Belonging; learning together

Fascinating post from Harry Curtin, on Substack, on how he modified his school rugby coaching sessions to focus on promoting connectedness within a team environment and to move from having the coach explicitly coaching to allowing the players (collaboratively) to learn.

And it set me trying to think of a similar approach in cricket.

I have long believed that there is only so much coaching (for which, read “instructing”) that a coach can usefully do before the players have to start learning themselves.

Over the COVID lockdown, I was introduced to learning design, and the concept of learning as a conversational framework — a series of interactions, between teacher & student, student & learning curriculum, student & student, even student & “real life”, incorporating a range of Learning Types (LTs; not to be confused with learning styles).

But one LT I struggled with was the discussion, an exchange of knowledge and opinions between peers. We spend too long talking as it is.

But Harry’s take on the Line Game, a simple small-sided game, where the players choose the skills they want to work on and collaborate with each other to test & develop those skills, gave me an idea.

We could use something like the battle zones” model, but for a team game, cricket is a very 1-on-1 contest — batter vs. bowler, with the other players helping but only after the main contest, when the batter faces up to the bowler.

So collaborative learning might be best facilitated by setting batters & bowlers to work together. Most probably in a net setting; ideally with bowlers delivering 3-4 ball spells in rotation (other bowlers can be deployed on e.g. pitch maps & wagon wheels).

This is, at first glance, more confrontational than collaborative — I always tell the young bowlers who I work with that we only allow batters to play so we can get them out!

But what if we set a bowler to “work out” the batter’s strengths & weaknesses, and to find ways to nullify the former and exploit the latter?

And tell the batter what they see, and what they are doing in response to those observations.

The batter works to spot the bowler’s plans & variations (and repeated poor deliveries), and similarly is challenged to keep out the good deliveries and score off the others.

Ask the players to share what they have observed, and their approach to winning the “game”.

Both players get to practice at a higher level of intensity than a simple net, and to receive immediate feedback. They also get to practice the skill of “reading” an opponent, live rather than on video.

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This is, perhaps, an extension of earlier ideas about “the player as Analyst”, but transposing it into a discussion (with actions) between two players.

The success of such an activity does assume a reasonable understanding of technique, and where to look when assessing an opponent…another topic.