The Teesra

Category: player retention

keeping players in the game (and bringing them back)

  • What makes a good “development” club?

    I posted earlier today on a proposal for an alternative development pathway for U13 cricket in England.

    In that post, I included a set of criteria for identifying a “good” club — good, in this context, meaning one that could be entrusted with leading a local development cluster at U13.

    The list originated in a discussion of a fictitious “Top 100 Clubs” feature article for one of the cricket magazines, to sit alongside their “Top 100 Schools” pieces.

    I left the list as a work-in-progress, but it is, perhaps, an interesting project it its own right.

    My initial list:

    • Retention — do players stay with the Club over time, or drift in and out again?
    • Accessibility & inclusion (both by ability & age — good clubs welcome late starters).
    • Diversity of players & coaches (contentious; needs to be context-sensitive; difficult to quantify).
    • Parental engagement (see above).
    • “Lived” coaching philosophy — do coaches “walk the walk”?
    • Outreach & recruitment (active or passive?).
    • Further down the list: games won — I do believe that winning matters!
    (more…)
  • What are we going to do next? Thoughts on the new development pyramid at U13, post-ICEC.

    What are we going to do next? Thoughts on the new development pyramid at U13, post-ICEC.

    County Age Group coaches and pathway leaders should be tasked, as part of the State Schools Action Plan…, with delivering a positive State school cricket offering at the U10-U13 level.

    Holding Up a Mirror to Cricket — A Report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket, June 2023: Recommendation 41

    The intention behind this, as with all of the recommendations in the ICEC Report, being to reduce inequity in the game — in this instance, specifically targeting the under-representation of State school educated players in the professional game.

    This recommendation (shifting U13 CAG coaches from selective pathways into schools) sits alongside a wider feeling that U13 is too simply early to select (and de-select) players.

    Holding Up a Mirror to Cricket — A Report by the Independent Commission on Equity in Cricket, June 2023: Recommendation 40

    In the course of a lengthy conversation on this subject with fellow coaches on the future (on X-tter — it’s not entirely toxic on there), we were challenged to envisage what the new pyramid at U13 might look like.

    My attempt to answer this (modified a little since the original discussion), follows.

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  • Attrition in junior membership numbers — can we encourage “drop-ins”?

    Really interesting from Professor Catherine Woods of University of Limerick in her presentation “Youth Sport Dropout: Prevention is Better than Cure” at the iCoachKids (virtual) Conference on 2nd December 2020.

    Professor Woods’ main focus was on ways of keeping junior players engaged with sport as they get a little older (see below for a link to the presentation).

    But something else she said really chimed with me — some sports seem to get a second intake of “drop-ins”, with junior participants transferring in from another sport.

    Dropout does not have to mean STOP. Sport specific dropout does not have to lead to sport general dropout.

    Professor Catherine Woods, University of Limerick

    But this begs the question — what can cricket do to facilitate “drop-in”?

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