Are you making the most of your scorer?

Scoring is a thankless task, yet it takes incredible concentration alongside calmness under pressure. When it's done well, no one notices. No glory.

You can change that, and make your team better in the process.

Think about it. Who watches every ball of the game with more intense scrutiny than the scorer?

No one has a more complete picture of the game. Combine this with a thorough mind and attention to detail and you have an analyst, not just a scorer.

From scoring to analysis

When you think of your scorer as someone who can improve your game as well as record it, possibilities open up.

You can pick up stats like Control Percentage and number of chances for catches in the field.

Not only will this allow your proud geek scorer to produce more pretty graphs and chart, it lets you analyse trends in play to feedback to the coach and captain so they can gain a clearer picture of skills.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s take a typical example of an analyst in a club situation.

The captain wants his side to be better at running between the wickets. The team have a tendency to want to score with boundaries in a blaze of glory and it’s leaving the side short of runs with opportunities missed.

The scorer, captain and coach get together. The scorer shows a lot of runs in boundaries (Balls per Boundary and boundary percentage stats) but also pat back a lot of balls that could be worked as singles (Dot Ball%). This is especially true in the first 20 overs.

The team decide to set a target of 50 singles in the 50 over match, and increase Scoring Ball% to 35% overall.

The coach goes away and designs a training plan to coach players to reach the newly set target.

As time passes the scorer watches the result and reports back, allowing the coach to see how well the training is working while the captain can decide if the targets are realistic and testing but still achievable.

Make analysis easy

At club level, scorers have never had the access to technology that makes this much easier. It's meant that teams with big ambitions have been restricted.

But not any more.

PV/Match is PitchVision's scoring and cricket video analysis tool; it gives scorers the power to become part of the team's improvement drive. It makes the scorer one of the central heroes of the team because they keep doing what they do best while the team get better.

And it's a lot more fun scoring for a winning team than a losing one, that's for sure.

So, this season, sit down with your scorer and help them to help you.