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.