The Teesra

Category: Games based learning

cricket games-based learning

  • Coach as “learning consultant” — can we help players to learn how to learn?

    Coach as “learning consultant” — can we help players to learn how to learn?

    Barney Ronay posted this, typically insightful, article on the recriminations after England’s latest Ashes drubbing — Not all failings of England’s Test team can be blamed on County cricket.

    One line stands out, for me.

    “Root’s complaints about not replicating exactly the conditions of Test cricket in advance are the words of a sports person who has been cosseted through a system from boyhood, who feels it is an oversight not to be spoon-fed the perfect prep…”

    Not, perhaps, that players expect to be spoon-fed, but that they perhaps don’t know how to learn if they are not spoon-fed?

    This might be key, beyond discussion of central contracts and what the England coaches actually do, beyond CAG & Academy pathways and inclusion, right back to how young players are first introduced to the game.

    So the question might be — do coaches know how to teach young players to learn?

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  • I like games…but it turns out I have misunderstood the video game approach to designing practice activities

    Fascinating to hear more from Amy Price speaking on iCoachCricket about her video game approach (VGA) to designing practice activities.

    Back in 2018 I tried to devise a couple of vga-inspired games, but, working way below the “high performance” level, I was looking for games-based activities that teach players how to play cricket, not how to play the games.

    In truth, my games are really gamified drills, and lack the strategising amd meta-cognitive elements that are clearly central to Amy’s conception of VGA.

    What follows are some initial thoughts on modifying Amy’s game (you will need to watch the series of videos on iCoachCricket) to support my notion of “purposeful” cricket practice, whilst introducing more of the “thinking about thinking” that is key to VGA.

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  • Adaptive formats in cricket — good for…anything?

    Clubs in England have been able to play cricket for nearly a month, now.

    It’s not cricket as we know it, perhaps, but recreational cricket is back [1]. T20 & 40 over, mostly, from what I have seen, but with multiple junior formats.

    Perhaps it is easy to forget, now, the trepidation around the dreaded phrase “adapted” (or was it “adaptive”) gameplay that was promised by the ECB’s roadmap for the return of recreational cricket.

    Because the original version of the ECB Roadmap described a step 4 of “socially distanced matches” with

    • COVID-19 adaptations for adult cricket
    • COVID-19 adaptations for junior cricket
    • Shorter formats — to allow more matches to take place…

    And that third bullet received an especially blunt response on my twitter timeline:

    “If it’s 8-a-side, 20 overs, then I’m not playing.”

    I can just about see this for adult, recreational cricket — you pay your money for a game on Saturday afternoon, and you want a game. Maybe T20 doesn’t cut it, for you. For some, it’s a run chase and a result, for others, a few hours respite from the day-to-day worries.

    But is a 40-over bash, with little context, really going to be that satisfying? Might something more deliberately “developmental” have been a better way to spend the truncated summer of 2020?

    And for junior cricket, what format might give players the opportunity to learn more about the game?

    What follows is a lengthy, almost entirely subjective, analysis of what constitutes a “good” format — it reflects what I believe (based on 45 years playing experience, 10 years coaching), with no empirical data to back it up. Of course, you are free to disagree…just apply your own rules to justify what you do. But don’t do something without thinking through why.

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