Scoring hundreds is always fun. Player pictured: Somerset captain Tom Abell (Photo: John Moore)

Convert your starts. It is a common phrase in cricket. It is a phrase all batsmen have heard. It is every batsman’s aim to convert all his or her starts into big scores.

Alex Malcolm after scoring 112no in a final at the WACA

About the writer: Alex Malcolm has played over 150 First-grade matches in the WACA Premier competition for Subiaco-Floreat where he plays alongside Nathan Coulter-Nile & Jason Berendorff. After dominating the competition in 2013/14 (1091 runs at 68.19 including 6 centuries) Malcolm almost debut for WA in the Sheffield Shield final. While it didn’t eventuate and a broken finger the following season meant he slipped down the queue of opening batsmen for WA, Malcolm continues to be one of the leading batsmen in the 1st-grade comp (660 runs at 50.77 in 16/17). As a previous club captain and with over 5000 runs & 10 centuries in 1st grade, Malcolm has a great insight into what is required for a batter to be successful.

But saying it and doing it are two different things. One of the great problems with cricket practice is most batsmen do not prepare to convert their starts.

We practice starting every time we walk into a net or play an innings in a game. We work on the technical aspects of our game tirelessly, emphasising balance, drilling footwork, tightening defences, expanding stroke-play, all with an eye to getting big scores. But converting starts is a skill in itself.

There are so many variables in cricket that are completely out of a batsman’s control. But too many batsmen get themselves out after getting started through no one’s fault but their own. Nothing is more frustrating than throwing away a start.

As an opener who often failed to get through the new ball, throwing away a start was a criminal act for both myself and my team.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned about converting starts after many, many failures, and a few successes.

QUANTITY OVER QUALITY

Following a particularly poor season one year I was searching for some answers. I had struggled to get started most of the season, which can often happen at the top of the order, and you can curse your luck a bit when a season goes that way. But on closer inspection I had got to 20 six times and converted just one of those starts into a score of significance for my team. I felt that I had prepared well, similarly to previous years, by hitting a lot of balls and being in good physical shape. But an illuminating conversation with Justin Langer changed my perception of my own work ethic.

Langer’s last assignment as Australia’s batting coach, before taking over as the Western Warriors head coach in late 2012, was to help the test side prepare for a home series against South Africa. In the lead up to the first test at the Gabba Australia’s captain Michael Clarke was struggling with his ongoing back problems. The medical staff had advised him to limit the amount of batting he did in the lead up. Langer said Clarke ignored the advice and hit somewhere in the vicinity of 400-500 balls on each of the three days leading up to the test match, including the day prior to the game starting.

To put that in perspective that is more than 10 bowling machine buckets at your local indoor centre per day for three days. Most buckets carry 30-40 balls. How often have you hit 10 buckets in one session? I had never done it. Most of my sessions were an hour long, four buckets, maybe five, somewhere between 120-160 balls.

Clarke’s previous four test scores prior to that match were 45, 15, 24 and 25. They had come six months earlier but no doubt he would have been annoyed at not converting any of those starts into big scores. Clarke scored 259* in that Gabba test match. He backed that up with 230 in his next test innings in Adelaide. They were his third and fourth test hundreds in the 2012 calendar year and all of those were doubles, including a triple.

What he had done in practice was train his body and his mind to bat for long periods. If you train in one-hour sessions all the time you will train your body and your mind to switch off after an hour. Is it little surprise then that you fail to kick on after batting for an hour in a match? It shouldn’t be. This was eye-opening to me. I would hit balls four or five times a week but never for more than an hour or 90 minutes. Most team training sessions batsmen generally only get 10 minutes in a net against bowling and have a few throw downs on top of that.

So I tried some two-hour plus sessions the following winter, hitting 10 buckets instead of four, 400 balls instead of 160. The result was six of my next eight 50-plus scores were hundreds.

What you learn in high volume sessions is that quantity is better than quality. You won’t hit every ball perfectly throughout. You will go through periods where you strike the ball poorly. You will also go through periods of striking the ball superbly. You will hit flat spots mentally, you will sweat profusely, your back will tighten up, your hands and forearms will become fatigued. These are all things that happen during a long innings in the middle. If you train your body and mind to handle these things in practice, you have a much better chance of handling them in games.

You also need variety. You can’t just smash half volleys for two hours. During long innings you will face five or six different bowlers. You may struggle with one or two of those or face challenging spells. You also may fancy certain bowlers, and the challenge in those scenarios is to maintain your shape and not get complacent and lazy. So you need to prepare for all of that by setting the machine or requesting throws of different shapes, trajectories and speeds to try and replicate different bowling.

YOU’VE GOT TO RUN EM’

Most players don’t think they can replicate what David Warner does. He is known for his natural ball striking talent, which is beyond the reach of most of us mere mortals. But talent will only get you so far. What is rarely mentioned about Warner in regards to his dominance as a player is the physical transformation he has made. Have a look at his body shape here in 2011 compared to his body shape in 2017. He has slimmed down significantly and has become a running machine.

That’s not natural talent, that’s pure hard work. The incredible effect that has had on his game can be seen in his one-day record. In his first 63 one-day innings prior to breaking his thumb in September 2015 he scored just four hundreds and 12 fifties. In his last 28 innings he has scored nine hundreds and four fifties. While recovering from his thumb injury Warner did a lot of fitness work and focussed heavily on sprints and repeat sprint training. The result has been phenomenal.

From personal experience converting starts in 50-over cricket can be harder than 90-over cricket. The reason is the field spreads after 10 overs and there a far fewer boundary opportunities. You are forced to do a lot more running and that takes a physical and mental toll. Not enough players prepare for that. In overs 10-40 you have to maintain the run-rate by sprinting lots of ones and twos. You can’t just face three dots and hit a boundary to maintain a strike-rate of 100-plus.

Warner’s two international hundreds at the MCG in December 2016 illustrates this perfectly. In an ODI against New Zealand he batted 50 overs and made 156. In the Boxing day test he batted 48.5 overs and made 144. In the ODI, if you take out the total number of boundaries scored and include his partner’s runs, he had to physically run 167 of the team’s total of 256. In the test match he had to run just 98 runs of the 244 scored before he got out. That’s 69 fewer 20m sprints in the test innings.

Alex Malcolm batting for Subiaco-Floreat in the WACA Premier cricket competition

Lots of cricketers and coaches build running and fitness programs around the total distance run by cricketers on game day. Long runs and 100-200m intervals are common practice. Not enough players and teams focus on running between the wickets as a training option.

In my own experience the decision to abandon 10-16km long runs in favour of running repeat 20-40-60m sprints between the wickets has improved my short form batting significantly. I’m not a power hitter so I need to find another way to bat deep into 50-over and T20 games and still maintain a healthy scoring rate for my team.

If you run 100 runs in an innings it is only 2km of running, which is roughly 7-8 minutes of aerobic work if it’s a straight 2km run. But if you sprint 50 twos between the wickets on 30-second intervals, it’s the same distance, but it’s 25 minutes of anaerobic work that will test your lungs and legs so much more.

My preferred running session is to sprint four ones, three twos, two threes and a four every 30 seconds with a minute break after each set. One set takes six minutes. Doing 10 sets takes an hour and you run 200 runs in total, but I’ll often do more if there’s time. It can be boring and repetitive but as a batsman intent on scoring big runs you have to overcome boredom and repeat your skills better than the rest.

Distance runners don’t train for distance races by running 20-40-60m sprints repeatedly. The opposite is true for cricketers. The game doesn’t require you to run long distances non-stop. It requires short repeat efforts at high intensity over long periods of time. Training for that will give you a better chance of handling it in games.

NO GUARANTEES 

Unfortunately, none of these things guaranteed success. I still failed a lot and I still failed to convert starts.

But what it did for me was give me a better chance to succeed and made me feel more confident about my ability to kick on after getting started. Converting starts is all about eliminating the number of ways you can get out. As I said earlier, there are variables such as the pitch, overhead conditions, bowlers and umpires, that are completely out of your control. But your mental and physical strength to bat for long periods is in your control. If you prepare well, you are far less likely to get yourself out due to mental errors or physical tiredness and far more likely to make the most of a start that you have earned.

About the author : Tom Scollay

5 Comments

  1. Yash Rawat May 24, 2017 at 6:07 am - Reply

    I scores 30+ runs in every t 20 match in school tournament but i am not able to convert it into a big score.
    So please advice me how to convert a start into a big score?

    • Dan November 6, 2019 at 11:03 pm - Reply

      Mate, read the bloody article

  2. Rahul Das September 7, 2018 at 10:07 am - Reply

    Thank you For Sharing Nice Information Read More

  3. VIDIT SHRIMALI June 13, 2019 at 2:35 am - Reply

    Very helpful for me
    Nice guidence

  4. Naveen February 7, 2020 at 2:07 am - Reply

    Great coverage, and nicely written

Leave A Comment

Subscribe to newsletter

Insider offers & flash sales in your inbox every week.

Latest videos

Join our mailing list today

Insider offers & flash sales in your inbox every week.

[one_full last="yes" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding="" margin_top="" margin_bottom="0px" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""][imageframe lightbox="no" gallery_id="" lightbox_image="" style_type="none" hover_type="none" bordercolor="" bordersize="0px" borderradius="0" stylecolor="" align="none" link="" linktarget="_self" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" hide_on_mobile="no" class="" id=""] [/imageframe]

Chris 'Bucky' Rogers batting for Somerset in one of his 554 First-class innings

[/one_full]

I once spoke to a former professional player who became a coach in the professional ranks and asked him whether he would change his technique during the season during his playing career. He responded in the negative.

[one_third last="no" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding="" margin_top="30" margin_bottom="" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""][imageframe lightbox="no" gallery_id="" lightbox_image="" style_type="none" hover_type="none" bordercolor="" bordersize="0px" borderradius="0" stylecolor="" align="none" link="" linktarget="_self" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" hide_on_mobile="no" class="" id=""] [/imageframe][/one_third][two_third last="yes" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding="" margin_top="30" margin_bottom="" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""]

About the writer: Chris 'Bucky' Rogers isn't your typical cricketer. Having toiled away in First-class cricket for over 15 years, he was finally rewarded for years of dominance opening the batting in both Australia & England with selection in the Australian Test team for the 2013 Ashes in England. He went on to play 25 Test matches for Australia where he scored 2,015 runs @ 42.87 including 5 x 100s. With the amazing First-class record of 25,470 runs & 76 centuries, he has now retired from playing and transitioned into coaching, where he currently is the batting coach for Somerset CCC. 

[/two_third]

He said working on technique is for preseason and once he started playing, all that mattered was watching the ball.

That, I’ve discovered, is a very traditional response, handed down from father to son.

I had to stop myself from groaning out loud. “How short-sighted” I wanted to reply. I’m sure he’s not alone and these days, coaches are reluctant to challenge technical issues in young players, preferring the students to figure it out themselves. Perhaps they fear intervention will only create more problems.

NO PRE-SEASON?

What if a player never has a pre-season as, like me, he plays continuously on both sides of the world, where the seasons overlap?

Just once did I have a pre-season in Australia – and that I remember mostly for the agony of running the sand-hills at City Beach in Perth, rather than any working on technique.

Instead I was chasing an endless summer by playing 12 months of the year in England as well as home. “What is a pre-season?” was my standard jibe at teammates.

That meant technical experimentation had to be done on the job – so the standard answer to not work on your game for six months of the year seems like a waste of time and opportunity to me.

Often as a young batsman, you’ll have days when you pick up a bat and it feels like it is a natural extension of your body and other days when it feels like you’re hefting around a railway sleeper.

DAYS WHEN THINGS WEREN'T WORKING

Numerous days in grade cricket and even opening the batting for Western Australia, my swing would feel so awkward I would be trying to adjust almost every ball. I might try picking the bat up higher in my swing, other times move my hands forward in my stance and even change the width of my stance. These were just a very few of many.

In fact what would really confuse me is, somehow I’d last until the lunch break feeling like I couldn’t hit one off the square and then come out after a 40 minute sit down and feel like I was Brian Lara … well not quite but you get the drift.

What it taught me though was to keep trying to get better. I would often think to myself, and now sprout this to every kid possible, one step back to go two steps forward. Working with my dad who was my coach, I’d try all sorts of technical changes and usually, after a while, something would click and it would all fall into place. It would be like hitting at a brick wall and then all of a sudden one thing works and the rest fall over like dominoes.

PROBLEM SOLVING - DON'T GET OUT THE SAME WAY

One of the great advantages of playing in four innings matches is the chance to problem solve as a batsman between the first and second innings. I disliked … no, I hated getting out the same way or to the same bowler in the second innings as I did in the first.

After getting out I would sit down and figure out a way to combat the bowler who dismissed me first time around. It might not have just been a mental change but quite possibly a technical one.

Stuart Clark once dismissed me for a duck with a perfect ball that pitched on off stump line and nipped away but instead of just accepting he’d bowled me a jaffa, I checked out the footage and saw my hands were not coming down straight in my swing pattern and caused everything - my hands and bat - to go towards mid on. So my bat actually was inside the line, hence the ball found my outside edge.

Second innings, my focus was trying to get my hands to go towards mid-off while playing with the inside half of my bat to counter the away movement. Yes I know this is a bit more than ‘Batting 101’ but I only started to understand my own batting by constantly tinkering – even to the extent of working out what doesn’t work, to find out what does.

PLAYING TO COACHING

As I moved from player to become a coach, a surprise first-up piece of advice from other coaches was to be careful about the level of input you try to pass on. Yes, that makes sense and it would be ignorant to not listen to advice from people who have spent a long time coaching. However, it will need to be balanced against my long-held belief that the best players in the world never stop seeking improvement.

My first club-coaching role came via former Australian player and teammate Bob Quiney to help out at his beloved St Kilda Cricket Club, where the players have an average age younger than ever and a thirst for learning.

I was wary of saying too much early, but when one player said, “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do Buck”, my tinkering instincts took over.

“One step back to go two steps forward”, I reasoned.

The first player asked me how to play slow medium pace bowlers as he had nicked off to one the previous Saturday. I told him to be positive and proactive. Walk at the bowler or walk into his line … a la Steve Smith … and whip him through the leg side if the bowler went for the stumps. The next Saturday he was in the same position and ended up, he said, with too much going through his mind and being neither proactive nor defensive. He nicked off again. But he had learnt from his mistake and knew what he’d do the next time and since has had some success.

[imageframe lightbox="no" gallery_id="" lightbox_image="" style_type="none" hover_type="none" bordercolor="" bordersize="0px" borderradius="0" stylecolor="" align="none" link="" linktarget="_self" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" hide_on_mobile="no" class="" id=""] [/imageframe]

 Bucky passing on some knowledge during a batting masterclass for Cricket Mentoring in Perth

[separator style_type="none" top_margin="" bottom_margin="" sep_color="" border_size="" icon="" icon_circle="" icon_circle_color="" width="" alignment="" class="" id=""]

INDOOR NETS SYNDROME

Another had what I call ‘indoor nets syndrome’ and had developed a swing where he just jabbed at balls that would race off his bat on the true synthetic surface, but had difficulty with the natural variation of turf wickets. His hands would go towards the leg side in his swing but the ball would slice to cover or more likely the slips. I was wary of trying to reshape his whole swing but then thought “Why not?” I’ll show him what I think works and he can figure the end result out for himself”. He was quite difficult to adjust and we even experimented with grip changes, not something I’d usually recommend.

After an hour’s work he was starting to get the basic principles and enjoying it. He had a far better understanding of a swing after trying something new and that can only benefit him. He can always go back to what he was doing but at least he’d tinkered and thought about it. Afterwards he seemed genuinely excited at the change and the understanding.

Yet there have been plenty of times where my coaching hasn’t worked. I tried to help Peter Siddle with his batting but made it worse. Eventually he figured a few things out himself and is still getting better – so maybe my “one-step-backwards” theory helped!

CHANGE TAKES TIME

With most things, change takes time to feel natural and this principle needs to be stressed and I’m wary of trying to change players into playing like me but sometimes certain things need to be tried.  I’m amazed when I see any tall player stand with his feet close together in his stance when Kevin Pietersen is ‘Example A’ of how to succeed as a tall batsman.

I firmly believe all the best players in the world are tinkerers and never stop trying to improve. Just ask Marcus Trescothick, who at age 41 was still telling everyone how he’s trying to fix things. That and his saying that ‘form hides in mysterious places’ were my two favourite things I got from him.

At the moment the county season has just started and he’s still working on his game plan against different kind of bowling. You’d think he’d have it all sorted by now but no, he’s using every opportunity to improve as we all should.

SUCCEEDING AT THE AGE OF 38

When asking me to write this article, Scolls (Tom Scollay) asked that I write a little about my own journey and how I managed to play well in the 2015 Ashes at age 38.

Like Trescothick, I had a thirst for perfection. Grit and determination was only a part of it. So many years of 12-months-playing of four-day cricket meant I had a very good understanding of my own game, with all its strengths and weaknesses, and to have some success against James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Mark Wood and Steve Finn in bowler-friendly conditions was only possible with an in depth, intimate knowledge of my swing and my game.

For different bowlers and conditions, I would have different triggers. On the wickets that provided more bounce and seam I would have a back and across trigger while at other times, particularly against Anderson’s swing, I would push forward to try and cover the movement.

This skill only comes from trial and error and experimentation and willingness to learn. If every time I tried something, had initial failure and not persevered, my game would have been very one dimensional and limited.

Growing up I often watched in awe some of the bigger kids who seemed to make batting look easy but then fell away when they had to play against adults who matched them in size and strength. I believe it was because these kids had got it so easy early on, that they hadn’t learned to work at their game to try to understand it better.

ALL THE BEST ARE ALWAYS CHASING IMPROVEMENT

Of course, there are plenty of examples to disprove the mould but of all the best batsmen I have seen, the one consistent attribute they possess is a desire to never be satisfied and to chase improvement.

They tinker to learn … and then comes improvement.

[separator style_type="none" top_margin="" bottom_margin="" sep_color="" border_size="" icon="" icon_circle="" icon_circle_color="" width="" alignment="" class="" id=""][one_full last="yes" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding="" margin_top="30" margin_bottom="" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""]

If you enjoy our thoughts and insight into the game then please Subscribe to get our articles straight to your email (keep an eye on your junk mail as they sometimes end up in there).

[/one_full]

Curabitur non nulla sit amet nisl tempus convallis quis ac lectus dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit sed porttitor lectus.