Cricket coaching, fitness and tips - Fielding

The Thompson Reaction Drill

Millfield — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 07:40:00 +0000

This drill of the week is great fun, a super reaction and decision making drill and we like to use it as part of a warm up to get the hands, eyes and “grey matter” prepared for the intensity of a coaching session or a match.

Whilst reaction drills aren’t new, (I can remember doing them with Alan Knott back in the 1990’s as part of England wicket keeping group) Matthew Thompson (One of our coaches) has bought some revised versions into the Millfield Programme in recent months.

Matthew is leaving us to take up a Talent Development Manager role with Cricket Wales after doing a good job with us over the past 14 months. Matthew is one of life’s great “games and drills” designers.

Most of Matt’s games don’t make a great deal of sense to me as a stubborn and boring old coach; yet the pupils seem to engage and enjoy the multifaceted and ever changing rules and objectives. Their engagement is far more important than mine so it doesn’t really matter if I can’t keep up!

The associated video shows how much the pupils enjoy the drills and embrace the challenge that creates around them. The great thing about this drill is that it incorporates decision making under pressure.

Matt randomly and rapidly delivers a variety of balls into the catcher from behind a cricket bag. The player can’t see which ball is coming next in the sequence, they have to identify the ball, catch it and then choose which of the 3 boxes (or buckets) they place the respective ball.

Skills developed include:

Reactions
Peripheral vision
Identifying detail/association with task
Decision making
Fine motor skills
Dealing with pressure
Speed
Movement patterning
Spatial awareness
Catching

and many, many more

Drill Set up:

Matt set up 3 boxes/buckets & has a variety of different balls to throw. There are 20+ balls per round. Matt insisted on one handed catching ONLY

Middle Box/Bucket: Tapeballs (tennis ball which has electrical tape bound around it to make it firmer and more realistic to catch. We use these balls in our tapeball programme at school)
Right Box/Bucket: normal tennis balls
Left Box/Bucket: Any other ball (incrediball, cricket ball, sand filled Ball)

We have to make quick decisions about whether to leave, defend or attack on each ball. We make decisions ahead of calling with “Yes, No and Wait”. Front foot to back foot. Straight bat or cross bat.

As with all the decisions listed above, we have found that players who have repeated this kind of drill at the start of each session become more adept at their decision making and also more precise with their Ball placement when dropping the balls into the respective box/bucket. The more you practice in a deliberate fashion the better you get I suppose.

Drill progressions

Pace: Increase the velocity of the throw as the player develops their skills.
Frequency: increase the frequency of throw to challenge the fielders developing skills.
Distance: reduce distance to further challenge the player.
Different ball weights and sizes: develop fine motor skill adaptability with different ball dimensions and weights.
Word Association: As if that drill doesn’t look or feel challenging enough, Matt also throws in some extra distraction in the form of word association. For example, when the player identifies a randomly fed golf ball is coming towards them they must shout a word.Matt asked one lad to say “Badger!” When he saw the golf ball and another to shout out his favourite cricketers name when the golf ball was thrown.
Dodge: get out of the way of a specific ball rather than catching it.

In the meantime, thanks Matt for providing our programme with your drills and games legacy. I am sure that the Cricketers in Wales will enjoy your innovative training methods as much as the boys and girls at Millfield School. See you soon bud.

Catching is a Mindset

Millfield — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 10:12:48 +0000

You can never become too good at catching, right? So this has been a major emphasis as we embark on a new season.

The Millfield School teams may not always be the best XIs in the country but they are full of players who love to catch and players who know that catching is one of the key strands in the DNA of a Meyers XI (our most senior XI) cricketer.

It has been fantastic to watch the players collecting katchet ramps, Crazy Catches, hitting bats and lots of balls to practice their catching skills and make their hands sufficiently robust for the rigours of early season fielding (in the cold)!

One of our U15s is lad who will end up being a very good fielder. He has the most important ingredient that any fielder could possess: Passion for fielding!

I have yet to work with or meet a world class fielder who doesn’t like fielding. Fielding is a mindset first; and then a physical activity. If you don’t love it then you are unlikely to become a world class fielder.

The challenge that this young cricketer has is that he is very small in stature. His body gets into relatively good positions yet the ball regularly breaks through his hands and he drops too many catches. In order to help him develop and to give him a confidence boost I increased the challenge of a recent catching practice.

The weight of the ball that he was catching by nearly 6 times heavier than a normal cricket ball. It was a 32oz (907g) ball!

Initially, the fielder did not receive any technical information at all. He was simply asked to catch the ball either with 2 hands or 1 hand.

I was interested to see if the increased load had any impact on his technique, his movement and his catching shape; the shape of the arm. If we can retain a 90 degree angle at the elbow then it means that our head is close to our hands which helps control and precision. The catching shape also helps us to absorb the force of the ball.

The fielder in the video automatically creates as near perfect catching shape on all the balls thrown with the 32oz ball in the 1st round. He moves well to balls thrown into his right and takes the ball cleanly and consistently. A massive technical improvement.

The other thing that I noted whilst working through the round was that every time the ball went low, the fielder would catch the ball but pull his head slightly to his right which broke his head/hand alignment. Whilst he didn’t drop the ball in this exercise, it did take my mind back to some dropped practice catches by the same fielder during last summer.

This was my only coaching intervention in the session and he started to correct his alignment in the second round of catches when the ball went low which was good to see.

By increasing the stimulus (Weight of the ball) the fielder organised his body to withstand the increased weight. His catch became stronger and in review he recognised that this needed to be transferred into 156g cricket ball catching also.

He has been out every day this week doing exactly that with his best mate. Awesome stuff!

The Buvuma Run Out Drill

Millfield — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 09:52:03 +0000

The guys at school have been working so hard over the past couple of weeks building up their throwing workloads and developing their capacity to create run out opportunities from different angles and positions.

You have seen the attacking and defensive pop up throws in the last couple of articles and to finish off the “going to ground” set we have “The Buvuma”.

Temba Buvuma performed an incredible bit of athleticism to narrowly run out David Warner back in 2016 and we have been inspired to create our own practice drill ever since.

I set up some crash mats and ask the kids to pick up the ball and then dive and throw in one motion. The results are naturally a bit scattergun to start with as they are battling with their momentum, their ability to establish dynamic stability in mid air and trying to focus on a target whilst flying isn’t easy. But over a pretty short amount of time, their competency improves and some sparky things begin to happen.

The key coaching points that I used were:

Attack the ball fast - the more momentum you have, the easier the dive.
Use your last step to launch you into the dive. Temba uses his right leg to create a split second of “hang time” which allows he sequencing of the throw to take place and most crucially gives him time to get visual fix on the target.
Getting even the smallest amount of visual fix on the target will help enormously.

Lastly, learn from your experiments. As you can see in the video, there were a few epic fails at the start of the 1st 20 minute session.

If you accept those failures are a key part of the learning process then you will consciously and sub-consciously use those experiences to build a better technical model which will impact upon the eventual outcome.

We played a couple of games to help fast track both Ned and Tom’s development. The scoring went like this:

Clean pick up 1 point Miss target but still hit the fielding net 2 points Direct hit on the target 5 points

Have 5 goes and see what the points are at the end. Internal competitive players can track their progress from session to session by comparing their scores.

Externally competitive people can simply look to beat their mates

The second game is nearest the Bull!

Just as in darts, nearest the bull wins. 1 throw each.

Last week we had 2 direct hits on the target but their is only one winner!

Here is some footage from the session.

Can you emulate Temba Buvuma and complete a “worldy” Run Out? Give it a go.

Playing as a Unit: How to Use a Cricket Cliche to Improve your Cricket Team

David Hinchliffe — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 06:02:00 +0000

International players and coached these days are always going on about how they “performed as a unit” – fielded, batted, bowled.

Lurking in the depths of this moribund press talk is a grain of truth we can use at any level.

You see, whatever level you play, from first-class to under-11, we all have something in common.

We are all human beings.

And human beings all share the need to feel part of a group, to belong to something greater than their individual selves.

Even the most selfish people crave that feeling.

That’s where we can use the idea of a ‘unit’ to make us play the game as a team, rather than a group of individuals (which is always the danger in cricket where the focus is bowler vs. batsman).

Knowing your unit

If you don’t know what your job is, how are you supposed to know if you did it or not?

With that in mind, a ‘unit’ is just an extension of individual roles: It packages up a bunch of roles and puts them into a team within the team.

So the batsmen become a unit, with jobs to do and ways to do it. As do the bowlers and of course there is a fielding unit.

Players love this idea. If you are a bowler and that batsmen collapse, it’s up to you and your unit to clean up the mess. You still have that belonging without taking the blame.

But enough theory, let’s look at how to make these units work in practice.

The batting unit

Although there are different tactics and styles within the batting unit, the aim is to score runs.

So to be a unit, the top batsmen should assume the bowlers are not going to score any runs at all.

It’s all about taking responsibility as a group (and that group could be anything between 2 and 8 decent batsmen).

It’s in the nature of all of us to try less hard the bigger the group. Psychologists call it ‘social loafing’ – assuming someone else will make up the slack.

Having a clear batting unit with a clear run goal is a simple way to overcome this proven act of laziness.

Want an example?

Say you are batting first in a one day game. In the conditions you think on a good day your side is capable of 200 in your 40 overs. You have 5 top line batsmen in the side (lucky you if so, many club and school sides have just 1 really good batter and a few reasonable ones).

The top 5 have to take the responsibility for scoring every one of those runs. You could break it down any way you like:

Every player is looking to score 50-100 when they go out to bat
When someone fails, it’s up to whoever is left to take up the slack
Every player is looking to be there at the end. Be a ‘finisher’ from your first ball
Every pair considers the scoreboard to be ‘reset’ at zero when they come in and a partnership needs to be built from nothing

The bowling unit

We have all heard the line that bowlers hunt in pairs, or even packs. That’s the root of a good bowling unit.

A bowling unit is looking to either take wickets or keep the run rate down (or both). That’s done by applying pressure from both ends without letting up.

Of course there are different ways to do this. A combination of a wild strike bowler and a miserly medium pacer offer different challenges to the batsman but end up with the result you want even if the figures are 4-40 and 1-17 respectively.

To be a good unit you need 5 bowlers capable of doing to job of keeping the pressure on the batsman (through wickets or maidens). You might get away with 3-4, but any less will mean a gap that can only be made up by some exceptional bowling.

Bowling units also trust each other even when things go wrong. Anyone can have a bad game but a good unit doesn’t blame, it makes sure everyone else takes greater responsibility. You can read more about how to do it in this article.

The fielding unit

As an identity, fielders are the least likely to feel part of a unit.

Fielding is what you do when you are not performing your main skill (strike specialist wicket-keepers from that statement) and so we feel it’s a chore, a lonely one at that.

But when fielders do work together it’s an intimidating moment for batsmen who feel surrounded by 11 people all against them. And we all know how pressure makes wickets fall.

So make sure you are in a unit when you are fielding too:

Talk to fielders around you about the batsman and decide what fielding tactics would work best.
Keep encouraging the bowler and other fielders, especially when things are not going as planned. Remember it only takes one ball to take a wicket and change the game.
· Relax between balls and overs but keep talking to fielders around you to keep the overall feeling of a buzz about you.
Think of yourself as part of a team with the bowler, squeezing batsmen into mistakes.
Think of the wicket-keeper as the focus of the fielding unit. Get the ball to him or her frequently to keep up the impression of being the fielding leader. A good ‘keeper with a lively personality makes a huge difference to the atmosphere.

Overall, a unit is not something you need to think long and hard about with endless planning. It’s a loose knit group of people with a common goal (be it to score runs or take wickets).

If you think your team doesn’t have clear units, then it probably doesn’t. You need to work a little harder to get people thinking as one. It’s just a matter of introducing the idea of a unit and sitting back to let human nature take over.

And if you do that the overall team performance will improve too.

Specialist fielding: Boundary fielding

David Hinchliffe — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 06:23:00 +0000

Fielding in the deep can feel like a lonely place.

There you are with acres of space to sprint around while the batsman gives it the long handle.

Then they smash one straight up in the air and you have to wait forever for it to come down into your hands.

The potential for a mess up is a high one. Yet, you can massively reduce the chances of things going wrong simply by working on your specialist skills in this area.

Why have boundary fielders?

Being on the rope is a simple task, if a physically and mentally demanding one. Your job is to stop the ball going for a boundary, keeping the number of runs the batsman scores as low as possible.

More occasionally, and dramatically, you will be required to catch the ball.

This means you need to be able to pick up balls early, run to them quickly (often having to slide to get there) and return them with an accurate throw. If that wasn’t enough you also need to be brave with strong catching hands.

You might find yourself anywhere between deep point and deep square leg. The off side has fewer catches (it’s easier to sky a ball to leg).

Where to stand: On the rope?

Traditional coaching has stuck to a simple idea: Boundary fielders stand on the boundary line.

To creep in too far is a schoolboy error and makes you look silly when it goes over your head but bounces inside the rope to go for four.

But it’s not always as simple as that.

Mostly you will want to follow the orthodox line, but there are times when you have to judge where to stand with a bit more nous. Here are some times you may want to drift away from that rope:

A batsman you know has a big ego and thinks he can clear you so you wander in to tempt him to go over the top.
A very long boundary (especially on the off side) that batsmen will struggle to hit boundaries.
In the middle overs of a limited over match when the batsmen are not hitting out but working the ball around and looking to turn singles into twos.

How to field on the boundary

Wherever you stand, fielding in the deep requires you to stay focused. It’s rare for the captain to put you out unless the ball is going to the boundary.

As the bowler is delivering the ball, watch the batsman for clues to the shot that is coming your way. If it’s clear they are aiming for the area you are covering, laser your focus in on the ball.

You have to make quite a few quick decisions when you realise the ball is coming your way.

If it’s along the ground, your job is to get to the ball as quickly as possible and, if needed, stop the boundary. What happens next depends on what the batsmen are doing.

If they are risking an extra run, attack the ball and return it quickly. This is a riskier approach because more can go wrong, especially in crucial moments (but that’s OK because as a specialist you will have practiced).
If they are strolling and not looking to score, take more time returning the ball so your throw is accurate.

If the ball is coming in the air you have to quickly judge if it is going to reach you or not.

If it is, get in position to catch it, steady yourself and catch the ball with strong hands.

If it’s going to bounce, watch how the ball is spinning, adjust and look to take it after the first bounce if you can. Again the return needs to be accurate.

Ways to practice

Boundary fielding is, more than any other, the execution of fielding skills in an ever changing game environment.

So while it’s important to drill to get your technique right, you also need to practice with a bit of chaos and game situation feeling. Here are some drills that should be done as often as possible (every day if you can):

Keeping score in these drills makes sure there is pressure on you to perform too.

Also use middle practice as this simulates batsmen trying to steal extra runs from you.

Warning: Fielding Drills Don't Work

David Hinchliffe — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:41:03 +0000

Better fielding isn't about more drills.

We all love a fielding drill at cricket practice. That rush you get when you perform it well and take the catch or hit the stumps is real and satisfying. You can see your skills improve the more you do. What could anyone possibly have against a good-old fielding drill?

The big problem is realism.

A well-run drill is efficient, sees lots of touches of the ball for everyone and has a specific aim usually based on one skill or a series of skills in a set order. There are no decisions, no critical moments.

That is not what happens in cricket.

You barely touch the ball in the field. When you do get a chance to perform a catch, stop or throw it's preceded by a decision - "is this mine? Can I get there?" - and usually requires another decision based on the game situation - "which end?", "cover the bowler or keeper?", "run in or play safe?".

A drill works on the skill and technique with a lot of volume, but also removes the important bits:

Decision-making
Tactical awareness
The feeling of the importance of the moment
Patience and focus

When you remove these things from fielding practice, you make it far less effective. Many would argue they are a waste of time completely for cricket skill development.

The fix for fielding drills

There is good news. This problem is easy to fix.

Add in decision-making to your drills.

This can be simple or complex, based on your needs, but the more you can add back these missing elements, the better your fielding will get in games.

Start simple by making less accurate or more difficult feeds (like fielding on an uneven surface).
Add a decision by having two or more fielders "live" in the drill and having to work together to see who performs the skill in the moment.
Add another decision like backing up, choosing which stump to throw, batsmen calling as you field.
Make skills more difficult by starting kneeling, lying, or spinning round. You can even just be off balance or out of position to make this work.
Ask others to try and put you off with shouting, or silence. You can add distractions to slip catches.
Force yourself to catch in unusual ways. Prefer to catch Aussie style? Spend a few minutes only catching English style.

You don't need to think too hard to add a little more decision to a drill. Each change adds more difficulty for sure, is harder to master and leads to a lot of failure. In the long run, you learn more and it sticks for longer than just repeating the same skill out of context.

While drills may not be ideal, you can still hang onto them.

Just apply the question "how can I make this closer to the real thing?" and you will not be wasting time at fielding practice. Quality trumps quantity!

Let me know how you go!

Specialist fielding: Slips

David Hinchliffe — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:53:00 +0000

In the slips you are always in the game.

Catch the nicks that come and the bowlers will love you forever. Put even the hardest chance down and be prepared for long stares from everyone in the side: There is no hiding place and no respite.

Even when nothing has come to you all day.

Slip configurations

As the slip position covers a wide area there are several ways to lay out the slip cordon:

One slip: A single slip is common with spinners or seamers who are moving to a more defensive field but are still hoping for an edge. Seamers who tend to move the ball in towards the batsman and have close catchers on the leg side have just one slip even in attack.
Two slips: This is a very common configuration in club cricket early in the game where wickets are needed and so a wider area needs to be covered for the catch. It's often combined with a gully fielder.
Three slips: Quicker bowlers, or medium pacers on the attack can add an extra slip if there is enough carry. Gully is better employed at third slip in many cases.

Of course you can have no slips in defence or more than three slips, although the latter is rare enough that you probaly will not see it in your games. So you don't need much practice beyond third.

Where to stand at slip

When it comes to deciding where to stand in the slips, some basics are:

Take your cue from the wicket-keeper. First slip stands a little way back from the keeper, second slip will be roughly level
Stand arms length away from the 'keeper or other slips.
In general stand a bit too close rather than a bit too far away. It's better to learn to react fast to an edged drive than to see a defensive edge drop short.
On very slow and low pitches you may find that the slips have to come closer than orthodox to make sure edges carry. Here you may see second slip in front of the keeper and first slip almost level.

In modern times, wider, or staggered, slips have been used to try and cover a wider area.

Here the fielder stands wider than the orthodox position to try and cover more area. For example, if you have an athletic keeper who can dive in front of slip to take catches, the slip can move wider. The risk here is that the ball will be edged between the slips so your fielding needs to be even better.

Concentration

Perhaps the most important part of slip fielding is your ability to stay focused.

You may field for 50 or more overs with nothing coming to you then on the last ball of the day you get a difficult chance. You need to have to concentration to be focused on every ball.

It would be impossible to stay laser-focused the entire day, so the secret is to concentrate hard as the bowler is about to bowl the ball, stay alert until the ball is dead then relax between balls. The good thing about slip fielding is there is always someone to chat to between balls. The less this chat is about cricket, the better you concentrate when you have to switch back on.

There is some debate about what you focus on in the slips. The standard advice is to watch the ball if you are fielding at first and watch the edge of the bat if you are fielding wider. This is not hard and fast rule though, so experiment with both in practice to see what is most comfortable for you and gives you the best reaction time.

Ways to practice

Slip fielding is crucial to a team's success so a good coach will pick out the fielders most likely to be slips and make sure they are getting the right practice.

You can do this with a series of fielding drills designed to replicate slip catching like this one and this one.

In an ideal world you will do some kind of catching drill every day. More realistically, every practice session needs the potential slips to go away on their own for a few minutes and focus on getting catching right. Make the practice as realistic as possible. It's good to practice catching when tired or under a game situation with an outcome (best catcher wins a prize for example).

Slip catching is specialist because such long periods can go by without a slip being required but every chance that arrives is golden. Practice it until your hands hurt and it becomes second nature.

This is part of the specialist fielding series of articles, for the full list of fielding positions covered click here.

image credit: Sarah Canterbury

How to Be a Gun Fielder

David Hinchliffe — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 09:41:05 +0000

Diving saves, run outs, brilliant catches: A top fielder changes cricket matches.

Some seem destined to fielding brilliance, while others will always be compared to Monty Panesar: Someone who tries and fails to get any better.

Before we start, let’s work out what we mean.

What makes a "gun" fielder?

We all know a gun, or brilliant fielder who can do amazing things. Those players are certainly top cricketers. If you think, I bet you can also come up the names of a few solid, reliable fielders. The ones who drop very little, do everything right and hardly ever stray into the spectacular.

Which one is better?

Trick question.

There isn’t one way to go about fielding. You have to do the best you can with what you are given.

That might mean you are athletic enough to be the spectacular fielder. It might mean you know your limits but push hard to get as reliable as possible.

The fact is, fielders with the best impact can do it in a number of ways.

And worse - or better - different situations demand different styles of fielding: A terrible outfield, a hard hitting batsman, a weird boundary, a hard “seeing” ground, 40-4 or 200-1...

Fielding success is as much about adaptability as it is planning.

You need to find your way. And that's not as easy as a few drills.

Lock your fielding game tight

If fielding is a bit more complicated than just taking a few more catches in the warm up, how do we lock down those skills?

Two things;

Realistic, open ended practice
Games

Before we get into details, you may ask about technique.

Technique is important to learn, but has limited value if you are not practicing it in an environment like a game. Injury-prevention aside, it doesn’t matter how you catch, throw, dive, pick up and stop. It just matters that you do. A coach can help with technical stuff, but you still need to try it in an open situation as soon as possible.

Aside over!

Open practice is any drill that works your fielding skills without being too closed.

Here’s an example drill.

It’s chaotic to practice this way, but also much more realistic to cricket. You can’t set yourself against a specific type of ball. You may get a catch, stop, or nothing.

You will find you make a lot more errors too, but as we know, errors are fine because they teach you to adapt.

Make it even more focused by keeping score and competing with your team-mates to find out who is best, and who is improving quickest.

Games are also a great place to improve your fielding because it is the most realistic.

Bear in mind that, on average, you will only get three or four chances to perform a fielding skill during every cricket match. It’s not high volume, but it soon teaches you the importance of doing it right first time.

Some may say a big game is not the place for development, but I would argue you are always looking to improve, even during the Grand Final. If you make an error there, you certainly learn something for next time!

This brings me on to the final point.

You have to love - and I mean love - developing your fielding. You can’t do it by numbers. You have to work, make practice as hard as you can tolerate and be ready for failure so your can learn.

If you do that, the drills barely matter because you are going in with the aim to improve.

Summary

Good fielding is not drills. It's about adaptability and knowing your game.
Practice in realistic ways that are about quality and learning your method.
Have a mindset to enjoy it and try to improve your cricket with better fielding.
There are no shortcuts or tips, just plenty of practice!

A World Cup Winning Fielding Drill

Millfield — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 06:38:27 +0000

It was a great honour and privilege to spend the day talking about fielding and batting with many of the World Cup winning England Women’s team.

Natalie Sciver, Katherine Brunt and previous World Cup captain, Charlotte Edwards were joined on the ECB Level III coaching course by some excellent Kia Super League coaches as well as Nottinghamshire pairing of Michael Lumb (World T20 Cup winner) and Luke Fletcher.

We had great fun which culminated in three teams competing in the "Authentic Fielding Drill Game".

I first featured this approach a couple of weeks ago on another Level III Course. Each coaching team present their thoughts on their key elements that underpin their fielding coaching and then put together a drill which best represents those philosophies.

Michael Lumb’s group presented brilliantly highlighting the following things as being important within their fielding sessions:

Precision and accuracy
Speed of ball around the drill
Intensity
Energy
Limiting breakdown in the drill: Keep it flowing

I listed the points on a whiteboard and then the cohort watched Lumby’s group go through their paces.

Here is the drill. It has potential!

My marking scheme

In true Strictly Come Dancing style, I critique each groups thoughts before giving a overall score out of 10 for drill authenticity. Drill authenticity is being true to the groups presented thoughts and philosophies on fielding.

The quality of the drill design was fantastic across all three of the groups. In fact, this one I am showing you didn’t win but is certainly worth a look at!

Luke Fletcher (the smiley one) starts the drill off with an underarm feed into an underarm pick up and throw (fielder one).

A colleague (fielder two) backs up the ball picks up the ball and delivers it onto a catching ramp

Fielder 3 catches the ball off of the ramp and aims for the bowlers end stumps, attempting a direct hit.

Fielder 4 backs the ball up and flicks it into fielder 5, who is approaching the bowlers end stumps from a mid on position. Fielder 5 taps the top of the stumps and then pings the ball back to “Big Fletch” with the catching mit and the drill starts all over again.

Drill Review

I then asked a few questions about the statements on the whiteboard. Focussing initially on Precision and accuracy.

Me: “What and how are we measuring accuracy?”
Group: Throw accuracy, we could count the number of hits!
Me: “So how accurate were we?”
Group: 50%!
Me: “So, you hit the stumps at Big Fletch’s end half the time eh?”
Group: Well... no. We hit it once
Me: “Out of how many attempts?”
Group: 5?
Me: “so that's a 20% accuracy score. Now what about hitting the catching board? How many times did we hit that?”
Group: Once? Twice?
Me: “It was twice, so that's 40% in terms of accuracy. What about the bowlers end stumps?”
Group: Once.
Me: “Correct. So out of 15 throws we were accurate on 4 occasions. That's less than 30% Accuracy. Could that be improved on?”
Group: Goodness yes!
Me: “OK, so what would we tell a group of players if they performed to an accuracy under 20% of their target?

And the answers about feet alignment, early vision on the intended target and reaching towards the target post throw all came out.

It was a good coach conversation and very similar to those that the coaches have at Millfield all the time.

Of course, the intention of the exercise was to not to improve the fielding of the group of coaches in the room.

One of the intentions was to demonstrate was how having a a set of clear principles and philosophies which underpin your coaching practice allows you to stay on track when designing sessions and gives your players consistent direction as to the things that you want to see from them in both practice and in match play.

The other thing was to show how very basic measurement (I used a flip chart to log throws and hits) could give valid feedback to the group which then initiates coaching conversation and incremental development in performance.

If you have a clear philosophy on how you like to coach and the things that you coach, then challenge it by asking someone else to watch you coach and see if they can challenge the connectivity between your coaching beliefs and your coaching practice.

It's an interesting exercise and often leads to an increase in self-awareness and better coaching practice.

Develop Faster Running and Better Fielding with a Stopwatch and This Drill

David Hinchliffe — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 10:16:43 +0000

This simple drill boosts running and fielding confidence.

One of the things that distinguishes better cricketers is their ability to pick up quick singles, but it is hard to train well. With this drill you can show batters exactly how many they can pick up, while helping fielders work on stopping those runs.

The only extra gear you need is a stopwatch.

The drill is in two parts.

Part 1: How quick single?

This is part fitness training, part cricket skill. Mark out 22 yards to run between. Warm up as this is sprint training and the chances of injury are higher. Have someone with a stopwatch ready then,

Run a three as fast as you can, record the results.
Rest for 2-3 minutes to allow a full recovery.
Run a single as fast you can, record the results.

If everyone on the team does this, you have a leader board of how fast a single and a three is taken. A side benefit is you will know how fast people are, but the main benefit is everyone knows how long it takes to get to the other end from a standing start.

Generally, if you are under three seconds, you are doing all right.

Now we can do something with this information.

Part 2: Can you make it?

Set up a fielding drill where the goal is to get a run out.

The fielding position can be anywhere in the ring. Point, square leg, mid on and mid off are good starting points. Here is an example drill where for point hitting the non striker's stumps:

The drill is simple because you will have your stopwatch again.

This time you time how long it takes to pick up the ball and get it over to the stumps. The ideal is to hit them, but we are mainly working on how fast you can get to the ball and get it away, so it's not crucial.

Spend some time trying a few different ways to cover the ground faster, get a clean pick up and throw the ball accurately. See what method gives you the fastest results.

Once you have had a few goes, compare times.

You will find that it is very difficult to execute a direct hit run out within the time it takes to get to the other end.

This should give your batsmen more confidence that they can pick up singles in the ring, even when the fielding is tight.

Part 3: Put it together

From here you can progress the drill to middle practice where batsmen are trying to pick up as many quick singles as possible in a set time. Based on their times, they should get plenty more than they thought possible.

Taking that into a real match is a bigger hump to get over, but the more you practice this, the better confidence you can have in "engaging autopilot" and rushing up the other end, knowing you will get in every time.

(And the fielders will get better at hitting the stumps with all that practice!)