Holiday camps — turning long days into learning opportunities

Over the Easter holidays I coached on a couple of holiday camps. Good fun, but quite hard work.

For coaches and players.

Six hour days are long, not only for the younger groups. How often does a 16 year old get to play cricket all day? With the proliferation of short-form (not a bad thing, of itself) even a 40-over game is the exception. Yet the coaches are charged with engaging the players for a similar length of time, or longer.

I wonder if we could develop a narrative to run through the day? Perhaps by linking to a day’s match play. And putting the skills we coach into context.

A couple of examples might help, here.

“One day cricket” (6+ hours)

• Morning session (with a “drinks break” half way through).
  • team building (we’ve all seen pro’s playing football on the morning of a game!);
  • facing/bowling with the new ball, emphasising the particular skills needed in this phase of the game — building an innings vs. taking wickets;
  • running between the wickets (rotating the strike/keeping the scoreboard moving; made competitive by playing “runners vs. fielders” aka “run him (or her) out!”).

• Followed by lunch.

• Then an afternoon session, again with “drinks”.
  • a chance for a vigorous fielding practice, to get the players engaged again after lunch;
  • focus on acceleration/containment — more expansive/innovative strokes vs. bowling variations, perhaps

• Followed by tea.

• Then the evening session, with a final drinks break before the closing game.
  • winning the game; scoring quick runs, hitting big vs. taking wickets;
  • playing the game — long(er) format, but not “if you’re out, you are out” (too brutal, and can leave a player’s last memory of the day as being sat down wondering how they missed that straight ball…).

Each session scaled to fit the available time — 2 hours each, 40 minutes “lunch”, 20 minutes “tea”, if we have the players for 7 hours in total, perhaps 1 hour 45 minutes session (and a shorter tea break) for 6 hour days.

“Short form” (3 to 4 hours)

• For a 4 hour session, approximate T20 timings with an “innings break” in the middle
  • Powerplay — scoring runs without losing (too many) wickets vs. taking wickets without giving up too many runs;
  • “being the finisher” & bowling at “the death”;
  • street20 (20 balls per innings, 15-20 minutes per game — a three-team tournament could be played in one hour, with the non-playing team scoring/umpiring/analysing).

Sub-sessions — structuring activities for learning

Within each sub-section, I am a big fan of “whole-part-whole” — play a game (“whole”) & highlight a specific skill; isolate and coach that skill (“part”); then repeat the game (“whole”) to put the skill in context.

If we can, testing new skills with appropriate opposition — cricket is always batter vs. bowler, so why not practice this way, too?

Make it “representative”, in fact.

A better way to spend 7 hours?

The challenge was to make best use of a full day of cricket coaching.

Narrative, and representative practice environments, might be one way to go with this.