Archive for the ‘sportbloggeradi’ Category

Time to change the training process?

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

As the game of cricket gets more professional, competitive and widely analysed and marketed the training process is still very much the same at grassroot levels. The few things that i think should change especially in Indian grasroot/club levels are as follows:

(1) I mean a net session of about 1.5- 2 hrs hours is broken into 15 minutes of warm up, 15 minutes of fielding practice and remaining session for batting and fielding training. Considering that this nets are the producers of finished goods more importance has to be given to this. Should not the clubs start doing more fielding practice every day. How about 30-45 minutes. It will really help Indian cricket gradually and the results could be seen in next 15 years as the kids start training from age of 8 years and they make international debut somewhere around 22.

(2) Also we have once coach for training, though the skills involved are many like batting,fielding,wicket keeping and bowling. This is the old method being continued in all clubs. Isn’t it better to have separate batting coach,bowling coach and fielding coach. Currently one man does all the jobs though he is only proficient in teaching one skill. Off course most of the Indian clubs are funded by individuals or few individuals, hence it would be difficult to hire separate coaches. But there are many company sponsored clubs who get enough sponsorship. Should not these clubs at least try to revamp the training methods.

(3) Only few clubs do tours to different cities and play series with a particular club of other cities. It would only help if many clubs start touring different cities once a year with their A side. Financing for unsponsored clubs could be an issue. How about the MCA or KCA or other such associations helping some clubs in their cities financially so that they can tour.

(4) The corruption in selection of young cricketers should be stopped. There have been occasions of money being demanded for getting a kid selected in under 19 city teams. I have few excellent players having to curb their quest for cricket because of such demands to get selected.

(5) In India most of the clubs practice on concrete wickets. As generally there is no point bowling short on such wickets youths at clubs bowl/are asked to bowl full length deliveries 95% of the time. Same is the situation on soil wickets and MAT’s. Due to this most of young players get naturally front footed and very able at it. However, the back foot technique does not comes as easily and are found wanting at higher levels in overseas tour. MCA has got D.Y.patil stadium built with soil imported from South Africa. Shouldn’t more such stadiums be built in all cities. That will encourage pacers at club levels as well as make our future abtsman as confident against any length of pace bowling.

With BCCI being the world’s richest cricketing body, it can always set correct strategies by helping the city associations financially so that India sees much better quality in all aspects of the game of cricket.

Referrals and technology will make cricket better.

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

Cricket has become a more professional sport . The competition is at its best than it was in the previous era. The performance of players is being monitored minutely. In such a scenario a wrong decision by umpire may ruin the career of a cricketer or the fate of a team. Imagine if the wrong decision was ruled in a World Cup final. Someone else makes mistake and some one else suffers. That cannot be eradicated but can be minimized. Technology is the best way to assist the umpires in an unbiased way to minimize human errors. Applying technology to all decisions will cause interruptions and take more time. However, if players expect better decision they they should help the cause by wasting less time between over and stop some silly time wasting techniques that we have seen recently in some test series. I think if players stop wasting time we can have more than 3 referrals per innings per side, maybe 5.

Scope of referrals: All types of decisions made by umpires.

Technology that can be used: Snicko , Ultra Slow motion replays, hot spot.

Why is it opposed?

(1)Accuracy: Hawk eye is the only debatable technology and it has been criticized by past players.

Solution: Instead of totally scrapping the hawk-eye technology, research can be done to make it more accurate.

(2)Time/Interruptions: Many cricketers have a view that it will cause interruptions and consume more time.

Solution:Number of referrals and time management: 5 per team per innings. So there will be maximum of 10 referrals per innings which if referred will take 30 minutes of play. I think this 30 minutes can be covered by wasting less time between over, reducing time wasted due to sight screen issues by improve sightscreen mechanism (sometimes it takes 3 minutes to adjust the sightscreen) and maybe even start the game 15 minutes early.it is surely not difficult to manage the time in an efficient way.The willingness has to be there.

We will have to consider that umpire errors are on rise and it has no positive effect on the game of cricket.. Further it effects cricketers, result of the games in a wrong way. Hence, the quality of the decisions have to be improved and the accuracy and unbiased nature of technology will be good assistant to the umpires.