When listening to TVcommentary, how many times do you hear the pundits speaking about decision making?

Is it more or less than mentions of technique?

This was a very simple experiment but quite interesting to do.

I sat and watched the 3rd England vs Windies Test Match at Lords last week from a lovely seat in the Mound Stand. Attached to my ear was one of those radio headphones which allows the spectator to listen into either the TV or radio commentary whilst watching the match live. It was great fun.

For this experiment, I focused solely on the comments made regarding the batting team (England were batting in their 1st Innings for the duration of the experiment).

I ran the experiment for the Friday afternoon session only.

A running tally was kept and updated on my phone. Every time an element was discussed in a batting context, I added a "1" on my notes page. At the end of the session of play I added up the "1's" to give each category a grand total.

The categories are listed below with some descriptors of discussions that ensued over the 2 hours and 10 minutes of play:

• Technical Footwork, batswing, downswing, head position, balance
• Tactical decision making: shot selection, shot options vs the field set, playing under lights, counteracting the Lords slope
• Mental Concentration, Confidence, Belief
• Physical Power, Speed, Strength

1. Technical (14) 23%
2. Tactical (32) 58%
3. Mental (11) 18%
4. Physical (3) 5%

Now, I’m not saying that our commentary friends are the doyens of all cricketing knowledge, but the findings did get me thinking.

If a session of batting provides so much stimulus for decision making discussion then how does correlate with the time that we assign to developing decision making within our batting coaching sessions?

On reflection, my sense tells me that personally, I assign about 10% of my coaching session time to decision making, and more than 60% on the technical elements of batsmanship.

Have I got my coaching balance right?

Some follow up questions:

• What would a batting session look like if the main focus was on highlighting and developing the decision making capacity in our batting student?
• Would a heightened level of decision making skill naturally facilitate better technical performance within any given session?
• Does a development of decision making skill within a practice environment translate into more productivity (runs) in match play?
• How can we test the robustness of a player’s decision making skill within a session?

Some great questions that I want to try and answer over the coming weeks. Now all I need is someone to work with who I can design sessions for with a decision making emphasis?

Luckily, I get the opportunity to work with one young man who just loves cricket and likes to have a top up batting session each week with me. For this experiement, we have called this player “Badger”.

Badger's normal batting coach is Matt. Matt is working hard technically with Badger in the first phase of the winter and we have decided to use my weekly session as an opportunity to develop Badger's decision making ability in match play.

So are Badger and I barking up the right tree? My session 1 report comes next week!