what is cricket coching

Baby steps…. And how we learn…. In Cricket Coaching, there is a special magic that takes place in the relationship that the Coach has with their players and the team in general.

I think of this relationship as a gift, it is to be respected and nurtured.

There are special ingredients in this relationship, this photo of myself and War to unis depicts the trust and rapport we had as Captain and Coach, this is central to all coaching relationships.

We pass ‘I’ On. Passing our Passion on for this beautiful game.

The grace is that when we do it well, we do it unconditionally, we help and support, but it is the player and the team's  journey.

The magic in the coaching relationship takes place in the ‘space’ between where the cricket player and team are now and how we help them to get to where they want to be.

This is a journey of growth into potential.

As a cricket coach, I believe it is essential that we suspend our judgement of what we believe is possible with our players and teams.

When the magic starts to take place in that ‘space’, we really don’t know how far a player can go.

On Dale Stents player page, I share some of my journey with Dale, how he went from a promising first class player to becoming a great international cricketer.

Even more remarkable is how Roofer van Dr. Berwyn went from being a provincial player to an international cricketer in literally 12 months.

He was playing in the amateur team for Northern, the feeder team for the Titans Cricket  team, and we would invite him down to the nets to be an extra bowler.

He bowled so well that we gave him a start in a one-day game, and he never looked back, 12 months later he played his first game for South Africa.

Cricket coaching for me is many things, but primarily it is about learning, to challenge cricket players and their brains to grow into their potential.

This potential doesn’t end when the player gets older, they are always facing new challenges in the game, our job is to facilitate this learning process and then get out of the way.
Values Based Cricket Coaching

The foundation of our coaching practice are the ‘Values’ that we bring to the job on a daily basis.

They are the compass by which we judge every decision and action in the coaching relationship.

Simple Values like honesty, discipline, honor, humility shape how we work with the players and the team.

It is important that we make these explicit so that the players know that we embody these values.

Sit with the players and the team and choose a ‘Compass of Values’ by which you wish to play and work.

It is a reference point you can all come back to, And as a coach it allows you to stand on a higher authority when issues of discipline and attitude come up.

The wonderful thing about values is that they are universal, I have used them with teams whose cultural backgrounds are as diverse as Pakistani, English and Afrikaans.

So long as we are consistent in our application of these values, we will always be on track.
Pass the Passion On

Getting back to passion, passion is energy, if we want to assist players and the team to create inspiring and motivating goals to drive up their performance, then a key goal is… Passing the ‘Passion On’ for cricket – Fun and Enjoyment

We are passionate about people, understanding that central to the coaching relationship is our ability to build trust and rapport with the team and players.

We show them we care by preparing and organizing well.

We sit with them and plan goals for the team and players, it gives them critical direction.

Comprising: Vision-Outcome Goals and Process-Performance Goals

We focus on small process goals that we can control, building on these small success’s so that the cricket player and team make early gains and get confidence flowing.

These early gains that get confidence flowing are like grains of sand, lots together make rocks, then boulders, then mountains.

Day by day and week by week, we build on this momentum.

And yet we keep coming back to our central coaching model, what is going on in the performer's brain, how we are challenging it, how we are we communicating with it …. One at a time.

The focus of Cricket Coaching is effective learning, the faster our players learn, the closer they move toward achieving their individual and team goals.
How Brains Really Learn

Let's refresh how brains really learn, they are connection machines, they wire together absolutely every experience that comes into them, to make neural maps.

They are Goal Seeking Mechanisms, the mind chooses goals and hands them over to the brain to help achieve them.

As cricket coaches, we are seeking to help our players and teams to develop new, better neural maps to play better cricket and to be happier, more effective people.

If they are playing from old ineffective ‘cricket maps’ they will keep going to the same destination, called ‘inferior performance’.

We assist our players to choose challenging goals and help them plan and prepare to achieve them.

In doing  this, and we are creating new maps which are loading up the right mental ‘software’ for cricket performance.

We plan the learning journey for our players and teams so that they can embed quality learning from structured training.

In training, we help their brains to learn quickly and effectively through simulating and rehearsing what they must do in game time.

We do this until it is automated in the cricket player's subconscious mind.

A key question for us is, Whose Brain is doing the Thinking ? When we coach.
Engage the Player's Brain

The first thing we do in coaching is to make sure that we engage our players in their own learning process, that they actively participate.

How do we do this ?

We ask them questions …… intelligent questions that assist them in paying attention to the right thing with the right intention, at the right time.

This allows the cricket player and the team to use their own brains to create the right ‘connections’ and ‘wiring’ about situations on the cricket field.

They then create their own solutions which they have thought through and practiced over and over, this allows the solution to come up to consciousness and operate on automatic.

The opposite of this is to be telling them what to do all the time, they then don’t have to think, we as cricket coaches are doing the thinking for them.

They end up thinking with the coaches brain and not their own brain.

Makes for slow learning and weak players.

We as coaches give them power over their own decision-making, it allows them to take responsibility and accountability for their own performance.

The wiring that is taking place in their brain, about their game, belongs to them, they are generating it.
Where does this matter most ?.