Building lasting partnerships

Last weekend was a very enjoyable one for me. Not only was I able to go down to London to watch Manchester United win the Community Shield at Wembley, but more importantly, I was able to play a part in an import win for Kimberley away at Papplewick.

What made Saturday’s victory particularly enjoyable was the fact that we had to really work for it. Without the crucial partnerships between firstly Sam Ogrizovic (69) and Sam Johnson (46), then our opening bowlers Atif Sheikh and Elliot Bowles, who ensured Papplewick were strangled in their chase right from the start, Alex King’s match winning bowling performance would not have been possible.

Sunday’s trip to Wembley was not only about the football, but also about catching up with my Best Man and one of my Ushers as we prepare for my wedding in just over a weeks time. Therefore, it seems appropriate that this week I talk about the importance of good partnerships!

With Usher Pete and Best Man Will at Wembley

 

Cricket, while obviously a team game, is essentially a game that depends on partnerships between two people. Firstly, you have the batsmen. Successful partnerships are built upon an understanding of how your team mate thinks and plays. You must not only know your own game well, but also theirs. For instance, there are players in our team who I know will be quicker between the wickets than others, or who might call runs in a different way to others. To avoid errors running between the wickets, this understanding is vital. In addition to this though, it is important that you both work to the same game plan. That plan may change and evolve as the score progresses, but you both must have a clear expectation of what your partner and yourself are expected to do. Effective batting partnerships can break bowlers and can also force bowling captains to feel that they are perhaps doing worse than they are.

For bowlers too, partnerships can often force a team back into a game. Often people refer to ‘bowling in partnerships’ when two bowlers keep things tight and as a result force a mistake from the batsman. This was very much the case as Alex and I bowled on Saturday (with Kingy getting all of the glory of course!). Keeping the score down and forcing batsman to take a risk they don’t want to, can create wickets. Yet bowlers must also look to develop partnerships in different ways. You might get a clue or a hint of what a batsman is trying to do to you, so why not pass that on to your teammate? You might work together to restrict a batsman from playing his favourite shot, or hitting in a particular area. Bowlers need to communicate just as much as batsmen inbetween overs. Without that communication, you might end up missing vital clues or working to a different strategy.

Finally, there is the partnership between fielders and the bowler. On Saturday, Dominic Brown was superb for me fielding at point. His hard work and good anticipation prevented a number of singles which helped build that pressure on the batsman. Then at the end, young Elliot Bowles took a superb catch at long off, and the beauty was, I knew he would because I trusted him in that position. I suppose that is the key to a good partnership, you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your teammate and place the trust in them to do the job. That is what I intend to do over the next few weeks both on and off the field!

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.

Pitching it right

Saturday was a gruelling day at the 2bm Private Ground. It was one of those hugely frustrating matches where the weather continued to intervene all day, and we found ourselves trawling the covers on and off the pitch at regular intervals.

On a day like that, it can be incredibly tough both physically, as you have to prepare your body for action several times, but also perhaps more importantly, mentally. I think my bowling spell was interrupted by three rain breaks in total, and each time the game had moved onto a new situation which required a different mind set and approach.

One of the most crucial skills as a bowler is to read the situation that you are bowling in, and adapt your approach accordingly. Different factors may condition the way you bowl. Sometimes it is the way the batsman is playing, or the areas in which he is looking to score. Too often, I see bowlers who are reactive in their field setting. The key to success is to try to read where a batsman wants to score. You can then choose to bowl to their strength and protect that part of the pitch reducing their run scoring capacity, or alternatively look to make it difficult for them to score in their particular zone.

One of the most critical areas a bowler needs to master though is their understanding of the pitch they are bowling on. One thing I try to do early on in any spell is to read the pace of the pitch. I suppose what I mean by this is that I try to test to see if the ball is coming onto the bat, whether there is bounce in the wicket or whether it is skidding on. By identifying this early, it can then give you a clue as to the best line, trajectory and speed of delivery that might be most productive in that situation. If you are inflexible in the way you can deliver the ball and adapt to your surroundings, it makes it much harder to be consistently successful as a bowler.

Once you have mastered the pace and bounce of the pitch you can then start to think carefully about the length to bowl. We talk heavily on the pitch and in the dressing room about ‘bowling a good length’ or ‘back of a length’ or a ‘full length’, but do players and bowlers actually understand what that means? Back of a length on one pitch may be different to that on another surface. With young players in particular, this terminology can be a little confusing. Perhaps what we should really talk about to bowlers is the shot we want the batsmen to play. “I want you to draw him forward but don’t let him drive you”, may be a better way to prescribe the particular length of delivery we are looking for. After all, it may change from batsman to batsman. I would hazard that James Taylor would have a different stride to Kevin Pietersen!

With a talented young group of bowlers forming at Kimberley, I hope that my experience can be of use as they start to establish themselves as 1^st XI bowlers over the coming seasons.

What is a 'good' pitch?

“How are the first team getting on?”, “They scored 320-4 off their 50 overs”, “Must have been a good wicket!”. It’s a conversation heard on many a cricket ground during the season. Yet is it really a good wicket? Surely what you actually mean is “that must have a been a good wicket to bat on!”

We all know that cricket is a batsmans game. I regularly have this conversation with my dad, pleading how unfair it is, and he regularly reminds me that people come to watch batsmen and not bowlers. Yet surely what matters as a spectator is the game being close rather than lots of runs being scored on a pitch as flat as a pancake.

Finding the right balance is always the challenge. As a bowler, while it is nice when the pitch offers you a lot of assistance, you also acknowledge that it is not fun watching one team get 70 all out while the other team struggle to chase it. What you really want is a wicket which rewards a bowler when they keep the ball in the right areas consistently enough. You just want it to do ‘a little bit’ so if you bowl well then the batsman is kept under pressure.

Getting this balance is crucial to keeping the equality in the battle between bowler and batsmen. After all, surely winning sports matches is about who has the best team, not just who has the most aggressive batsmen on a flat deck.

At Kimberley, we are renowned for producing ‘good wickets’. It is probably fair to say that generally conditions at Kimberley favour the batsman with the size of the boundaries and the fact the ball comes nicely on to the bat. However, it is very rare that as a bowler you don’t feel that you have something in it for you. As long as you maintain that status quo, it generally makes for good cricket matches.

Just because a wicket is easy to bat on, is it a good wicket?

There is no doubt that over time, cricket has definitely moved in the direction of helping batsmen. Whether it be big steps such as the advent of covered wickets, or the improved condition of bats, to smaller but still significant factors such as the two new white balls in ODI’s removing the bowlers ability to reverse swing the ball, and keeping the ball hard for 50 overs. In addition, umpires will abscond any bowler who slightly incurs on the pitch during follow through, yet a batsman is allowed to disturb the surface as much as he or she likes with their ‘gardening’.

Despite this, it is pleasing to see during the last week two excellent bowling performances for England putting them into this weekends Champions Trophy Final. Yet, many would complain that this was not down to them but actually a poor pitch with seamed and spun a little too much, the weather which helped the ball swing, and the South African bastmen who choked. Or maybe, just maybe, the bowlers bowled well…