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

  • 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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  • From a “holistic approach to talent development” to suggestions for grassroots coaching

    I was very taken by this infographic from Alex Lascu, and the thinking behind it.

    It captures so much of what I believe is good about current coaching practice, but also sets a high standard for “talent pathway” coaches to aspire to.

    There was some discussion on Twitter of the applicability of the advice to grassroots coaching.

    One senior coach commented that he believed that most clubs ran a “talent” development programme, even if that wasn’t the label it was given. We are all looking to find and develop talented players…although, for some of us, “talent” might be the ability to mix with team mates, to muck in and get things done around the club, rather than bowl at 85 mph and hit 90m bombs, 360°.

    I believe strongly in a joined-up development pathway, with best practice and ideology shared across the game, from Test to primary school. It makes sense (to me) if we all (Performance/Talent, Development, Grassroots) followed a similar philosophy.

    So what follows is my attempt to re-position Alex’s guidelines very specifically for the grassroots coach.

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  • Culture — from the professional game to the U9s

    Culture — from the professional game to the U9s

    Last week, I sat in on a webinar, organised by Essex Cricket in the Community (ECiC), that featured a talk from Anthony McGrath, Head Coach of the 2019 County Championship and T20 Blast Double Winners.

    I was fascinated to hear about the culture that “Mags” is creating in the 1st XI Squad at Chelmsford and, importantly, how that same culture applies across the Academy and Development Pathway.

    Maybe this sort of sharing goes on all the time. I have little contact with the development pathway or the pro game.

    But as a grassroots children’s coach, I find this sort of information really helpful. If I am to shape a culture in the environment I work in (coach as environmental and cultural engineer), surely it makes sense if it can match that higher up the pathway (assuming that culture is healthy and positive, of course — this most certainly seems to be).

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