The Teesra

Category: batting

  • “Running two” – a modified fielding practice that also develops batting stroke placement and decision making.

    Back in the summer, one of the teams I coached was having problems picking up singles and twos – their innings progressed by a succession of big hits and run outs – so we developed a game to practice shot placement and decision making.

    I called it “run 1, run 2”, because that is what I kept calling out to the batsmen, but you might come up with a better name!

    Try it, though – we found that the results were encouraging, and, as with many games, the tactical challenges were as interesting as the technical.

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  • One hand, one bounce – what’s that got to do with coaching?

    When I started out at my local Club as a volunteer, level 1 Coaching Assistant, sessions were taken by an exuberant 1st XI player – lots of enthusiasm, diving catches and (attempted) big hitting, and always a fiercely contested session of one hand – one bounce, usually with said 1st XI player dominating the game.

    The players seemed to love this activity, but to me, as a newly qualified “proper” coach, it looked as if one hand-one bounce existed only so the star player could show off.  Not coaching, at all.

    It’s fair to say that I never liked one hand – one bounce, but I have recently started to include it my own sessions with our Club U9s.  And I think it has a place in the games-based learning panoply.

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  • A response to “Coaching: a fabulous crisis” – part 2, what is a batting coach?

    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.

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