A question for coaches who also play — does coaching improve your own play?

I have had an odd experience, recently.

Coaching a very competent cricketer, finessing his bat path for an on-drive. And somehow, the work with my client seems to have transferred (positively) to my own batting technique.

Can coaching someone else improve the coach’s own playing technique? Is “subliminal skill acquisition” a thing?

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Belonging — at the very heart of “inclusion” and “diversity”, surely?

Cricket in England* is facing an existential crisis of a series of racism scandals and widespread criticism for the lack of diversity across the game.

There has been a lot wrong with the game, but hopefully some good will come out of the reviews and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) initiatives.

But there surely needs to be more to EDI than statements of intent, and training, and disciplinary sanctions. A former coaching colleague, Ollie Rae, made what I thought was a very perceptive observation.

You can not have inclusion and diversity without people feeling like they belong.

What does “belonging” mean? What could a cricket club (the wider game) do to encourage those “outside cricket” to come inside?

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Pedagogy & philosophy — ECB National Programmes getting it right

In a recent post I mentioned how, in my opinion, the ECB’s National Programmes have more to say about learning to play (by playing “games” to learn; repetition without repetition) and player behaviours (the multi-ability model, developed in collaboration with Create Development) than the mainstream coaching programmes.

I ran All Stars sessions for three years, pre-lockdown, and have delivered training for National Programmes Activators for a couple of years, now, and the more I see the more I am convinced by the underlying pedagogy and philosophy of the National Programmes.

Pedagogy — the method and practice of teaching

Philosophy — a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behaviour

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