Practice

The Purpose of Practice

You go to practice to learn and improve your skills so they become automatic reflexes (via muscle memory). Muscle memory is the body’s ability to repeat an action over and over without conscious thought about the action. If you have developed early muscle memories that are faulty in a cricket skills sense, your coach will need to assist you in replacing the faulty muscle memory with the correct habit.

Your coach will have planned out the session for the overall benefit of all the team members, but will probably not have a specific plan for you in mind. It is your responsibility to make sure that you get the most benefit from each of your practice sessions.

Practice should have the atmosphere of a match. When you bat in the nets, concentrate hard on improving your batting. Don’t regard it as simply a chance to practise your slog shots against the hard-working bowlers. Treat every bowler as you would in a match, as an opponent trying to take your wicket.

Pay attention

You must want to hear what your coach has to say to you. You must focus on what is being said and being demonstrated, catching every word. Avoid the wandering mind, ignore what is going on around you. Remember that your coach, assuming he did play the game, will have a great wealth of knowledge to help you improve your game.

Be busy

Ensure that you take the opportunity to take part in a high number of repetitions of whatever specific skill you are practising. This could take the form of a specific fielding technique, a particular batting stroke or a certain bowling variation.

Have a personal practice plan

Have your own plan about what you want to achieve at each session. Ask your coach to monitor the particular aspect of your game you are working on. Your coach will be impressed with your motivation. Too many young cricketers attend cricket practice, particularly net practice, as an excuse for social interaction rather than skill improvement. The idle “chit chat” about what you are planning to do on the weekend can wait until a more suitable occasion. If you need to chat to the others, talk cricket!

Informal Practice

Don’t disregard the importance of informal practice. You will only get better by repetition. The more the better. Backyard and schoolyard practice is vital. A concrete wall, a tennis ball and a bat is all you need for an informal solo practice.

In the off-season

Winter training

In general, you should work on the technical aspects of your game during the off-season, and the tactical aspects during the season. Technical is working on such things as how to bowl the ball (your action) and how to play various strokes. Tactical is where to bowl the ball and where to hit the ball.

Be careful, if you are a pace bowler, not to try too hard on hard, unforgiving indoor surfaces. Work on refining your action and developing rhythm rather than emphasising pace and bounce.

In the month before the start of the season, weather permitting, you will be able to practise outdoors, where you can finish off the technical improvements gained during the off-season.

Playing Indoor Cricket

By all means play indoor cricket as:

• it is fun.
• it is fast paced, some calling it the indoor version of twenty20 cricket.
• it is beneficial to your cricket fitness, agility and reflexes.
• it helps improve the speed of your decision-making under pressure.
• all levels can play together and teams can be mixed.
• it will help you transition to the summer game, with skills honed in the indoor version.

Read about the game

There are dozens of coaching books on the market and in your local library. Take some time in the off-season to read one or two of these. You will learn a lot of tips and advice to help you become a better cricketer.

View coaching videos

Many excellent cricket skills DVDs are on the market and viewing them is an excellent way to improve your technique as you watch international players demonstrate particular skills.

Get a junior umpire’s qualification

As you get to the later teenage years you will need to start umpiring your own games. In many competitions it is a requirement that you have a player umpire qualification. Players as young as 12 years of age can gain these badges through attending a series of lectures and passing a straight-forward written exam. Your coach will advise you when these courses are available.

Apart from being a qualified player umpire, you will learn much about the laws of the game that will help to make you a better performer on the playing field.

Set goals for the coming season

Achievement goals provide motivation and can be long term, such as to win the competition or be selected for a rep team, or short term such as winning the next game. These goals need to be realistic and attainable. If you set them too high and do not achieve them, you may lose motivation. Discuss your goals with your coach.

Performance goals are more under your control. An example of this will be to learn to bowl a leg spinner. A performance goal describes the process or actions that lead to achievement goals. Again, discuss these with your coach.

Your goals:

• should be clear and should be written down.
• should be measurable. For example, bowling no more than one ball per over down the leg side.
• should be challenging but achievable.
• should be flexible. You may become more skilled at not bowling balls down the leg side and may want to re-set your goal to just one leg side delivery every three overs.

Develop your own personal improvement plan based on areas you believe need attention. Again, seek advice from your coach on what areas of your game should be in your personal plan.

Fitness for Cricket - Part Three

Team Spirit

A good team spirit will undoubtedly aid the potential for strong personal performance. Humour will lessen tension and anxiety; appropriate discipline will help focus practice routines. Team warm-up games and collective stretching routines help develop a collective team purpose and a sense of enjoyment belonging to the team. These will lead to a general feeling of both individual and team optimism, leading to all involved being in the right frame of mind in which to play the game.

Injuries

A cricketer who is improperly conditioned (unfit) to play cricket is more likely to suffer an injury than one who has followed a regular fitness training program. This is because tiredness or lack of coordination leads to faulty movements and loss of concentration.

If you are unlucky enough to suffer an injury, make sure that you are fully recovered before resuming training or playing. If you have suffered a muscle strain injury, you must be able to play without pain when the affected muscle has been tested to full stretch. This enforced period of rest should not, however, be used as an excuse to do nothing. You should use it as an opportunity to get fit to play. For example, if you have suffered a broken finger or an injured ankle, you can still exercise to maintain a good level of fitness.

This is especially important for young pace bowlers who suffer from sore backs or side strains. If you suffer such an injury, it is important that you get a respected bowling coach to check out the safety of your bowling action. Many a promising young pace bowler had his career ruined by continuing to bowl after such an injury with an unsafe bowling action.

Cricket is a game where there is a risk of injury. In tables of injury rates it is close behind the contact sports of rugby, league, football and hockey. Ball impact injuries have lessened in the last ten years with the almost universal use of batting helmets and thigh guards by today’s young cricketers. With today’s emphasis on health and safety it is important that schools, clubs, players and officials do all that is reasonably possible to lessen the chances of injuries.

Some of these requirements include:

• ensuring a flat outfield.
• ensuring good footing for bowlers in their run-ups and delivery strides.
• ensuring artificial pitches are flush with the surrounding outfield.
• ensuring watering outlets are carefully covered and flush with the outfield.
• ensuring outdoor and indoor nets have no holes and the run-ups and crease areas are flat and not subject to slippage.
• ensuring the playing and practice pitches are flat and clear of debris.
• ensuring that players are wearing suitable socks and footwear with good shock-absorbency.
• ensuring that all batsmen wear good quality, appropriate and suitably sized, protective equipment such as batting helmets, leather batting gloves, thigh pads, groin protector (box), and batting pads.
• ensuring that the team’s wicket-keeper is wearing good quality, close-fitting wicket-keeping gloves and a mouth guard. It is encouraging to see many young wicket-keepers wearing protective helmets when standing up to the stumps
• ensuring pace bowlers wear heavy long-sleeved sweaters after completing a bowling spell in order to keep the back and shoulders warm, especially on a cold day.

In Summary

As a young cricketer you should not be given, or be forced to undertake, too rigorous a training routine while you are undergoing your growth phases. The major emphasis should be on acquiring skills and improving technique. Most of you will have achieved sufficient general fitness from your winter sport program and/or your school physical education program.

If you are a young fast bowler, you must listen to any warning signals your body is giving you and avoid over-bowling. Get the safety of your bowling action checked out three or four times a year as it is easy for unsafe bad habits to creep in without you noticing them. Avoid trying too hard when training indoors on hard surfaces as many a young bowler has developed stress fractures in his teenage years through this practice.

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