The Teesra

Category: batting

  • Do I have to hit it? SSG for the forward defensive…and more

    Latest addition to my collection of constrained SSGs — didn’t have a name for it at the time, but the theme is “block or whack”.

    I have a large group of U11s (large for the available indoor space), with a range of abilities and attention spans (this is an after-school activity, and I know how hard it can be to focus on “drills” after a day in class).

    I was keen to find a game that could test a valid batting technique whilst also challenging decision making. Oh, and I needed something to engage their attention.

    So a session centred on the front-foot defensive might seem an odd choice.

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  • Online coach development — more than just “telling”, surely?

    A Twitter contact (X contact?) posted this the other day.

    Excerpted from ECB research into helping coaches “develop potential international batters”

    Anything that increases time spent playing at the expense of deconstructed “skill drills” is going to find favour with an advocate for the ecological dynamics and a constraints-led approach (like me!).

    So I’d buy into this as an underlying coaching philosophy, although the numbers look low, too me. Only 50% “play” for young players — so the rest is still chores?. And just 40% “…highly random and game-based…”?

    But there’s surely a problem with “broadcast coach development”.

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  • 40 years of bat

    40 years of bat

    I posted a couple of months ago about my cricketing 50th anniversary — 50 years since I first played, back in 1973. And I have just realised that I am using a bat that is modelled on one I bought 40 years ago.

    The face is just about held together with tape!
    Not that clear in the pic, but the bat is split from toe to splice!
    My original GN500

    Not quite Trigger’s broom (or Plutarch’s Ship of Theseus, for the more Classically-minded), but there is a direct lineage from my old Gray-Nicolls GN500 to the bat(s) I have used this season with the Essex Seniors over60s.

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