Here at Millfield School, the UK season has drawn to a close. The players have had a few weeks off cricket and are now itching to get back into the cricket bubble and hone their skills for next season.

Over the past week, the coaches at school have been interviewing each player as part of out review and planning process. This guides the players and the coaches (both internally and externally) through a long winter training period.

If you go on the internet and put in "performance programme" into a Google search then lots of pretty pictures with different coloured content will come up. Whilst they look good on paper, that paper simply gathers dust as it is too complicated, too detailed or lacks flexibility.

Simple planning

The Millfield Player Development Programmes that we use, asks the player and coach to identify a specific goal (the what), to explore why that goal is important (the why), to establish an Action Plan showing how this is to be achieved (the how) and asks, "What does success look like?" (the measurement).

We encourage simple language that both player and coach will clearly understand and we list the review date (in this case the 7th December as we break up for a month at the end of that week).

The date of review is essential as it time caps the development phase. This, in turn encourages coach and player to be realistic in the number of coaching points that they list in the plan and also helps them to prioritise their time and resources appropriately.

How or why?

When people write into PitchVision they usually ask us to provide them with new "drills". It has to be remembered that drills form only part of the “How”.

A key question when looking to use any drill should be “Why”.

Why are we using the drill? And then, what are you looking for that drill to develop in the player?

It's a question that is rarely asked. It's easy to become infatuated by a snazzy drill and apply it to all-comers irrespective of their development needs or the demands of the game.

Measurement

The second element that is rarely defined and hardly ever followed through is the relevance of measurement.

Without measurement, how do we know if the intervention has been effective and yielded an appropriate result?

How do we know when to move onto another goal or aspiration?

Measurements such as pace, length, deviation and line are all available to the privileged pupils at Millfield through the magnificent PitchVision PV/ONE system.

We can also measure success with both areas to bowl and hit, by using synchronised and comparison video footage, by accessing comparable still images such as point of release and also to count the number of balls that we can access when aiming to hit a number of cuts, pulls of drives.

These numbers give us a guide of progress or regression. They don't always have to be totally objective but need to be valid, credible and consistent.

However, in many cases, the best assessment is what it looks like it or feels like, so be mindful of ignoring the these most obvious and historic barometers.

The key thing for me is that we run through a process of:

1. What
2. Why
3. How
4. What does success looks like?

Any coach or player looking to develop a skill would benefit from following the 4 step process above and by using a template similar to our PDP.

Have a go and see if it works for you!