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coaching cricket session planning

Just watching some cricket…with a coaching twist, of course

With a tentative return to 1-to-1 practice in the nets, announced last week, cricket in England is at last beginning the slow march back, post-lockdown.

But no amount of nets, or online video drills or S&C, nor even SSGs and conditioned games as the lockdown loosens further, will make up for not playing much (any) actual cricket in 2020.

For the younger players (for all players, probably), the greatest loss will be game time, experience gained by simply playing the game.

Is there anything coaches can do to make up this deficit, whilst coaching remotely?

How about asking the players to just watch some cricket?

Continue reading “Just watching some cricket…with a coaching twist, of course”
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coaching coaching children cricket culture

Culture — from the professional game to the U9s

Last week, I sat in on a webinar, organised by Essex Cricket in the Community (ECiC), that featured a talk from Anthony McGrath, Head Coach of the 2019 County Championship and T20 Blast Double Winners.

I was fascinated to hear about the culture that “Mags” is creating in the 1st XI Squad at Chelmsford and, importantly, how that same culture applies across the Academy and Development Pathway.

Maybe this sort of sharing goes on all the time. I have little contact with the development pathway or the pro game.

But as a grassroots children’s coach, I find this sort of information really helpful. If I am to shape a culture in the environment I work in (coach as environmental and cultural engineer), surely it makes sense if it can match that higher up the pathway (assuming that culture is healthy and positive, of course — this most certainly seems to be).

Continue reading “Culture — from the professional game to the U9s”
Categories
cricket

Reflections On and With Mosston’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles

In recent posts I have reflected on the toolkit available to coaches, and on the ways that different tools can be applied.

We talk of “random” or “game” practices, of Practice vs. Play, of Constraints-Led vs. Games Sense activities, but very often the definitions applied to each coaching style or intervention is poorly defined, especially in terms of who does what.

So perhaps we need some tools to help with reflection.

One such is Mosston’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles.

Mosston’s Spectrum is a classification of teaching styles with decision making as a central defining characteristic — when the decisions are taken (pre-delivery, delivery, post) and by whom (teacher or learner).

I was interested to find out more from the recently published tome The Spectrum of Teaching Styles in Physical Education, edited by Brendan SueSee, Mitch Hewitt & Shane Pill.

Continue reading “Reflections On and With Mosston’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles”