Coaching to Win | Cricket coaching, fitness and tips

The 4 biggest secrets of successful youth cricket

This is a guest article by Daniel Maddocks of T20Kids.com: Promoting Cricket for Kids. Daniel is an ECB Coach with experience in coaching young cricketers in the North West of England.

A healthy youth section is the sign of a healthy club.

How to coach wicketkeeping

Imagine the scene, you turn up at nets. The bowler's bowl and the batsmen bat. Sometimes they swap places. It's all pretty typical.

What about the keeper?

The guy is just expected to never make a mistake, even when all the work he gets involves taking throws from fielding practice.

Hardly fair, is it?

The problem of coaching a specialist

Be a better cricket coach by giving less information

To be a coach, you have to coach, right?
 
Not always.

Coaching isn't like filling a jug with water. Minds don't work by having information poured into them until they are full. For a start, jugs don't wonder if it's the right kind of water for their needs.

How to motivate young cricketers

As a coach, have you ever wondered about the talented player who seems to cruise without putting in the hard yards?

How much better would Player A be, you wonder, if only he had the motivation of the les talented Player B? The frustrating part is that motivation is more complicated that a simply telling Jimmy to buck up his ideas.

6 Ways to get the most from your cricket team meetings

When done wrong, team meetings are a waste of time. I know. I spent years working in a big company who had the ability to make meetings about meetings last for hours for no reason.

So if you are going to have one make the most of it by doing it right. It's only respectful of the player's time.

Why the will-to-win takes more than a dressing room pep-talk

The captain is in the dressing room before the game giving his team a last minute talk.

He tells the boys that they have the talent and ability to beat this lot. All that needs to happen is this: Stay focused and switched on for the entire game. Let the will-to-win take us over the line.

How you can instantly be a better cricket coach

A long time ago in another life I was a fitness instructor at a big gym.

Even back in the late 90's people would tell me at their first sessions that they didn't want to get too bulky. They wanted to tone up. As we know, it's all but impossible to accidentally get too big.

What's this got to do with cricket coaching?

The real secrets to mastering the sweep shot

If shots go through fashions, we can safely say the sweep is this year's must have item. Have you been wondering how to play the sweep well?

The sweep is an excellent weapon for any batsman: when used correctly.

And that's also the problem

Frowned upon totally in its early days, the shot (and its range of variations) has become an acceptable, if difficult to learn, shot. But many coaches still shy away from teaching it, going down the safer route of a straight bat.

Do you make these mistakes when coaching spinners?

Would your club side be better with a couple of excellent spin bowlers? How about your Test team?

They are mysterious, a joy to watch and frustrating to play against. But spinners need careful attention if they are to be developed properly. It's easy for coaches and captains to crush the enthusiasm and confidence of a young player simply by misunderstanding how to handle them.

The 5 Immutable laws of coaching kids' cricket

Despite all the recent innovations in coaching, some things remain constant.

I have been a coach since 1994 and have taught kids at almost every age and skill level. Long ago I learned that to be a success you need to do certain things. You could be standing in front of 40 8 year olds or trying to get the most out of an elite group of under 16 Academy players. These are the immutable laws of coaching kids' cricket: