In our recent podcast, the subject of form came up. I talked about a discussion with group of U14 cricketers at The Portsmouth Grammar School. I remember it started with a Hampshire cup semi-final match, I forget against who, but it went something like this...

“We should be able to win this one”, one of the boys said… “Chris and Tom are bang in form, Jack’s turning it square and the seamers have got good form at the moment as well… Me and Ollie aren’t in form right now, but the others are doing well enough, and we’ll be back in form by the final!”

It was nice to know he was so confident and that the game was clearly “in the bag”. As well as that come the final he’d be able to step up and dominate. But not yet, not today. He wasn’t ready, he wasn’t in form.

Thinking about what he’d said, I wanted to know more about why he thought that way. What he meant by form. And actually what anyone meant by form.

A few days after the game, which they did win as they’d predicted, I approached the subject. “Why are Chris and Tom doing so well as the top of the order? Why are the seamers having some success at the moment? And why has Jack gone for so few runs in the past couple of weeks?”

As you can imagine, the response came in droves.

“They’re all in form”

“When they’re in form they’ll win us the game. When some of the other lads are in form they’ll do it for us.”

“… It’s when no-ones in form that we’re in trouble.”

So it’s seemed that our entire season was hinging almost completely on the form of our players. I suppose that seems logical. Although perhaps a little tricky to control if we don’t know what form is.

But again, “What does that mean?" I asked.

“If we’re going to be in form, we need to work how to achieve form. And to work out how we achieve form, surely we have to understand what form actually is.”

So following a slightly disorganised group discussion, we came up with the following ideas:

• Form is how well we’re playing at any time, or maybe better phrased, over a period of time that’s not too long. So being in form means we’re playing pretty well.
• Good form requires having confidence or belief in your abilities.
• Good form happens when getting your technical skills right.
• Good form involves making the right decisions and /or, getting your tactics correct.

Now this is a group of under 14 cricketers, so by no means am I saying that what they’ve come up with is correct, or a conclusive list ideas. It’s just a few statements that meant something to them.

So now that we’d agreed on a few statements that suggested what form might be, I asked them to give a little more clarity to them and interpret how the 4 factors they’d decided on related to each other.

What they decided on was as follows:

• Playing really well at a particular time is how they interpreted good form as an overall definition.

- Confidence, skills, and decisions or tactics, were the elements that made up this overall thing they call form.

This now started to give a bit of clarity around what we needed to get right if we wanted to be in form.

• We needed to get good plans in place and understand how we apply them to a match situation.
• We needed to practice our skills in training, to ensure that we were technically sound and striking or bowling the ball well.
• We needed to prepare on a match day in such a way that our skills were functioning well on the day.
• And hopefully having done all of the above to a good standard, this would assure us that we’re ready to perform, giving each other confidence and belief out on the field.

**Suddenly anyone who wasn’t in form had some direction as to how they could get into form. **

While those who were in form, had a good idea about how they could extend it for as long as possible.

Again, what the group came up with wasn’t necessarily right or wrong.

But importantly it removed a big cloud of confusion that covered this term that was being used on a daily basis, and was also being made responsible for success or failure.

With a view to controlling our own successes, players could have a positive feeling of influencing their performances and form. Whilst the defensive shield of “I’m not in form so I can’t do anything about it, or, it doesn’t matter”, was taken away.

Again, passing the responsibility back to the individual to control their own form and performances.

Finally we can up with quite a nice little equation which is a reminder for how they manage their own performance levels and form (if we want to keep using this term).

Form = (Technical skills + Decisions) x Confidence

Sure, as a piece of mathematics, it’s probably bordering on idiotic. However, as a representation of how we can perform better, and improve our form, to this groups it means something.

Simply allowing them to pinpoint which area on the right side of the equation needs to be improved, and then getting to it.