Organised Chaos

This weekend was a real rollercoaster for us at Kimberley. Firstly on Saturday we had a must unusual game of cricket with Clifton. The game was ebbed and flowed, one way and then the other, and then just as it looked as though we might have taken the ascendancy at just the right moment to win the game, the rain and conditions once again intervened. We were still pretty happy with the 12 points we picked up and we now have some really big matches over the next few weeks which will define our season.

We were very disappointed not to have won our cup game at Mansfield on Sunday. It was, on reflection, a match we should have won comfortably, and we need to make sure we learn from some of the mistakes we made.

Much of our problems I feel were caused by not having a detailed enough game plan for where we wanted to be at different stages of the match. This is something that we will look to put right over the coming weeks.

I have recently led British Colleges Girls U18 Hockey Squad on an international trip to Portugal. One of the key messages that I tried to get across to the girls was that we need to have a game plan and structure that allows us to make sensible decisions under pressure. Having such an approach in dynamic invasion games such as hockey, rugby and football I like to call ‘organised chaos’.  The basic theory is that while you cannot script a sports match and predict exactly what will happen, you can try to condition the events with co-ordinated actions of the participants.

With the BCS girls we worked on strategy to organise our chaos!

 

Cricket also has elements of this ‘organised chaos’ mantra. A bowler should have a clear plan and vision of how they expect an over to go. If the first ball goes as planned, what might I do next ball? Then the ball after? Bowlers often describe this as ‘setting a batsman up’. You might think that a batsman therefore is reactionary to the bowlers plan. However, the top batsmen will also have a clear plan in their head. They will see the field that has been set and identify their scoring zones. Once that has been done, a plan will be formulated on what shot will be played in relation to the type of delivery bowled. For most top players this process actually becomes tacit, and they do not necessarily become conscious of this process taking place. Therefore when asked about how they set about doing it, they might respond with phrases like, ‘it comes naturally to me’ or ‘I just play it as I see it’.

For developing players, this process is much harder and building the responses comes from giving a player a smaller number of options to a similar delivery. From here they can build up a response to different types of delivery in a progressive way. The only way to get to the ‘natural’ stage unfortunately is practice. That is where as I side we must work hard across these last seven weeks of the season to make sure we stay ahead of our opposition.

Planning for the unexpected

Saturday was a disappointing day for us at Kimberley. After such a positive result the previous week against Rolls Royce, we were desperately keen to back it up with another good performance against another prospective championship winning team. Unfortunately, we were outplayed in every department, and full marks must go to Cuckney for the professional performance they put in.

The defeat was not down to a lack of quality on our part, but perhaps a lack of concentration at crucial stages of both the first and second innings, and this is something we will be keen to address this weekend at Mansfield.

The week has also seen a remarkable Test Match take place down the road at Trent Bridge. The cricket there has been engrossing, with momentum swinging for side to side with each passing session of cricket. I also read this week that 200,000 pints of lager had been sold over the five days so hopefully Nottinghamshire will have made some money out of it!

The game really changed from being an easy England win to a close fought contest, when young Ashton Agar came in and played the most astonishing innings from a number 11. As a fellow ‘jack’ myself, I know how hard it can be to come in when your team are struggling and need a bit of momentum. However, the knock that Ashton played was more than just momentum but was really a game changer.

Alistair Cook was criticised heavily for his captaincy during that intriguing session of cricket. Yet what you perhaps forget is that England will have had no plan for Agar. With a support staff to rival a West End Production, England have footage, analysis and a written game plan for each international player around the world. Yet when this boy was pulled out of Henley on Thames a few weeks before the series, I doubt England had much footage from the Home Counties League. The fact probably is, that they assumed (maybe as Australia did by batting him at 11) that he wouldn’t be up to much with the bat, and would probably last a few overs at best. So when he started to stroke the ball to all parts of the ground, it sent the strategy team into a bit of a spin.

I really do wonder how much current international captains are encouraged (or allowed) to think on their feet. There was much criticism that Cook was uninspiring through this phase of the game with both his field settings and his bowling changes. Yet I would imagine, that to justify the large entourage and coaching team, Cook and the bowlers have a set plan for each batsman. So when situations arise that require a little intuition and creativity, they struggle to find it as they are not used to it.

The skilled captain and coach are always looking for the clues and tell tail signs of where a batsman likes to score and where they might be vulnerable. It is certainly something that we look at at Kimberley, and I have no doubt that come Lords this week, we see  a plan hatched for young Ashton that wasn’t there at Trent Bridge.

Analysing the commentary

Saturday was a great day for us over at Rolls Royce. It was pleasing for a variety of reasons, not least because we were able to pick up 18 points from the current league leaders. Another delightful aspect of the day was watching our overseas player, Bharat Popli, score his maiden hundred for Kimberley against a bowling attack packed with Minor Counties or First Class experience. Bharat has been working extremely hard on his game during his time in Nottinghamshire, so it was really pleasing to see him rewarded on Saturday. We hope he can now build on that performance, and continue to make match winning contributions through to the end of the season.

Soon after his innings, Bharat was whipped away for a radio interview with Mansfield 103 who are covering the cricket in the league this year. So far this has proved to be a real success, with the clubs, the league and the radio station putting a lot of time and effort into making some entertaining shows. It has also been nice to meet some of the people who have volunteered to be reporters out and about at the grounds. Having worked on a live production team before, I know how tricky it can be to pull together all the component of a live show, so to do this with a team of volunteers has been very impressive. The individual reports have also been very impressive in their knowledge of the league and their astuteness in analysing the match situation. This is something that can be quite tricky to do when you only have a small on air slot.

This week we have seen the Ashes begin at Trent Bridge. As well as a debut for young Ashton Agar in the Australia team, some of you may have noticed another person making their bow. Andrew Strauss has made the jump from changing room to commentary box, and in doing so has joined the list of ex-England captains on the Sky Sports commentary team. So how has ‘Straussy’ got on so far? Well to be honest, I have been impressed. He maybe isn’t as colourful as David Lloyd, or as cool as Michael Holding, but Strauss really tried to do something, that so many ‘pundits’ fail to do. He tried to give you an insight into what he thought the captain was trying to do, particularly when Clarke was moving his field around so much during the first couple of hours. So much of the television punditry now is mundane stating of the obvious, or the favoured lines of some of the cricketing fraternity of ‘it was better in my day’ or ‘he wouldn’t have been able to bowl to me for long like that’.

Working as an analyser is a different role than being a commentator. The current Sky team try to combine the two, and it is a difficult mix. Trying to enhance the pictures on your screen by building the atmosphere is a skill in itself, but when you are asked to also try to make meaning of what is going on, the role can get confused. For me, Bumble and Michael Atherton have mastered this balance, and blend together the two roles beautifully, yet both in a very different style. It will be interesting to see how Strauss develops over the summer.

Fielding a strong team

As we get closer to the first Ashes Test which starts at Trent Bridge next week, excitement is building around the country. In England, it is the Ashes that without doubt whets the appetite of the cricketing public and more importantly perhaps, the general public, and once again the spotlight will be firmly on the England team for the next couple of months.

Ashes series can be defined by many great individual performances, and thinking back to that great series in 2005, many standout as being crucial to the success of the team. Flintoff at Edgbaston, Vaughan at Old Trafford, Pietersen at the Oval all spring to mind as brilliant batting displays in wholly different contexts that played crucial roles in influencing the series.

Andrew Strauss take a wonder catch (c) Patrick Eagar

For me though, there are two moments that always stick in my mind from that series as pieces of individual brilliance that had a huge influence on the series, and both came at Trent Bridge. Firstly, there was Andrew Strauss’s spectacular one handed catch at third slip to dismiss Adam Gilchrist off the bowling of Andrew Flintoff at the 4^th Test at Trent Bridge. Then came the controversial but brilliant run out of Ricky Ponting by substitute fielder Gary Pratt.



Gary Pratt will be remembered as the man who ran out Ponting



Both these pieces of brilliance not only took crucial wickets in their own right, but they galvanised the team into thinking that nothing could stop them. That is why fielding is such an important element of our game, and one that we always ensure we practice thoroughly.

On Sunday, we were lucky enough to witness our own pieces of fielding brilliance to change the direction of the game. Firstly, Bharat Popli came up with a brilliant run out at a crucial stage to remove their dangerous opening  batsman who had just reached fifty. Then later in the innings, Sam Johnson took a brilliant catch running backwards over his shoulder, to remove their last real batting threat.

These things don’t just happen by chance. We work hard on our fielding both during the week at training, and in our preparation before the start of the game, to ensure that we give ourselves the best chance of creating moments of brilliance. I have always believed that fielding is actually the easiest part of your game to improve but mentally one of the toughest as you have to be willing to put the time into something that perhaps is not as much fun as bowling or batting. We are lucky at Kimberley to have a group of young players (and Jon Terry) who love fielding and take real pride in the standards they set. We know we can’t afford to rest on our laurels as we need to use every advantage we can get. Lets hope we see some more moments of brilliance in the field from Kimberley and England over the coming weeks.