Time to change the training process?
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.
Tags: Club Cricket
January 17th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
An excellent, detailed blog Adi. One thing I remember being said during the World 20/20 was about the amount of practice players put into certain skills. I think it was Paul Allott who said that there was probably only Umar Gul and Lasith Maling in world cricket who would take a keeper and a bag of balls out and bowl just yorkers for an hour so as to perfect it.
I get the feeling that players at all levels are being made to be moderately good at everything, rather than focus on something they are naturally good at and perfect it. If this was done then I think we would see more diversity in cricketers, and also more match winners.
February 5th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Thanks Dimi.
Yes the specialist coaches can do a world of good for the issue of players being moderately good at everything. I like the idea of specialist coaches because a cricketer can always take coaching from specialist coaches if he wants to excel in a particular skill, be it batting,bowling,wicket keeping or fielding.
May 24th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Бесконечный топик…
(1) I mean a net session of about 1.5- 2 hrs hours is broken […….