The Teesra

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  • ECB CA Conference Review #ECBCAConference

    I am slowly recovering from a hectic couple of days at the ECB Coaches Association Conference at the weekend.

    Leaving the house at 6 am, and listening to Ashley Giles talk about his career, and his journey from player to coach, at midnight…a long and fascinating first day, followed by six straight hours of workshop and presentation on Sunday.

    Taken singly, every presentation contained nuggets of interest.  Taken together, and with the added bonus of a group of like-minded cricket coaches to share ideas with, there was almost too much to absorb in one weekend, and I am sure to be coming up with new ideas for months to come.

    However, the key themes of the weekend were encapsulated for me in the title of the opening keynote from Frank Dick: Winning Matters – and, by extension, so does the role of the coach in developing the pathway towards victory.

    The word “difference” came up a lot, too – we were exhorted to be “the difference that makes a difference”; “thinking differently [and] performing better”.

    Frank challenged us all to come up with a way to become that “winning difference” – I am still working on mine.

    (more…)

  • on culture – core values and clear purpose

    I have just listened to a webinar by Dr Wade Gilbert, hosted by Human Kinetics, in which Dr Gilbert presented a toolkit to help make adherence to the core values central to the culture of the team or organisation – to “normalise the abnormal”, as he put it.

    • define & repeatedly articulate the core values
    • actively teach the core values
      • often this will mean the coach modelling the desired values
    • recruit players who already share the core values (not always possible at every level, admittedly)
    • reward appropriate behaviours (and punish backsliding)

  • 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…)