Jimmy Anderson | sportslaureate

You don’t stop learning. A-and obviously you shouldn’t.

In my case we’re talking the usual zigzags; the pros and cons and trends; the occasi-wipe of the window. I’m a coach (on cricket pathways): I do that for a living but I’m not in the professional game. Like the overwhelming majority of us, I take that privilege seriously and have always tried to get better – whatever that means. Part of that has been about CPD, so the Boy Walton has indeed attended many coach development sessions over the years… but fewer, recently, to be honest.

Pretty certain this is not because I think I know it all: in fact completely certain of that. It’s probably true that there are less in person coach ed opportunities around – perhaps marginally, and perhaps cos I live in the faaar west – and in any case the internet is there and ‘socials’ are there and my curiosity is still there. So I do seek out interesting stuff. Plus I often work with better coaches than myself, on our pathway sessions. I listen to them. They are brilliant, thoughtful people who bring very different ideas and ways to the work.

Some look and sound ‘traditional’, meaning I guess that they are middle-aged white guys (like me) who do base most of their coaching around what many of us have considered The Fundamentals, for decades. We watch and listen to each other… and we do discuss our intentions. We look and we tweak things. This is one of the many reasons I enjoy our work together. My colleagues are good people and really skilled educators: I’m learning (too).

It’s not my plan to fixate on wider coaching theories here, but I better sling in an important note for newbies before I move on. Most of the sessions I/we are involved with are winter then spring sessions for junior regional players; typically aged 10-15. (And yes, we then run the teams through the summer). In this arena, a reasonably high volume of practice around traditionally-identified skills feels both appropriate and surely necessary – particularly (perhaps?) if there’s a kind of sliding scale through which more experienced players get more freedom to choose and/or ‘experiment?’

I accept there is a danger that coaches get this balancing-act wrong, staying too close to ancient truths, offering too little of what more contemporary modes and manuals have been calling ‘player-centred’ activity; possibly or probably enacting a kind of conservatism amidst a festival of radical change. So there are buts… and we must remain open and watchful. Everything depends upon skill and confidence levels, and what individual players need – in their view as well as the coaches – to equip them for the game(s) ahead.

Let’s close this out. My own coaching venn-diagram certainly includes (for example) the maker’s name mantra but is freer, less didactic and more fun (I hope) than just rehearsing straight-batted shots.

A) The game *really has* moved on and b) we coaches surely have to accept that whilst there may be some value in Core Principles, it’s both philosophically right and right in terms of execution to support options. Because c) young players are seeing a different game, with wilder(?) freer, more dynamic responses by batters. Most of their cricket is limited; meaning time-frames around ‘getting in’ or ‘settled’ may be counted in seconds, not overs. Rules no longer rule in the same way, if at all. In short coaches have to let go, and be more generous, in the modern era. We may need more and better questions, and less demonstrations.

But bowling.

I swing – see what I did there? – between muting the tellybox and *really listening*. When the pundits are at it, I mean. Clearly some are ver-ry good – genuine analysts as well as talking heads.

In recent months, as a fraudulent member of the Fast Bowler’s Union, I have really enjoyed some of the talk about bowling; in particular the shift towards describing finer, touchy-feelier movements – like ‘finger pressure’.

Historically Anderson has been both articulate and generous in offering fascinating detail on ‘feel’ and consciousness. Jimmy has been unusually watchable – he’s a dour and sometimes sour fella, let’s be honest – in this respect. But wonderfully aware of both wider body movements – what we might call stature/flow/outlines – and how his hand/wrist/fingers work. This coach rarely falls into anorakdom but I have actually sought out Anderson masterclasses on the interweb… and found them really interesting.

Much of the beauty and thrill of quickish or seam/swing bowling is at the outer limits of that which can be described. Happy Days – it’s ‘magical’ and exciting in a way that resists capture. But Anderson has spoken of a light grip; of that awareness of touch; of ju-ust pushing a little with one finger, to direct or characterise the delivery. Repeatedly, or with subtle, subtle changes, mind: and at mid-eighties miles an hour. Yes the seam is cantered; yes, some bowlers change their approach or ‘block themselves off’ a little, but awareness of finger pressure?!? Racing in, angry, knackered and under a cruel spotlight? Wow. This is truly elite-level consciousness.

It may have been Stuart Broad who used the phrase ‘finger pressure’, this summer. (From memory, Jimmy’s been more of a ‘soft fingers’ man). The FP thing has been adopted onto TV coverage – and it’s a mantra I may use. Partly because it speaks to the fabulousness and the control we can have, the power of minutiae. We feeble humans can do ridicu-stuff like this, when we fix our consciousness so beautifully and completely. Now how to coach that?

I have always loved bowling. The feel of that shiny ball; the challenges around controlling the fekker. Is there swing? How did I get it? Why didn’t that one swing when I’m sure I did the same thing? Do I run in and think of nothing else but soft fingers? (Sometimes I think that works). Or do I cop out and bowl off-cutters? No. Come on, steer it. Some of this has to be about belief.

I take time out to eyeball my players and speak of this crazy magic. Of why it’s my favourite part of the game – just playing around with the ball. They won’t understand everything, because I’ve been lumping in these ver-ry abstract ideas about trying to be conscious and their young minds may not grasp hold of that. But they will and I think do get a sense that I love it, and I want them to enjoy throwing themselves into the adventure. “Bowling is magic. Look at the state of me. 124. And I still absolutely love it.”

So in the nets it’s about finding something. Go have a play. But a play *where you notice things* – because how else can you control?

I may need a month away somewhere exotic, or a pint of poteen, or a long, deep sleep. To find the words, the New Superlatives. But there’s that over-riding urge, is there not, to record it now – the thrill, the love, the stand-up-and-raise-the-rafters-ness? Stokes. Anderson. Robinson. Bazza. And a Great Moment in Sport.

Almost obscured by that other, obscene giant, flashing it’s gaudy wares at us from the fucking desert, we find, we stumble-upon Another England playing with the kind of absurd generosity that Southgate could never even contemplate: Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes engineering a thrilling contest from a ‘feather bed’, an unforgiving ‘road’, a ‘dustbowl’. Because why not, why wouldn’t you, if you really understand what sport is, or what it can aspire towards?

A final day at Rawalpindi that owed everything to the very rarest combination of ambition for the whole game, as opposed to just the win; thereby re-affirming something a whole lot simpler and purer than some spurious Spirit of Cricket. Yes, McCullum’s blokey machismo may be flawed or even questionable, *on times*… but no, today is not one of those times. Today is a day to savour the life-affirming brilliance of his statement of faith and the new, joyful supremacy of a timeless idea: to enact that inviolable connection between responsibility and execution.

Bazza believes there is a Right Way and that confidence and liberation can take us there. In the wider context of a sport in some turmoil and under some threat – chiefly due to diabolical and generally avaricious government – This England are bypassing all that selfish ‘radical’ market-conservatism. This England are world-leaders in challenging.

Maybe the details don’t matter (but that declaration, tho’?)

Offering 343 with ridicu-lumps of time left? Nobody does that, in this situation, on that road. Nobody. Stokes did, because it was right and it made the game. Then that old bloke who can only bowl in the gloom at Trent Bridge does his thing and Stokes himself finds some truly fabulous leg-cutters and fatty Robinson finds some reverse and waddyaknow? Despite bumps in that road – howlers plural, from Pope, behind the sticks and gritty defiance from the last pair – the four-eyed slap’ead (who can’t turn it) claims the final wicket in a win that might need those aforementioned New Superlatives. England win a stone-dead test.

It was a privilege for those us who were able to watch the final day play out – even if just on the tellybox. The boldness was already fixed in but the bowlers needed to find spirit and guts as well as a disciplined line and length. Allegedly the pitch was going to offer nothing. Allegedly reverse might… but its influence on the game had been relatively minimal so far. Stokes opted to go all-in on the aggressive field-placements – he had to, right, to execute the unlikely win? – and press the Superhuman button again, again. The fella’s almost certainly in some discomfort but bowled a zillion overs of inventive, probing medium fast, endlessly beating the outside edge with leg-cutters/reversing outswingers.

Robinson, we hope, is on the proverbial journey towards better understandings around race and civility but the lad’s arrived as an international bowler. Some time ago, in fact. At a warmish ‘Pindi he found energy and threat for good periods: on times he even found some bounce. Anderson got his wily head on and bowled with shrewd, unshowy economy. It was an outstanding effort from an allegedly limited seam attack.

Spin-wise, there is a clear argument that Will Jacks is The Story: ‘Part-timer Gets Six On Debut’. But as time tightened and the drama focused, Stokes looked to Leach. After tea he bowled maidens just when they were needed. When Ali, in particular and Shah defied, at the death, he nailed the latter with a floaty, loopy one. The affectionate slaps to that pate told of the pleasure that final wicket gave to his comrades. Leach plainly contributes – perhaps more than those of us on the outside give him credit for.

This was all constructed upon the bulwark of big runs… and a spectacularly dynamic run-rate. So engineered from the off, by that culture of boldness. Stat-men and statesmen were no doubt consulted, pre- and post the toss: resolutions made, pictures painted. Last Day scenarios would have been mentally rehearsed from the moment Duckett and Crawley first went out to bat: An Approach agreed or reinforced.

Who cares, ultimately, where the percentages between laddish bravado and philosophical righteousness lie? Not me, not today. England were what we have so often called ‘worthy winners’ – they kinda defined that. The game won, too.

Pic from Sky Sports.