How to Coach Cricket to Difficult Characters
If you have coached cricket to young players you will know that not everyone listens intently to your every word.
The nightmare scenario is a group who seem bent on destroying any chance of developing skills. It's frustrating because, as a good coach, you are aiming to make every session fun as well as instructive.
Yet someone finds a way to be disruptive to your plans: Asking irrelevant questions, getting bored after one try and trying to distract others, I even once saw a kid so unfocused he walked across the pitch as the bowler was bowling (fortunately with a soft ball)!
The standard advice is "make it fun", but what do you do when your best efforts to make things fun are disrupted?
Here are some tricks I have learned in the last few years:
Adapt your style to the player
The first question when looking at difficult players is "am I using the style they respond to best?"
Coaching style is very individual. I have worked with disciplinarians who will give players a dressing down individually and as a group. I have worked with super-enthusiastic coaches who overpower distractions personal charisma. Both can work, but you need to be adaptable within your own style.
Some youngsters will buck up if you give them a dressing down. However, many will see it as a weakness on your part that your "head went" and try to do it again.
In many cases, simply ignoring the behaviour altogether is far more effective.
When you can't ignore it, you can also "park" it for later. For example, if a boy (it's usually a boy) is asking a lot of pointless questions, you can tell him that you will answer 2 questions every time he performs the next skill game correctly. Until then, it's time to get on with it!
Remember that most young players come to your sessions firstly to enjoy it. If your aims conflict with this, for example you are trying to get them to win at all costs, they will lose interest more quickly. You have to match your style to their goals, and not yours.
The more you work with young players the better your instinct becomes on managing your responses. But it will always take time to learn what is best. One size doesn't fit all, so experiment to see what kind of reactions you get. Patience is a virtue for all coaches!
Adapt your games to their level
In group coaching, one challenge is making sure everyone is getting the right level of coaching.
I coached a team this year with 14 year old players who have a good level of skill, and others who struggle with the basics. It's easy for the skilful players to get bored with basic drills and for weaker players to feel out of their depth with more advanced stuff.
I have also coached beginners who are so distractable they can't even perform a simple skill drill for 2 minutes without losing focus.
In each case, my job as coach - and yours - is to give players the right kind of challenge so they are engaged in your session.
For my distractable beginners I would basically throw them a softball and have a game of continuous cricket. Will they learn how to drive straight and bowl overarm? No, but they are not ready for that.
Meanwhile at my under 14 session I might have a bowling machine for my talented players while the others do some technical work on the bowling action before having a game-based target bowling session.
But that knowledge took several sessions to work out, with a few distracted players along the way!
Players who are losing interest are a sign you need to adapt the session to the player, and not try to crowbar your requirements in when they are not ready or willing.
Nobody wants to dish out punishments to players who seem to be not paying attention. But with a little reflection and quick thinking during your sessions you can nip those difficult distraction players in the bud.
They will enjoy the sessions more, and so will you.
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Comments
The age groups I find most trying are the 13 - 15.
I was recently asked to take up the coaching role for them at a club where the previous coach had left because they did not follow instructions and were generally rowdy.
Contrast this to last Monday when none of them showed up and I coached the U11's. Some immediately did a lap of the ground without prompting. They all did the fitness and skills routines and the session was rounded off by an orderly and pleasant game with everyone fully engaged to the point where I let the session extend by almost an hour.
Back to the 13 - 15 age group, a totally undisciplined bunch in need of drastic remedial action and what took place on the 2 previous sessions.
First week working on skills of target bowling against a slope. When I looked around a group of 5 had detached themselves to talk to the club's overseas pro and had to be pulled back into line.
Second week, LTAD ...
"What's this in aid of?"
"I only came here for a game" said the bowler who had difficulty in pitching the ball in the batter's half of the pitch with almost every ball going wide.
They did just one exercise taking up only about 2 minutes, some sitting down and others detached themselves in a huddle.
When they were in a game, the language and behaviour was dreadful and I told them so.
They were wandering off, sitting down on the field and other nonsense.
Plan of action if they had showed up last Monday
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* This is a cricket club and I am here to coach.
* Dress code, a plain white tea shirt, tracksuit bottoms and suitable white footwear or leave the club premises.
* Likewise send home anyone who turns up late and didn't start with the warm up and fitness routines for any session.
* Exercise my authority to ban anyone misbehaving or not paying full attention as they have their way of showing displeasure with any aspect of coaching.
I don't mollycoddle or bend, they have to measure up or ship out.
If there is no self discipline, discipline has to be rigid and enforced, otherwise nothing will ever be achieved. The last thing cricket needs is a bunch of next generation sociopaths.
I think Sid, you are the perfect example of a disciplinarian coach! It is a challenge to motivate youngsters who do not listen and seem bent on doing their own thing. My question to you would be this: what changes could you make to your coaching methods to inspire? In short, what is the carrot to go with the stick?
The carrot is in the stick.
Contrasting the approach of the previous coach who simply reacted by running away in the face of a group bent on not cooperating.
I also mentioned the U11's who were interested throughout the session, lively but cooperative.
They listened and enjoyed a fruitful coaching session which extended almost an hour beyond the scheduled slot with their parents watching from the car park waiting for it to end.
The few who mentioned at the start that they had to be away by 7 PM were able to enjoy their shortened session and say a pleasing "Thanks Coach" - Mission accomplished.
They enjoyed the session, I enjoyed the session and most of all I could see they benefited from it.
I see my mission as a coach is to aid youngsters in becoming improved cricketers, both with enhanced skills and mental attitudes towards the game.
On a previous assignment at the same club I was able to move the U15's into the third team and experience the joy of the youngster who scored his maiden half-century aided by the 4 he needed off the last ball and the magnanimous gesture of the opposing captain who asked his player to assist it across the boundary.
That's why I coach in addition to my numerous other pleasure pursuits.
Yesterday it was flying an aeroplane, today it has been working with software and Amateur Radio hardware, this evening and tomorrow morning it's coaching.
My approach to everything I do is serious and intense throughout.
On one occasion being coached at Edgbaston my friend Jeff asked what I thought about something non-cricket to which I replied "The only thing I can think of is what I want to do with the next ball I am about to bowl".
My standard joke with the youngsters is "take this seriously guys, the time for socialising is for later over a pint at the bar".
Sid Boyce
I've got to say, I'd love to have some coaches like you!
As a 14 year old I know how it feels at first to have coaches that are not very serious and don't discipline the players. It doesn't help you at all. But when there is a coach who disciplines the players and teaches them valuable things (even if they don't understand the value) they automatically gain experience and knowledge from it. Even if they don't always show it, they are very grateful. Keep at it.
I think that is the key to things. Whatever style you use from the hard taskmaster to the cheeky buddy, the kids must be enjoying things and be engaged in the sessions. Playing up is a symptom that they are not enjoying it.
It's our job as coaches to build a framework to your sessions that allow skill development through enjoyment.
We currently have a mixed bunch, the ones who try to behave as though they are having a knock about in the park with their mates, then there are the serious ones who appreciate coaching and look to improving their game and knowledge of the game.
Order has to be kept to allow fruitful coaching to take place and parents will voice outrage at misbehaviour.
We have been successful in having a number of young players accepted into the County District teams, one into the Academy and one who has been a county opening batsman and bowler for some years.
We have had to seek the OK of the County to continue coaching those youngsters as they had been handed letters saying that they should sever contact with other than county coaches and it's been gratifying that one youngster's dad was handed pictures to show us so we we could rectify a batting difficulty the youngster was having - that we accomplished.
Those parents are very sensitive to the standards of discipline they observe and rightly so.
At one club a parent said that he was appalled at the on-field behaviour of our Under 15 team who were playing away under the control of the team manager.
This parent said he was going to withdraw his son and we never saw him again.
They would be pulled up in short order had I been there.
Unruly and undisciplined behaviour in any coaching session is robbing the ones that are serious so it has to be stamped on immediately as unfortunately clubs do not employ a child psychologist to take care of the rowdy ones.
If they don't like my methods they don't have to come back, besides I have many other interests I would rather be doing.
Having a smooth running session is rewarding to me as a coach and to the youngsters of whatever ability or none who benefit from coaching that improves their abilities. For that reason I have banned the word "can't" from my sessions.
With one lady's team I instituted a 10p fine for the use of the word.
There is one youngster I worked on for quite a while to stop throwing. I kept saying "that's a throw", showing him time and time again how to bowl; only once did he say "I can't bowl" and I told him "you can".
Comes the fateful day when I approached him pointing a finger with him expecting a telling off, only to ask "Did I not tell you you could bowl", the smile was worth bottling. His bowling action is faultless.