I watched a bowling session last week with Kevin Shine, the Lead Fast Bowling Coach for the ECB. The topic was one that was discussed recently by Steffan Jones: bowling yorkers.

English bowlers are rarely excellent at this, the last brilliant English International bowler was Darren Gough and his International career came to an end way back in 2006.

Coaching the Intention

Kevin built a coaching gadget which acts as a tunnel for the Yorker to pass through. He placed it 1.22 metres away from the middle stump and he asked an ex-first class bowler to bowl at it.

The intention was to bowl the ball through the tunnel. The tunnel was adjustable in length to increase the difficultly (intention) as the bowlers competence and results improved.

The intention was clear. Get the ball through the tunnel. Simple.

At the same time, Shine asked a Performance Analyst to video the bowler’s action in high speed camera mode. The bowler initially bowled the ball into length under instruction and then the intention shifted to the "yorker tunnel". We could then compare the bowling actions for the 2 deliveries.

So what was different on the yorker delivery?

1. The length of the delivery stride increased
2. The previous point helped the bowler to lower his release height.
3. This had a positive impact upon the (flatter) trajectory of the ball.

Intention drill results

These are all great adaptations of the body - and for the bowling action - that work well when trying to hit the elusive yorker. But more importantly, did the bowler get better? Did the bowler get the ball through the tunnel?

No he didn't. Far from it!

He only hit the tunnel once in 20 balls, bowled lots of length balls and 3 beamers. He would have been taken off in a game by the umpire.

So, 'Coach the intention; not the action' theory doesn't work then?

Interestingly, what I have described here is the last 10 minutes of the session.

Rewind to the start

The previous 30 minutes was spent giving excellent data and research undertaken around the topic of yorkers by Shine and his ECB team. This research has informed the technical interventions and practices that we as coaches can choose to use. The detailed information was delivered to the group, including the bowler.

The bowler then bowled with all of this information in his head.

Consciously or sub-consciously, he was trying all those things at once and not getting anywhere near the target. His performance was significantly compromised. Now, we must remember that the session had a coach education theme and not a player development one; yet it got me thinking.

How many times we as coaches complicate and obstruct player development rather than unlock potential through intention based coaching?

The knowledge ultimately needs to be with the coach. The coach can then use the knowledge and data to set up appropriate intentions and to know what to look for.

A bowlers body will self-organise to find a solution (in this case a longer delivery stride, lower arm position, faster run up) if we set the right intentions and then coach in an implicit fashion.

Participant feedback

Some of the participants went away from the session saying "that's interesting data".

Some left thinking "I'm not having that! It’s too generic and the bowler got worse."

I went away thinking "That was great, I'm going to use that; just in a different order".

Have you got any examples of "intention based" coaching that has worked for you? Let me know.