The Teesra

Category: Good Cricket

as opposed to bad cricket, of which there is too much; very subjective — my “Good Cricket” might bore you to tears, but it is still good for me

  • Team building – numbers and culture

    Your pre-season planning will be well in hand, now, I’m sure. Winter nets in full swing, working parties planned to spruce up the pavilion and repair the sight screens, grant applications in place.

    It will soon be time to think about selecting the team for the first fixtures. How many players do you need? The obvious answer is 11, of course. But how many of them do you need to be in form and making a contribution each week?

    In a typically insightful article last year, Ed Smith quoted Sir Alex Ferguson as saying that he needed only eight players performing well to win a game.

    Just eight. And Smith gives examples of teams that have been successful with contributions from an even smaller proportion of their players.

    Which is not to say that Sir Alex would ever have sent a team onto the pitch with only eight players, nor that the other three simply stood around for 90 minutes and did nothing.

    We do definitely need 11 players. But what should we expect from the three or four who won’t be scoring runs or taking wickets, and how do we prepare them to play that role? (more…)

  • How to win at cricket – what the skipper really needs to know

    This summer (every summer, it seems), questions were raised about Alistair Cook’s performance as captain of England.

    And around the country, I suspect that (almost) every Club captain has been criticised, at some time in the season, for changing the bowling at the wrong time, for not changing the bowling, for setting the wrong field, for getting the batting order wrong, for picking the wrong team, for the wicket, for the teas…

    Get it right, and everyone will say – “what a good team”; get it wrong, and it will be “find a new captain”.

    So is it any wonder that we sometimes struggle to find volunteers to fill these essential Club roles?

    The challenge, as with most cricket skills, is that talent alone (assuming you have any…) will only take you so far as a skipper – to become truly competent you need to practice.  And that means putting up your hand at the next AGM, taking the reins, and taking on the captaincy.  And hoping that the criticism you receive won’t be so depressing that you give up after one season, vowing never to stand as skipper ever again. (more…)

  • Stefan – RIP

    This week we lost a young Club member who made an immense impact on his team mates in the short time he was with us.

    I have known Stefan (or “Frenchie”, as we called him; our first – and only – French-born cricketer) for 8 years, from when he joined the club as a cheeky member of the junior section.

    Stefan grew from the cheeky Colt to be a fine young man, a source of genuine human warmth and good humour, who could share a joke with his team mates or the opposition, who always played the game the right way – to win, yes, but not at any cost.

    I last played with him just 7 weeks’ ago, in our final League game of 2014. Stefan opened the batting and top scored for us; we could not quite find a way to win the game (our opponents might just as well say that we just managed to save the game)…good cricket, played in a great spirit. Most games with Stefan felt like that.

    The Club lost two senior members in the last year – players the Club has known for 40 or 50 years, who have played and served on Committees, had a beer or two in the bar, and grown (more or less gracefully) older with us.

    Men of whom it could truly be said “they had a good innings” (metaphorically, if not literally with the bat).

    The news of Stefan’s sudden passing, at just 20 years of age, has shocked and saddened everyone at the Club.  Stefan has left us all too soon.

    Keep smiling Frenchie. And ‘though you won’t be with us, we will keep smiling when we think of you.

    Stefan Premadasan – 1994-2014