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

  • Performance goals (2) – putting some numbers against the targets

    There has been an interesting discussion on the LinkedIn group “Cricket Coaches Worldwide” about the use of fielding analysis data recording at club level.  The (mostly full-time?) coaches are collecting more and more detailed data about every aspect of the game, and using it to inform training and development planning.

    But one of the challenges that the coaches identified was that of data quality – you can spend your day (or allocate someone else’s day) to collecting all manner of match-day stats, but they can only be as useful as the analysis that you perform (and the insight drawn from the analyses).

    I wondered if there were any simpler numbers that might help to drive personal and team performance goals.  So here are my back-of-an-envelope metrics for “good cricket” – by which I mean “winning cricket”.

    (more…)

  • On deadly ground, fight

    “On deadly ground, fight…Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape…and there is nothing they may not achieve.”  So wrote Sun Tzu, in his Art of War.

    That sounds like fighting talk…but what does a Chinese general, strategist and philosopher, writing some 2,500 years ago, have to say about cricket?

    I watched the second innings of an indoor game yesterday morning.  With little chance of defending a very low first innings total, the bowling side took the only approach open to them – to try to bowl the opposition out.  And they succeeded.

    OK.  Division 3 of a local indoor cricket competition is hardly Sun Tzu’s “deadly ground”, but with nothing to lose, they produced a performance as convincing as any I have seen.

    So perhaps there is something in this, for the future of “good cricket”.

    (more…)

  • Match rules again – providing positive incentives for positive cricket

    It’s that time of year, again.  The League is consulting on possible changes to match regulations for the 2013 season.  And the proposal this year is to play a lot more limited overs below 1st XI.

    I can’t fault the logic behind the proposals.  1st XIs already play a lot of limited-over cricket (National, regional and League cup competitons, twenty20, some Sunday league formats), so lower XIs should too.  Many Captains throughout the League, but especially below 1st XI Premier, probably do not really know how to manage a “time” game, let alone how to win one.

    But, as I have written before, my preference for the time game stems from a desire to see all of the skills of the game come into play, and limited overs cricket can (sometimes) require limited skills – what space is there for the young spinner to learn to deceive the batsman with flight, for example?

    I suspect the battle might be lost, this time.  Match rules can be imposed to restrict overly defensive field placings, but perhaps there are more creative ways of providing positive incentives for positive cricket. (more…)