In part 1 of this response to Rick Walton’s post “Coaching: a fabulous crisis”, I tried to outline my own approach to coaching batters.
In this section, I want to investigate some of the knowledge and characteristics that a modern batting coach might need.
Continue reading A response to “Coaching: a fabulous crisis” – part 2, what is a batting coach?
In Coaching: a fabulous crisis, Rick Walton encapsulated the dilemma facing the batting coach today – in an era when “if the ball goes to the fence, anything goes”, what is the role of the coach?
Graham Gooch, in a coaching programme available to purchase via PitchVision, succinctly described the role of the batsman as being a run maker – ultimately, that’s all there is to it.
You don’t have to be stylish or technically “correct” (although elements of style or of a textbook technique might well emerge as long as they contribute to successful outcomes); you do have to score runs, ideally as quickly as conditions allow and the match situation demands.
So, for the batting coach – help the batters you work with to score runs.
Technical models help, if the player’s own technique lets her down; core principles (can) help to identify exactly what is going wrong.
But most important is to get the batter playing strokes and scoring runs.
If you haven’t yet read Rick’s post – start here!
Continue reading A response to “Coaching: a fabulous crisis” – part 1, just let them play!
Here is another reblog, this time from Rick Walton’s cricketmanwales blog, on the challenges facing batting coaches in an era when describing a batsman’s technique as “textbook” can almost be seen as a criticism.
Includes links to a couple of fascinating batting masterclasses.
For those of you who already know Rick’s writing, you will know what to expect. For anyone who has not yet experienced the passion, the honesty of CricketManWales, you are in for a treat.
@cricketmanwales is asking the important question – what now for batting coaches? Have a read & have your say! 🏏❓❓❓
We can’t pretend nothing’s changed; everything’s changed. McCullum plays baseball cum tennis, with hands eight feet apart, off a wide, elasticated base. Pietersen says ‘kiss the ball’ – it’s all about head – and forget (or trust?) your feet. Nye Donald (a fair symbol for the next, irresistible generation?) has high, twitchy hands, intent on pulls and slaps – and he’s opening. The old certainties are buried.
Or are they?
All of us coaches at all of our levels are scrambling across the fallen masonry. It’s the age of the positive, the pre-emptive counter-attack, the bomb squad. Levels of change, development or challenge have become become so-o tectonically shifted it’s become unthinkable to deal in classical batting… or has it?
A series of Sky Sports Masterclasses have felt central to the annihilation of all we knew; or maybe they’ve simply enacted the moment of kerrplunk. Hussein and Key and Vaughan…
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