The Teesra

Category: batting

  • Performance goals – what do you want?

    An interesting initiative at our Club this year, in the form of a self-assessment form for all players – strengths, weaknesses, objectives and training needs.

    I don’t know yet how many senior players have actually completed their forms, yet (two weeks into our 18 match League programmes) and I do wonder if there will be a need for the Captains to provide a little direction, but I can see a lot of (potential) positives.

    In the absence of a Coach working with the senior Club, players will need to rely on self analysis and feedback from team mates.  But I suspect that the main benefit of the exercise will be a better understanding of strengths and weaknesses.

    It does not need to run to complex statistical analysis or psychological profiling; just a look at the stats on the Club website will show if you are bowled more often than caught, or if you really are LBW more often than anyone else in the Club.  And from that can come at very least a resolution not to keep hitting the ball in the air.

    This is definitely a project I would hope to be able to implement for the older Colts, maybe not now the season is under-way, but perhaps when we start winter nets, in October.  A little self-awareness is probably a good thing for a young player, if it is supported by a well thought out training and development plan.  More work for the coaches, to design group sessions that support multiple development needs (we won’t have the luxury of individual coaching), but a rewarding challenge, I hope, for coach and players.

    (more…)

  • Don’t do what I do, do what I say…

    To indoor nets last Sunday – my first time as a player for two or three years, and hopefully a preliminary to playing a few games in the summer.

    Remembering the tenets of “purposeful practice”, and everything I say to our Colts when I am coaching, I set myself a couple of very specific goals for my first batting practice.

    1. Play myself in, and adopt a very deliberate structure to the session
      1. 10 balls played with a dead bat, or left alone completely;
      2. 10 balls “looking for singles”, manipulating the ball into imagined gaps;
      3. pick up the pace;
      4. hit anything in sight (it always degenerates to this, in the end – but now I can call it “20/20 practice”).
    2. Try out the “action position” – this sounds like good advice, but I wanted to try it for myself before I suggested that any of the Colts start moving their feet before the ball is released…

    I think I managed my second goal (more on this later).

    But…the second ball I received was full, and slow, and pitched around leg, leg-and-middle. Did I play the dead bat, as per the session goals? (more…)

  • Coaching “intent”

    Over the course of the winter indoor season, our Colts’ teams have twice been turned over by an opposition side fielding two or more spinners.  Not unlike England against Pakistan, in fact.

    There was no suggestion that they were undone by “mystery” spinners, nor even by bowling that was exceptionally good.  They simply did not know how to deal with a problem they had not faced before.

    In truth (and speaking as one of the coaching team), this is a failure of coaching, for not helping them to prepare for new challenges, or for not teaching the young players to think on their feet, most certainly not of the players.

    So the latest edition of the ECB CA “Wings to Fly” could not have been more timely.  The focus is on “purposeful practice” – allowing the players to learn for themselves by making practice as much like the game as possible. (more…)