All Stars Summer – the good, the bad and the ugly

We finished our first All Stars Cricket programme at the Club last week.  A lot of fun, and a lot of learning, for All Stars, Activator and Centre Manager.

Did we get everything right, first time?

No…but there was more than enough that went well to make us want to run All Stars Cricket again in 2018.

Continue reading All Stars Summer – the good, the bad and the ugly

Game Sense: Cricket

Now this, from the Drowning in the Shallows blog by @imsporticus, just might be the model for future coaching programmes. Strongly in the “game sense” mould, with the players taking a lot of responsibility for their own learning.

Not that the coach gets to sit down and do nothing for an hour – there will be a lot of observation and analysis, followed by questioning and appropriate feedback; there will be an increased need for imaginative game design, with appropriate progressions planned.

But the potential upside, of developing thinking cricketers, must surely be worth the effort.

drowningintheshallow


As a department we have over timed moved away from ‘sport as sports technique’ method of teaching sports within our curriculum to ‘sport as tactical concepts’. This is in the belief that:

  • The game sets the context of learning and gives that learning some meaning.
  • Play is the true environment within PE and results in improved and sustained motivation.
  • Technique cannot be separated from decision making if we want to help create confident and competent movers within sport.

This process started over 6 years ago and whilst buy in for rugby and football was immediate and has been slowly refined, cricket was resistant to any change. All of us had been taught and have taught cricket in the traditional way and found it difficult to conceptualise a very technical game taught through mainly through games. We were addicted to ‘Grip, Stance, Backlift’ and giving up seemed impossible. This year though…

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