I watched two coaching demonstrations at the ECB Coaches Association Conference – a batting session with Graham Thorpe and a spin bowling one with Chris Brown.
Both deployed a range of drills to challenge and develop specific skills, but, if I am honest, I wasn’t really that interested in the cones, hurdles and baseball mitts.
I was much more interested in hearing what the experienced coaches were saying to the player. (more…)
Interesting conversation with a parent after one of my sessions last week.
We had been working on hitting front foot drives, and had finished with a game, with bobble feeds from the coach – making it “too easy” for the players to hit the ball.
As I explained to the parent, just about the only way for a batter to strike a low bouncing (almost rolling) delivery back towards the feeder is with a vertical bat – the feed forced the batsmen to approximate the front foot drive, rather than just hitting the ball anyhow.
A perfectly reasonable question…I probably should make a point of explaining some of the “madness” to the parents, in future.
I have posted previously on my conversion to games-based learning, and on the challenges of designing games that are both “representative” (of the real game, and that therefore require the players to develop transferable cricket skills) but at the same time not so constrained and artificial as to no longer be fun to play (the “game” element is important, because we want the players to come back to it again and again). (more…)
The Teesra 