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

  • We win! Back to the drawing board…

    It’s a common enough refrain from managers and coaches after a heavy defeat, or at the end of an unsuccessful season – we will have to go back to the drawing board/training ground, or (in the modern idiom) get back to our “processes”…

    Perfectly understandable, and certainly not wrong.

    But what to do when you have just recorded a winning season?  When teams have won divisional titles and promotions, when the Colts section has dominated County age group competitions, and produced players who now expect to score runs in senior cricket.

    Back to the drawing board, I say!

    When you are strong, that is the time to put in the hard yards to make next season, and the seasons to follow, even better. (more…)

  • Shall we watch the ODI? Nah, let’s kick a football around the park

    I was coaching on Wednesday night.  I managed to find regular excuses to return to the club, to collect another piece of kit and to sneak a look at the telly and to keep an eye on the score in the 4th ODI between England and New Zealand.

    We finished at 8, and with England needing another 150 in 20 overs or so, I expected the players to come into the club to watch the game.  Five minutes later, they were back out on the park, playing football.

    Live international cricket lost out to a kick around.

  • England’s DNA – how the FA define their philosophy #playingyourpart

    I spent last Sunday with a group of football coaches from the FA East region, finding out about the FA’s new initiative, “England’s DNA”.

    With presentations and coaching demonstrations on “who we are”, “the future player”, “how we coach”, “how we play” and “how we support”, the day offered both theoretical and practical guidance as to how the FA expects its coaches to develop the Future Player – from grassroots to the international stage.

    For all the fanfare around the “DNA”, perhaps most revealing was the statement, in an introductory video, that there was, in fact, no fixed model – as soon as a document is written, it goes out of date (or evolves, to maintain the biological metaphor).

    What was offered was a framework, beyond the “4 corners” (see below) for the philosophical grounding of football coaching.

    It sounds quite high-powered – in fact, it was practical and realistic, and there are definitely lessons to be learnt.

    (more…)