Andrew celebrating with Melbourne CC – Victorian Premier Cricket One-day Premiers 2016/17

March heralds the arrival of finals inn the Southern Hemisphere. The slog of pre-season through the damp, dark and cold months of July and August seem so distant. Form and hope that fluctuates through a season reaches a point of new aspiration. Red ball. White ball. Short form. Long form. All is now able to be culminated at the pinnacle of the season where long-lasting memories that enrich the history of a club.

Reflecting upon the season behind, revisiting plans and strategy, is useful in reaffirming the value of reward in playing finals. By now, little (if any) improvement for skill and technique can be gained from more practice sessions. More so it is the focus on being in control of and comfortable with:

  1. Self-awareness
  2. Accept that failure is ok and move on
  3. Being emotionally level
  4. Focus on process over result
  5. Self-talk
  6. Being present
  7. Consistent mental routine
  8. Practice as you play

These are some of the key elements that have been the foundation of the approach taken by Cricket Mentoring in all of the content, lessons, podcasts, blog posts and direct engagement with our audience. The finals provide that wonderful occasion to put it all into practice.

The depth of communication that we have with the Cricket Mentoring audience keeps us grounded in recognising the different methods which have a positive impact on the performance. Regular feedback we receive direct from players that have followed the 5-day challenge or player roadmaps is evidence of this.

For the purpose of sharing from experience, here we present and reflect upon a recent case study in 2017 with Melbourne Cricket Club.

The First XI had gone through a year of considerable restructure in leadership, personnel, game plan and preparation. A new captain, some senior players and a youthful group (more in the 17 to 19 year age bracket) had a mixed season, very good form in white ball matches that resulted in winning the One Day Final, yet the last three matches of the season were all losses or draws heading into the finals. We couldn’t bowl teams out, were unable to defend a score, had lost the ability to build meaningful partnerships with the bat.

A top-level position was eroded to just scraping in. The advantages of home ground and needing only to draw to advance were not achieved. The only way ahead was to find a way to win. To complete the picture, the ongoing success of the Victorian team meant that first class players in Tremain, White, Gotch and Harper were unavailable with Pucovski still recovering from concussion.

During the last round, the coaching staff openly reviewed the position with the players, focused on the things that we were good at with confidence and control. A few minor changes to player roles were considered and activated. Agreement was made on the way we would play. Our intent to be bold and committed that we were going all the way (even though we had just made it).

We then documented this is into a short handbook with an individual copy for each player who was able to possibly play in the finals to use as needed. We created for the Demons – The Plan To Win The Championship

At the start of the season, when the club plan, strategy and values were presented to players, management and support staff there was a direct focus upon a specific theme. This had been borrowed from Ric Charlesworth, one of the greatest ever coaches and strategists in Australian Sport:

“What might seem impossible but would make a big difference if we did it?”

Now before a season starts, this question opens the mind to dreaming about club championships, premierships, massive partnerships, great performances and plenty more. Unencumbered by reality, the mind openly wanders and good thoughts around success easily enter.

Now being at the pointy end of the season, this question was revisited and allowed the boldness to be more easily accepted. The question had been asked once. We now had a different context where it applied. Nobody was expecting us to do much. Our focus internally had been refined and sharpened. We were together as Demons with a plan.

To set the right tone, a simple message of congratulations opened the document.

Then a reminder of the Philosophy and Strategy that we had followed together:

  • Philosophy = To create and continually develop a trusted learning environment where our players at MCC can become better in their performance and as people to the club and each other.
  • Strategy = Think Correctly, Plan, Do

The Philosophy and Strategy were supported by the Pillars of Preparation:

  • BASE fitness
  • Communication
  • Knowledge
  • Balance

And Actions aligned to the Strategy (as noted below).

The Team Plan had been refined to suit the position that now faced us ahead in the finals series that contained a focus on roles where each player, every Demon, was able to contribute in some way and create a greater sense of togetherness as a team.

Rounding it all off was the foundation of the Team Plan that had been followed all season:

  • Walk off intact
  • Take the 10

The unbeatable equation that delivers victory.

Shifting then to a more personal focus, a continuation upon the Player Roadmap exercise that many had completed and followed during the season, was an invitation to record any meaningful aspect that was present when the player was going well and feeling good. This can then be used as either personal affirmation or to reinforce in discussion with the coaching staff to assist focus.

With the plan as a team and individual in order, belief to play with a winning mindset was established.

As a lower ranked team, the only choice and path available was to bowl teams out, take the ten!

The Demons embraced a Bowling Plan that every player understood, believed in and committed to.

The balance of the team provided an opportunity to attack with the new ball, find the right balance of aggression and control. Get ourselves into the contest and have clear communication with bowling partner and captain.

Once the ball condition deteriorated, the plan was around creating maximum wicket taking opportunities and applying tactical pressure with the keeper and fielders in support. Remove defensive reliance upon a fine leg, keep fielders in the eyeline of the batsman. Subtle in creating the feeling of restriction.

The outcome was the majority of wickets were taken of the top order bats being dismissed bowled, leg before or nicking behind. A momentum was created that surged through the bowlers and fielders keeping the energy and intent levels high. The Demons were hunting. The batting team core had crumbled.

The last page in the book was for any notes to be captured around the games, with our path to play in the Grand Final openly stated. These are a copy of the performance moments that directly related back to where our plans had been well executed. Moments where having things in order provide the outcome. Moments where the Demons took control of the match momentum with skill and emotion.

These formed the key points for the coaches to apply in reviews with the players during breaks, post-match and at practice.

However, with hurtful honesty, we were unable to sustain the flow of good play all the way to win the Grand Final. Fitzroy Doncaster, an admirable and deeply respected opponent, batted first and scored 309 after being 5/286 in 110 overs. A score that we felt was well within our capability, the suspected winning range being 340.

The Demons found it hard to get ahead of the game, losing a wicket at a challenging time and finished short at 266, the match going deep into the third day with Matthew Brown making a majestic 134 not out.

It had been many years since a Grand Final had been in the balance beyond the first day. A testament to all players involved with so many finding it within themselves an ability and spirit to rise to the occasion.

If we are able to help yourself or club further, or if you would like a copy of the blank template of “The Plan To Win The Championship” please feel free to send us an email to either:

Andrew = andrew@cricketmentoring.com

Tom = tom@cricketmentoring.com

Enjoy March, embrace the opportunity, hold the moment and enrich your history.

Andrew Walton Cricket Mentoring

About the writer: Andrew Walton has a unique depth of experience from a coaching career that has involvements across the spectrum of cricket in Australia, India and England.

Currently in the Cricket Australia Level 3 HP Program, Andrew has been the Head Coach in Premier Cricket Men’s clubs Melbourne (3), Prahran (4), Fitzroy Doncaster (2) and Hawthorn Monash University (2), and a season of Premier Cricket Women’s with Plenty Valley. International experience has been gained from regular visits (6) to the Karnataka Institute of Cricket (KIOC) in Bangalore and involvement at Middlesex County Cricket Club as a guest coach in 2014. In 2018, Andrew was appointed by Cricket Victoria as Head Coach of the Blind Cricket team for the NCIC and has since been appointed by Cricket Australia as the Assistant Coach of the National Blind Cricket team.

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About the author : Tom Scollay

One Comment

  1. Chintala saikrishna June 17, 2019 at 6:10 pm - Reply

    Sir please join to me sir am very proor but i didn’t have money sir please give me chance sir

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

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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

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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.

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