This year, I decided to take the reins a little more with my coaching. Instead of taking a junior team and relishing in the fact that they treat me like a school teacher automatically, I wanted to learn how to build that relationship. So, I actively sought the second most senior team in the school, and it has been an eye-opening experience. My introduction to them came with a short disclaimer: I am probably unlike any coach you’ve had before. So far, this has come as an advantage and many interesting training sessions have come as a result. Some went exactly to plan, despite how untraditional they were! It has become a habit for them to arrive at training and seek out my whiteboard, with meticulous handwriting outlining the challenge of the session. Other afternoons are incredibly slow, and I find it difficult to encourage quality practice when they trudge down the hill to training after a long school week. Now that we are about halfway through the season, I’m proud of the ground rules that we’ve set: back your decisions, and support your teammates.
Despite the variance in skill level, I have always believed in holistic skill development. I try to avoid deconstructing movements wherever possible, which has come as a surprise to some. I also make them think, which has been met with some initial, unconscious resistance. The immediate response I get is “I don’t know”. As incredibly frustrating as this is, it’s important to remember that many of these young cricketers may have rarely been questioned throughout their learning experience. We are taught as young people to only speak when spoken to or raise your hand to make a remark. When they leave the classroom and have the freedom to communicate, it takes a bit of time to adjust to the environment. Now, they are encouraged to be thinking, feeling individuals at training and that might feel incredibly foreign. If they’ve grown up with traditional-style coaches who are built on direct instruction and simple repetition, I can understand how my sessions may be a little overwhelming. In my realm, they dictate the play. Realistically, this is how the game works, right? So each training session must have an individual or team-based objective, and this is something that I encourage them to drive. I will often draw on some behaviours from game performances and sample them into the session, but things like bowling areas and shot selection are something I encourage them to reflect on. It all boils down to the question I’ve written on everything I own:
What are you trying to achieve?
I’ve gained a lot of insight into the minds of adolescent boys over the past five weeks and yesterday, I had a slightly more interesting response than “I don't know”. The exercises focused on a skill that each boy wanted to improve, which mainly revolved around their ability to rotate the strike or hit the ball cleanly. But, when one batter was asked if he was hitting the ball at 100%, as I’ve always encouraged them to do, his response was: “I didn’t know you wanted me to do that”. To him, striking the ball hard wasn’t seen as a natural part of the skill, so he had developed a playing style entirely based on manipulating the ball. As a young player, this is an incredibly powerful skill because the game is often dominated by the kids who mature first and tower over the rest. Now, coupled with an element of self-doubt and indecision, it was proving to be his downfall. All it took was a simple question. From his reaction, it was probably the first time he had been asked about it, and that was a very proud coaching moment for me. We could see a missing element of forcefulness from the other end of the pitch, and his tentativeness in the game was often mistaken for a nervous start but really, he had never been encouraged to explore beyond his current skillset. Once this was identified, he thrived. We set a mini-scenario: six balls, all loopy and above the eyeline with little pace on the ball; hit them as far as you can. When the ball is moving slowly, it leaves plenty of room for error. Often a batter will make an early decision and execute the skill too early, or leave that decision-making process too late. This little exercise encouraged him to explore both options, without even mentioning them, and see what worked best. Oh man, did we have some chasing to do after that.
When we shifted the momentum from just building an innings to dictating the play, their behaviour changed immediately. A bit of swagger swept in, movements were direct and the ball was being forcefully struck instead of merely redirected. This shift in behaviour is something that has rarely been seen in a game, often because suddenly there are consequences and perceived pressure. What they’re starting to realise is that this indecision or lack of self-assuredness contributes more to their errors than their skill level. It’s been a slow process, and training without context like an open field has made it difficult to develop, but each young man is backing themselves just that little bit more and that’s exciting.
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