I wrote recently about the importance of communication in coaching.
I don’t think this point can be over-emphasised – communication is absolutely key. A coach could be knowledgeable, perceptive, empathetic, and enthusiastic, but if he can’t communicate all of these qualities he might just as well stand at the back of the net with his iPhone!
But clearly there is more to coaching than putting across the right message, at the right time.
So – what makes a good a coach?
This autumn we are very lucky to have a full team of qualified coaches working with our Colts section. Not only does this mean that the volunteer coaches get the chance to work with more experienced coaches, it also means that we have the luxury of occasionally taking a step back from running a session to actively observe what is going in.
And some of the things we have seen, even in the warm-ups, have confirmed a growing suspicion about the fundamental athletic abilities, such as speed, strength and agility, demonstrated by our players.
We are working with a group of talented young cricketers who are not always equally talented athletes.
But a series of observations that confirm a suspicion only poses the question – what can we, as cricket coaches, do to help our cricketers to become (better) athletes at the same time as developing their technical, tactical and psychological cricketing skills? We are cricket coaches, not track and field, or gymnastics.
So I was very lucky to attend a breakfast workshop recently with Kelvin Giles, where he addressed the topic of physical literacy. And the more I heard, the more I became convinced that basic physical literacy could be the answer to our (cricket-related) athlete development challenge.
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald provoked an interesting discussion on LinkedIn about the importance of communication for the coach.
The article featured descriptions of individual batsmen’s techniques, including in-depth analysis of (perceived) technical flaws.
To be fair to Neil D’Costa, the Aussie coach who came in for some criticism on the LinkedIn group, the descriptions look to me to contain pretty accurate diagnostic pen pictures, highlighting diversions from the “orthodox” technical models that we all refer back to. We could argue about the remedies proposed, but I think the potential technical issues have been clearly identified.
Whether they have been communicated adequately or appropriately is a different matter, however.
The Teesra 