic and almost entirely free from ‘simulation’ or disrespect between players or teams. Genuinely uplifting, in fact, in terms of the world showing us that brother/sisterhood thing we might be fearing subsumed in the age of diving and conniving footballers, £6 Cornish pasties and an intimidating multitude of *revealing* camera angles.

Folks have loved other folks’ teams – Japan-lurv being the most obvious example. So, shedding the baggage of our postmodernist awarenesses, we can simply agree (can’t we?) that it’s been bloody great?

But what can we learn?

In sport atmosphere is BIG. Athletes feed off energies from the crowd (and clearly vice-versa) in a way that really can inspire brilliant execution. It may be that truly elite-level athletes get to be that way because they harness, or are comfortable with or yes, inspired by the heat or hoopla of the big, big challenge. Magic players, far from being undermined by the pressures of the environment (noise/distraction/nerves?) blossom, find their truest finest selves in those moments – hence the overuse of the word ‘expression’. Almost without exception, from Brighton to Geordieland, #RWCup2015 crowds were buzzing… and the players got busy expressing.

Cast your mind back a week or two and something very different was occurring; the first Test Match in Abu Dhabi.

Here England and Pakistan ultimately served up some proper drama, after wading through a weirdly debilitating silence for four days. The players in fact emerged with an almost surreal level of credit but for an age a good deal of what happened felt emasculated, or short of sport. Cook flourished and important *statements* may have been made but with nobody there the event of it felt more like a drawn corpse than a live contest. What fascinates me – or rather one of the many things that fascinated me about this test – was what effect if any the utter lack of atmosphere had on what went on.

Let me swiftly add the rider that I speak as an advocate of Test Match cricket who (whilst getting the current impatience with it) would defend the capacity of the sport to bear the occasional slow burner ‘midst the contemporary carve-tastic norm. Consequently I was almost as unflustered as the England skipper when every pundit and former player in the universe was wailing on about dullness.

This daft thing in the desert was a small percentage part of the dynamically evolving Test Universe; it was entitled to its loopy-scratchy, defiantly anti-dynamic dawdle.

Like the Big Lebowski I chilled – abided – watching and waiting, wondering what might happen if an almighty clamour were to accompany a key wicket or a lush spell of bowling. Wondering how demotivating that yawning quiet might be – how seductive, how soporific to the fast-twitch fibres. The minor revelation came that things might have been different.

As I write #TMS is on again, for the second test; apparently (if my ears are to be believed) there is again no crowd. A challenge for bowlers – maybe particularly seam bowlers? – to get on a roll, on a flat pitch, in the sun, with no crowd.

The atmosphere(s) when Japan beat the Boks or when Ireland turned the Millenium green were both remarkable and essential to the sport occurring on that day. It could be that Japan might never have beaten South Africa in a near-empty stadium. Their fabulous momentum was predicated on quick ball and some irresistible spirit mexican-waving its way round the stands and from the stands into the bloodstream of the game. It was of course wonderful – dare I say it? – literally wonderful.

Crowds, then – mere gatherings of bystanders – play their part in the sporting cowabunga. Let’s note that… and if we happen to have some influence over where Big Games are actually played… remember. As we remember (alongside our friends from Bayern) the cost factor, eh?

Something else about the Rugby World Cup has really registered with the media (who’ve been all over it) and with those of us who either coach or bawl from the touchlines; the Skills Divide.

The domination of the tournament by southern hemisphere sides has been accompanied by significant rumination from the northern press – as though there’s been some uniformly powerful lightbulb moment. It’s clearly dawned that the key difference is in skills, by which I think folks mean the freedom and excellence of successful execution.  Most of us will imagine what we might call expressive skills; stuff we called natural ability until that became an area overloaded with difficulties.

Everyone from Brian Moore to Paul Hayward to well, everyone has been banging on about the skills that get you tries or opportunities (even) when things are tight. Skills that separate. Skills which may range from soft, intuitive hands to mind-blowing composure and decision-making.

It may be kinda funny that in the Everything Accounted For age, with typically more coaches and trainers and ‘support staff’ in place than can possibly be justified, we have such a universally recognised DOH!! How did we miss that one?!? moment.

Everybody’s leapt upon the essential ‘truth’ of it; Wales were great but couldn’t finish, Ireland were outclassed by The Pumas(!), Scotland have transformed and may have been robbed, England and France were embarrassing. But mostly, The North lacked brilliance.

Somebody soon enough will make a counter-argument to the current rash of theories aligned around Northern Bash undone by Southern Flash. In fact, because it’s plainly a tad simplistic I may even do it myself. But if we accept that there is a case to answer, here – i.e that we in the North are producing less gifted or less ingenious/expressive rugby players – why would that be? Does this transfer across into other team sports? How come our talent is less talented (or less able to perform) than (say) Kiwi talent?

The theses are already underway, right?

I can speak of but not for the ECB Coaching set-up on the ideas around the facilitation of talent. Here there is an acceptance that diverse opportunities for sport and broad development – towards being a better human, actually – fit with the pathway towards brilliance. Coaching is (or aims to be) more generous than previously; less prescriptive. Core Principles are offered to players as a support, through which those same players should find a way that works – that feels like them. This counts for a pretty radical shift when compared to decades of technical models and acutely fine-tuned ‘demonstration’.

Plenty of coaches are concerned that the growth of a globalised, t’internetted Sports Development Corporation necessarily means things get genericised, flawed by soundbites, or compromised as we all seek to do the Right Thing. We all finish up saying the same thing in order to sound credible – or we all seek to sound ‘left-field’ enough to stand out. We’re all too painfully aware.

I have seen enough to acknowledge both shortcomings in what the ECB call their ‘player-centred’ approach and in the creep towards multiskills BUT have no doubt that this loosening of the technical shackles is helpful in terms of unleashing or freeing talent. Of course this talent might be guided by what we might call technical specialists but let them not clutter up the mind of the athlete. Let them offer up their gift.

It may be foolish to meander between sports but I make no apology. I remain alive to the possibility of wonder through daft stuff like rugby and cricket, as well as through cerebral revelation via culture. I make no qualitative distinctions between them. They both still make me smile – as does the following wee notion.

Graham Henry (who has written so outstandingly on #RugbyWorldCup2015 and matters beyond, recently) has coached at the elitest of elite levels, yes? Known for his intelligence, thoroughness, experience, success(!) etc etc. Whilst All Blacks coach he was approached by key players, after a significant disappointment, as he no doubt planned his next Churchillian, team-gathering riposte. They asked him who the speechifying was for – them or him? They asked him – Graham Henry, aged 50-odd, at the height of his powers – if maybe he should say a bit less and trust a bit more. Graham Henry now doesn’t do team talks. He builds teams… from individuals.

Questions for the game.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 9 Comments

Every sport is navel-gazing. By that I mean doing that soul-searching thing to find a way to either grow or sustain; holding workshops or seminars where the men (mainly) who administrate gather to chew the fat and challenge themselves over matters of strategy and policy. I realise now that the quality of questions asked at these pow-wows is erm , powerfully important: in that respect it’s not unlike coaching.

I went to two days of exactly these kinds of meetings earlier this week as part of the Cricket Wales posse charged with thinking deeply but also freely about what we do. I should say clearly now that what follows is neither a Cricket Wales-approved synopsis of what happened and what this means, nor some kind of manifesto.

On the first count let it be known that whilst I am unashamedly proud – yes, proud! – to work for CW, I speak and occasionally get up a lather very much of my own and am therefore what we might call a medium-loose cannon. I’m a team-man, certainly but have waaaaaay too many fast-twitch fibres to be a full-time office-waller and/or strategic thinker – for now!

However – and in contradiction – I do get that there is value in skilled and informed and generous brainstorming; it’s complacent not to do it and (for the cynics out there) my experience has been positive, in the sense that I now reckon people genuinely work hard and honestly at these gatherings – certainly our lot do. Then we drink brandy ‘til 2 a.m.

In essence, during our medium-epic philosophical shakeout, we were set two prime tasks; to identify the three most significant issues facing Junior Cricket in Wales and then, having reflected on those, propose what we might do differently next year.

(I may need to briefly remind or inform my sagacious readership that as I am a Community Coach, the bulk of my work and that of my colleagues is around enthusing kids for the game and getting them to transfer from schools into clubs/hubs or leisure centres so that the healthy cricket stuff sustains – hence the concentration on that end of the market. Cricket Wales, of course, is charged with leading and inspiring as well as administrating the whole of the recreational game in Wales but we Community Coaches inevitably(?) spend the bulk of our time playing daft games wiv kids.)

The following – a shocking mixture of ‘conclusion’, ‘experience’, hunch and sooo-premely insightful observation – will need some care, as a diplomatic disaster or twelve could unfold *unless* you are prepared to believe me when I say that neither myself nor my colleagues are characterised by a kind of appalling and arrogant CricketWalescentricity. (I promise.)

Having looked at rafts of data and swapped intensely our many, many coaching/club/school impressions, the clear winner in the Big Issue For Junior Cricket stakes was (the idea that the) experience for children who had transferred into clubs wasn’t magic or entertaining or (who knows?) comfortable enough for enough of those children to stick with cricket. A big number of kids were gathered in but a smallish number stayed.

There are several ways we might interpret that – from the idea that the game itself proved to be unappealing after a few sessions to the notion that something within or about the club experience was undermining (excuse the Sports Development Speak) migration. Plus, there would be sub-notions that I simply don’t have time and space to address – for now. Clearly, if the proverbial lessons are to be learned then the data – which shows a big drop off between the numbers of children who actually went to clubs, having been inspired (or bundled kicking and screaming) by Community Cricket Coaches and those who stayed there for more than a few weeks (and therefore became new members at those clubs) must be de-mystified if possible.

We threw most of the relevant notions round the room, earnestly as well as liberally and there was a consensus around the following; that whilst some clubs offer new children the kind of (actually) pretty dynamic and inclusive and entertaining sessions they get from Community Coaches who visit their schools (generally for around four lessons), others don’t. The experience is either a little intimidating or starchy or dull… or something.

We cannot know what every child feels about the transfer into clubs and clearly children (like allegedly mature adults) don’t always tell us the truth, anyway. But plenty do get asked about this – it is surveyed. Could be that we need more and better information around this but for what it’s worth (and I am clear it’s worth something) the Community Cricket Coaches and their immediate seniors the Cricket Development Officers of Wales were notably in agreement that migration numbers fall away sharply partly because sessions aren’t fun enough to make it worth the child (and by implication, the family) committing to the club regularly.

The chief difficulty around this may be the argument that Doh! Of course Cricket Wales staff are going to conclude that their coaches are more fabulous than those unblessed with the CW badge! Their very lives and jobs depend upon deciding to Big Up and Justify their own excellence!

People, on this one, all I can say is I’m pretty certain some of us like the sound of our own voices (Exhibit A, this website) and ye-es, it’s possible that we are the annoying geezers who Say Too Much Too Loudly whenever the opportunity to peacock our cricket knowledge around the gaff presents itself but honestly… we ain’t so cheap as to masturbate our own egos over this one. It’s too big, too important and besides – again, honestly – as a mob our lot are too genuinely concerned for the good of the game to invent some self-serving cobblers to deflect undeserved flak someplace else.

All of which means I am saying to you, to my colleagues and soulbrothers and sisters in club cricket, that it could be the case that some children, newly arrived at your club, are being inadequately accommodated. Some are feeling that sessions are a bit dull; some feel excluded – even though they have manifestly made a step towards the game; some maybe feel a bit lost. I should add – and not just for the sake of ‘fairness’ – that all of these feelings may arise in one of my sessions… but percentage-wise this appears to be less likely than in a club environment.

Please try to get past the arrogance implicit in the cricketmanwales.com view of this and ask yourself how new, young players arriving at your club feel about what you’re offering. What is training like, for them? What is the environment like – what are the people these children are being led or coached or signed in by sounding like? Think about how the children who may never make one of your competitive teams but who have stepped across that threshold anyway feel. Maybe think about how your club activity fits against the fun festivals and inclusive, un-threatening, softball sport these children may have gotten used to at school. There may be an argument that you should be offering an extension of that experience as well as developing competitive players/Test stars of the future.

I’m here to ask some difficult questions. I realise the answers may be about changes in format or governance as well as culture change in individual clubs. I’m not providing answers and I know what I do – what Cricket Wales – does is flawed too. This blog – all of these blogs – are about making a contribution to a debate. Endof.

Look I know there are many many wonderful clubs and coaches out there. I am privileged to know and to work with an inspiring lump of them, either as a volunteer, or as a Cricket Wales fella, wearing *that badge*, remembering *that training*, aspiring to *those goals*. But however unpalatable it may sound, I am clear there are things we all have to improve, not just for some spurious need to ‘grow the game’ but because surely we are all together charged with offering our players – young and old – something fabulous for them.

Finally, it may sound like I’m somehow down on traditional cricket and traditional cricket clubs. No. Nothing I’ve argued is to suggest that traditional cricket is either out-dated or inappropriate or short on fun. It ain’t. It’s wonderful. But my strong conviction is we may need to provide some other stuff too, for the kids who want to join us… but then turn away.

The Mad Batter’s Tea Party; Obvious Positives.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Working in and for the game of cricket, I take more than a passing interest in how folks view all of its multifarious (or possibly just nefarious?) forms. (Go see Jarrod Kimber ‘bout that latter niche.) I’m as daft and as clueless as the next fan/coach/umpire/player about many things within what we might call the world of cricket but medium clued-in, I would say, on matters to do with coaching and retention – what the game (or, okaaay, what Cricket Wales) is looking to do.

I’m not boasting. I’m not saying I’m good at this or that, just that I have some knowledge – some information – stored on these issues, following turgid or revelatory classroom-bound discussions or blokey workshopping or centre-practice of cricket stuff. It’s what I do. Why wouldn’t I know something? If I don’t know what the path forward looks like on Coach Education and in terms of schools provision, I do know what’s being discussed, or put in place, or considered at local and national level. But ultimately… everything’s context.  Everything out there shapes things.

Cricket People are like Ordinary People in that they locate themselves, noisily or quietly, into wildly different zones of opinion or belief. Sometimes a level of global calm seems to win out, as the cricket equivalent of peacetime – or tea-time – prevails. Other times the brew is stronger and the scones, yaknow… stonier.

Now feels like a Mad Batters Tea Party. An incendiary, expressionistic, drug-addled cornucopia-fest. Where the crashbangwallop of the game magnificently and beautifully but maybe luridly reflects the noises off, the times, the turbidity currents building around cricket’s heaving continents. It’s excitingly off its own head.

The times of course do contribute to the vulcanism; ‘f you don’t like something or somebody you mercilessly troll them. ‘F you see the umpire got it wrong from 24 different angles you blow your collective, high definition fuse. If the game slows down you down another Fosters. So if this doesn’t seem like a Test Cricket kindofa time then maybe that’s because it really ain’t.

However. Despite the absurdities and indeed immoralities exposed by ‘Death of A Gentleman’; despite the *challenges* to fairness/honesty/decency implicit in an Indo-Aus-Giles Clark Pact; despite the alleged woefulness of some of the Ashes Women batting – despite the obscene hurry we’re all in to get somewhere brasher quicker – there are Obvious Positives. Even for Test Cricket. Surely there are? Positives which though they may not necessarily ‘grow the game’ – in that immortal phrase – may counter-intuitively perhaps preserve it and develop it.

I know some of these positives from my work and in that I am privileged. I see young girls in Penny Dropping mode as they get that this is their game too. I see the powerful and yet relatively untapped educational potential in upful, ‘physical’ but thoughtful school sessions – children building cricket games and therefore using a zillion ‘academic’ skills as well as heartily lugging round those limbs – moving. I meet, actually, loads of brilliant people, either in schools or within Cricket Wales or Glamorgan C.C.C. or elsewhere.  But hey look if you think I’m coming over all soft-sellingly pro- what I do then I’ll park that and go back to where we came in. Which was with perceptions – opinions.

I went both to the Ashes Test Match in Cardiff and the Bank Holiday double header extravaganza – where both men and women played T20 Internationals. Both were superb events, confirming the racy, thrilling, contemporary brilliance of short-format cricket and the traditional but evolving majesty of the five (soon-to-be-four) day experience. Moeen Ali was great. Ben Stokes was great – all kinds of things from that general upping of the ante to seeing Cook command the new era with confidence and imagination were great.

These days were both a novelty and a re-affirmation.  We’ve burst through something, haven’t we? Carved out of yesterday’s billion-year-old past.

I’ve previously wittered on about this new wild positivity – picked holes in it – but generally it’s pretty fab, right? It offers us cricketpeeps clear opportunities; let’s take them.

But enough foam for a minute. Here’s a wee story which feels relevant. ‘Sharing’ stuff, (hate that phrase!) asyado, on twitter, I happened to drop in a minor note of disappointment re the level of attendance at the beginning of the Women’s T20 and was fairly promptly slapped down for using the everydaysexism hashtag to accompany my (honestly relatively minor) gripe. I should say I have the luxury of being a complete nobody so this was not heavyweight trolling, you understand, this was two blokes.

They objected to my high-handedness and accused me of that kind of hypocrisy whereby you *support* something you don’t really support because (probably) you read that this is right in the Guardian. They said that the Women’s Ashes was poor and I shouldn’t be pretending otherwise, effectively: also that you can’t force people to watch something.

I know what they meant and that there is such a weasley phenomenon at work in the Liberal Mind. And I suppose I fall into that category. But they were wrong.

Firstly I hadn’t said or implied anything about the quality or otherwise of the game. Secondly they misunderstood – probably wilfully – the essence of my disappointment. Not wishing to use too much battery time on the discussion, I signed off promptly –
Have a good day, Genghis.

With the SSE Swalec emptyish rather than fullish as Brunt and Shrubsole went about their opening business and in the knowledge, frankly, that on a purely economic level it made sense for supporters to take in both internationals, I expressed disappointment. Why not support the women’s match, even if you find it less dynamic or entertaining – even if the ‘standard’ offends you? Don’t get it. Unless #everydaysexism.

To clasp that nettley comparison – this;
a) it’s both faintly ridiculous and mildly dumb to compare men and women – they’re simply different
b) (if) levels of power are the central issue maybe something could be done on type/weight of ball and/or length of pitch – if we become sure that women’s cricket needs to replicate men’s by becoming increasingly about elite-level mega-dynamism. If we don’t, then maybe (wonderfully/hilariously/enlighteningly) women’s cricket will be a/the game for skill, subtlety and patience, as things develop.

Finally on that, things have developed. Meaning despite the ‘distance yet to travel’ inferred by much of the writing on the Women’s Ashes, cricket played by women and girls is a cause for celebration and it seems essential and right to support it. Not indiscriminately but support it. Sure the scores are markedly lower, sure the hitting is markedly less wallopacious, sure the event is of a different timbre – currently and maybe permanently. But there has been and there will be rapid ‘progress’ as wider opportunities for top level competitive play/training/competition emerge.

Finally finally, watching from directly behind the bowler’s arm, I loved it that Anya Shrubsole (who bowled a flawed spell, ye-es!) swung the ball further than anyone of any sex on that double-header of a day. I also really enjoyed Brunt’s Proper Fast Bowler Attitude from t’other end.

Throw in Sarah Taylor’s nonchalant excellence behind the sticks and there you have three reasons to be cheerful. Obvious Positives. Now if we (the English/Welsh) can sort the Buttler batting thing out – oh and the Lyth one – and then get to the fascistic world-governance scene-thing, imagine how fabulous cricket could be?

Our cricket clubs… our juniors…and how we do this thing better.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

The bigger picture: @cricketmanwales is in the market for slinging ideas around and would be over the proverbial parrot if they triggered pretty much any kind of response. This is a friendly challenge – even if you reject it in a patronised huff.  It may mean nothing (not to me!) but @cricketmanwales has just been recognised by the ECB with an award for ‘Outstanding Contribution’ to Coaching.  So listen.

Firstly, housekeeping; there is no suggestion here that my/your/our club ‘model’ is necessarily broken, merely (like everything else) we can improve it. And maybe we need to. Secondly, I am acutely aware of the EM Forster notion that we may plan at the expense of joy – this may feel relevant. On that, two things;

1. I am abso-lutely in the free-spirited expressionist camp. Be witty and spookily in the moment.

2. The planning I’m onnabout here may be the gentle thinking ahead variety rather than any training dogma.  We must not do cricket practice by numbers, eh?

My friends I know how magbloodynificent much of the work that goes on in cricket clubs is and in no way am I looking to undermine that. Fact is though, (I think) despite the superlative efforts of the Essential Posse at every club – you know who you are – it’s proving difficult to retain players right through their teens and into glorious cricketing adulthood. So we need to do something.

Many things which compete or conspire against us cricketpeeps we simply cannot control. The proliferation of opportunities, the alleged decrease in attention span, the lust for instant reward – that’s all anti-cricket, or anti- Traditional Cricket, right? (There’s another argument here, around whether or how or why we might change the nature of cricket itself but let’s scoot right on past that baby, for now.)

The twitchiness and bitchiness of most of our modern interactions clash gaudily against the deep, rich stillness that characterises some forms of cricket. Be honest, that probably works against us? But as much as I’d like to offer oil painting classes and art cinema at Haverfordwest CC only some of this crazy flux is our responsibility. We can’t sort every headless-chicken of a thing. We can, however maximise or tailor the qualities of that defiantly philosophic, world-contrarily brilliant phenomenon we’ve got our hands on – cricket. Cricket in our clubs.

But wadda we need to do, I hear you ask?

People, it’s not like I or anyone else can direct you absolutely on this.  I’m throwing down a few thoughts here but the more I do this the more central the ability to ask good questions becomes.  So go do that.

Ask questions of the nature of what you’re doing as well as about the process of skill development. How are we sounding… to youngsters? Sure, cricket practice  needs those dry, instructive and reflective periods – it demands those, in fact – so steering kids through that is one of our responsibilities. But how do we keep all this jazzy and attractive enough to junior earthlings (too?)

A note here: coaching better doesn’t mean getting ‘too serious about stuff’ – as many seem to fear: it means being on the case and (asitappens) probably having a giggle. It means being sensitive to the mood of an individual and/or a group. It means being prepared as well as responsive – intuitive. And yeh – it’s a big ask.

One of the things we might do better is to increase the amount of fun/entertainment we offer during training. More than anything, perhaps, we should look to avoid drift; drift stifles both enjoyment and learning. (Doesn’t sound very sexy I know but) preparation and reflection can help us keep sessions bright and keep our young players with us.

So let’s have a wee think about stuff. Our responsibilities as coaches/cricket people are what, exactly?

Amongst many other things…
• To develop players towards excellence?
• To animate and enthuse?
• To ensure everyone remains healthy and safe.

To achieve these things what do we need? All three demand some planning; whether or not this is back of a fag-packet stuff or immaculate tables of options. Do something that works for you – I know what time pressures are all about, believe me.

My general proposal is that we become better focussed by setting out our objectives – perhaps our individual sessions? – significantly more clearly. Far from ‘putting young players off’, I think that we will retain and entertain our young players if we offer them something dynamic, something that leads them somewhere –  something other than just a hit, a throw, a bowl. For me, the essence of this has to have good energy; it has to grip these young people.

Let’s go back that one important step. Statistically, we are losing players from the game in the mid-late teens; I think this is partly because coaches let sessions drift or fail to inspire and these are things we can to some meaningful extent address.
If we accept at the very least that we could do things better so it may well follow that we need to plan things enough to make progress possible.

As an example if we ask ourselves what (broadly) we might need to cover with our young players, we might suggest;

• Core skills
• The generic game – an understanding of what you do
• Team needs

Then we need to address how best to offer up these skills. I’m suggesting a flexible coaching plan (Brit weather!) where ideally we set out objectives for individual sessions and for the season, with age-appropriate, challenging practice.  I stress again that your planning is there to free you up, to be the springboard from which you can confidently bound: I am FOR responsive, ingenious, individualised coaching.

We have to surely combine this with cool, longish-term thinking. Think through percentages of time spent on the three chief disciplines; think about how – and how much – technical information you give out. (Give kids four things to think about not forty-four!) Think about maintaining energy and focus throughout sessions in particular – about how you can minimise drift.

As coaches I’d suggest that an important part of what we do is both an assessment of how players are doing… and how well our sessions have gone… and relationships (the link, if any) between the two things.

Plus is there a way that we can support each other on what we do? Should we be having a monthly pow-wow to keep up to speed with player’s progress and our own delivery? Wouldn’t it be great if coaches shared ideas about particular sessions or games? It’s so-o beneficial to pick up a variation on a game – or a completely new drill – that can be both a hoot and a really healthy challenge. I love that.

Clearly there are issues of diplomacy around even the most casual and friendly coach ‘share’ sessions. Not always easy to find the right level of ease – we ain’t all extroverts, are we? But they are typically entertaining and genuinely instructive moments so find a way of holding the occasional coaches gathering where you throw around some cones or balls. Folks tend to be supportive once you get past any reticence.

Nets are for me the obvious example of where most clubs underachieve. Far too often somebody gets padded up and smashes through the ball for twenty minutes before somebody else does the same. Meanwhile bowlers bowl too much/too casually/without any real commitment. This must change. We need (and I would argue that the young players need)
• less nets/better nets
• clear objectives set by the coach – specific shots/specific gaps?
• a considered and challenging environment which seeks to replicate match conditions
• in other words, FOCUS
• plus… importantly, better attention to SAFETY ISSUES. How many close calls from a straight drive have you seen recently?

Maybe in nets we need cones to mark out where fielders are, we need two batsmen who actually run, we need CHALLENGES and DISCUSSION and LEADERSHIP from the coach. We need reasons to be doing what we’re doing.

I repeat that even though I know hard-ball-competent junior player’s first thought is to ‘go have a net’ and that they therefore equate that most immediately with real practice, it often tends to be poor practice. Guys and gals, we need to sort this one out. In a nutshell, reduce and improve your time in the nets.

This feels longish… and yet the strip’s barely been scratched. Enough, for now.

Whether we like it or not, we are facing all sorts of challenges – financial/competition from other clubs or sports/apathy amongst players and the general population(?) All these are arguments for improvement – for change. It’s a big ask. Especially when most of us are simply volunteers. But comrades… I’m asking. How can you/we/I do this thing better?

Kids go searching.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I’m no fan of Kevin Pietersen and never have been; I’ve never believed in him. I know plenty of folks think he’s a genius, a rare and special talent who’s simply been mismanaged but in accepting the bulk of that statement I reject him, utterly.

If the Steve Harmison story is true about KP flatly refusing to take throw-downs from senior England coaches then let that be my reason. If it’s not, let it be that I think his arrogance and his consistent failure to think of his mates and that team-thing marks him down as a… luxury item.

But hey guess what? Recently I’ve been ploughing through ECB Coaching Workshops and the thought struck me that KP – yes him with the ego – might have done something which may yet turn out to be profoundly positive. Maybe.

Between the Level 2 ECB Coaching Certificate and the new Performance strata there now lies a bunch of workshops. These are important in that they set out a good deal of the new ideology around coaching cricket in England and Wales. (Ideology? Oh YEAH, you better believe it.)

In the last eighteen months or so, following an epic lump of research, sports-scientific wotnots and cross-bi-lateral oojamiflips, the ECB has re-emerged from the swamp. Or should that be… the nets? There’s been a fascinating and genuinely radical shift in the thrust of coaching. Personally – and maybe I should be careful with what I say – I reckon you can feel the hand of the Sports Development Militias in it and you can certainly taste the political correctness of the era; neither of which is necessarily bad. But with generic views may come the occlusion of that which is unique to cricket.

The titles alone, of some of these workshops (and the fact that they are known as workshops, eh?) may tell you much of what you need to know. “Creating the Learning Climate for Children”. “Game-based Learning.” “Skill Development for Children”. Cutting through the inevitable (and inevitably transient) verbiage, there’s a powerful move towards ‘player-centred’ coaching, going way beyond tokenism towards the individual. This is big, ideologically-driven stuff aimed at making coaches work more about the player and less about the recall or display of their own cricket knowledge. I think some of this may have been prompted by KP, whose profile has been such that he could, conceivably, be a catalyst here.

Those last two paragraphs may have had too much cynicism lurking so let me immediately contradict. Or at least re-calibrate the tone. The changes are huge, or will feel that way to coaches brought through previous regimes – regimes which have themselves been rotated or cheese-grated through development over the years. But (genuinely) my experience of Cricket Wales/ECB Coach Education (and therefore my sense of the philosophical intent) has been both encouraging and challenging in a good way. Surprisingly perhaps, things feel quite dynamic back there. People seem to be alive to the need to transform; rapidly.

But back to KP. I’m guessing that opinions in the ECB hierarchy are about as divided when it comes to Pietersen as they are in the general population. In a private space 60% would describe him with a brisk four letter word – a recent former England skipper did exactly that, you may remember.

38% would say it doesn’t matter what we think of him or his methods – ‘e dun it on the pitch’. The remainder would splutter into their Pimms. What is interesting to me is that having seen/sat through these workshops, the voice of KP –in fact the noise that KP makes- about ‘not coaching talent out of kids’ booms out. Credit the ECB that he is the first face turned to the camera in a key video on skill development.

Predictably, Pietersen goes straight into his ‘Bell plays classically, I don’t: don’t go coaching kids there’s just the one way’ argument. Understandably. Justifiably. But it’s almost as if in their scramble to appease the twin-headed monster at shortish mid-off (Pietersen/the multi-sports-conversant, child-centred modernist and funder?) the ECB have changed everything. Perhaps, being broadsheet-reading, report-assimilating types they fear being called out for old fart-dom? Perhaps they are high on that elixir of the coaching industry age, branding – branding in the sense of renaming, re-infusing with sexy new jargon rather than psychotic (aaaaargh!!) market-driven branding.

This is certainly how the swing away from the previously central notion of (accepting the validity of) certain ‘Technical Models’ feels to many coaches who qualified pre-, say, 2012. Many are cynical. I am not, despite how this might sound. I view this stuff as a healthy challenge.

If Pietersen has bullied us into reviewing the very essence of coaching that is remarkable. That has happened. The talk is of ‘Core Principles’ now not ‘feet shoulder-width apart and blah-di-blah high elbow’. Skill is successful execution not necessarily a particular movement pattern. Players finding things and coaches asking questions are central. The essence of ECB coaching is bravely empowering… and that’s good.

Now because I don’t like the man I’m reluctant to give KP too much credit in this but the fact is too many coaches did have a very fixed idea of what skill looks like and they bored generations of twitching, net-bound youngsters with those ungenerous notions. They can’t get away with that now. The newer, younger coach on the block will either call them out or intervene, as I do, when somebody is saying too much/presenting 44 ideas not four to a group of nine year-olds.

So KP as crusader, then? Hardly. The man’s a tad more fixated on his image, his contracts and the most efficient route to the limelight for that. But he has stirred it, made his point and rendered this debate necessary. That’s a singular contribution.

It may be that the new, updated ECB risks alienating traditionalists and fails to address finer, technical points; I’ve heard it said that there are gaps in the essential knowledge, that ‘Core Principles’ are all very well but what, precisely do you as a coach fall back on when a particular skill proves beyond a child? Generic answers aren’t always viable.

I’m hoping the ECB have thought of this. But it may just be that they are choosing to let kids go searching.

 

@cricketmanwales is proud to work for @cricketwales. But these views are his only, right?