The Teesra

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”?

WBBL thoughts (2) — is the 23m fielding ring too small?

I watched quite a bit of this year’s WBBL, and a question kept coming up.

The off-side field is packed, but the ball keeps getting hit through to the cover boundary. Why aren’t the fielders stopping the ball?

Are the batters really striking the ball so well, or are the fielders too close to the bat to react, and often too close to each other to move laterally.

I am told, by Raf Nicholson (who knows about this sort of thing), that the fielding circle is currently the same ratio of circle to minimum boundary size for the men and the women (55%).

So 23m it is.

But is this too close?

WBBL thoughts (1) — what a final; what a wonderful advert for the game!

I have enjoyed watching the WBBL, on BT Sport, over the autumn. Mostly the highlights packages, but I did catch the 2nd semi-final live, and the final on Saturday.

What a fantastic game of cricket.

No, I don’t think the Stars batted especially badly, or that the pitch, or the ball, misbehaved.

Yes, the new ball did swing and bounce, but not excessively…I thought it was meant to do a bit. Or should we give the bowlers a bowling machine ball to bowl with, or a baseball, and have them learn to swerve and curve. (A discussion for another post.)

Most certainly not a “disappointment”, as I have seen the game described.

It’s good to see bowlers winning matches (IMO, and writing as a bowler myself). This just might inspire a youngster to want to be a quick bowler, or a spinner, or a cunning, calculating, pace-changing medium pacer.

Who’d put in the hard yards to be a bowler when you are only in the game to feed the batters’ more outrageous hitting?

So — WBBL a great advert for the women’s game; a great advert for the game of cricket.

I want to get back to bowling, after watching Shabnim Ismail!