Spin Bowling in England Is in Trouble

Briony I think it’s fair to say that spin bowling in this country is in a bit of a pickle at the moment.

Yeah, it doesn’t seem to be as valued as it once was. Why do you think that is?

I’m not sure, but I do know a man who does.

Shall we get him on then? I’m Briony Brock.

Let’s.

and I’m Nathan Wood.

Welcome to the Cricket Mind Podcast.

So today’s guest is former professional cricketer Rob Ferley who is known as one of the most progressive and innovative thinkers in the modern game. Or at least that’s what it says on ChatGPT As a cricketer, Rob played for both Kent and Nottinghamshire as a left arm spinner and also represented England at under 19 level and post-playing career he’s

gone on to become a very well-regarded coach, gaining his level four coaching qualification a few years ago. And he’s now the head of cricket performance at Bradfield College. And more recently, he’s ventured into the world of business, co-founding Square One Cricket, which is a new development center in Brighton that’s aiming to rethink how players learn and progress in the game.

All very exciting stuff. So Rob, welcome to the show. Are you happy with that description by ChatGPT

⁓ yeah, thanks for having me. I suppose the main thing you mentioned there was the level four meeting you and having to be careful about what I say just to make sure I pass. So presumably today I can say what I want.

Well, you can because I’m not in that position anymore and neither are you. So it’s a free for all. That’s fine with us. So we’re going to be exploring spin bowling today. Something that I know you’re very passionate about. Can you remember why and when and where that passion first began?

can actually. And when I was younger, my mum and dad separated when I was early, when I was really young. And I used to go once every three or four weeks to my dad’s and stay at his house with my brother and sister. he, back in those days, there was no thought about not playing club cricket on a Saturday, even if you had a kid. So we were just dropped on the boundary and we were left to crack on And

My brother was four years older than me and I used to steam in and try and bowl pace and I could never get him out. And the rules were, unless I got him out, I didn’t bat. So after the sort of second hour of bowling, I decided that it was better off the short run to try some spin. The end part of that story is I actually ended up getting him out, like when I got a bit older, getting him out and then batting for probably only half an hour and he just ended up.

going back to the pavilion and not bowling at me anymore. So he didn’t like it when, when the shoe was on the other foot, but that would be the earliest memory. then obviously because of that, starting to bowl it and probably having a little bit of success, ⁓ just continued on that route.

So you started bowling spin because you didn’t like the hard work that came along with fast bowling. That’s what I was hearing anyway. Is that right?

Well, exactly. And little did I know that it was actually harder, but at the time the environment pushed me down that route. So yeah, it’s an interesting one because actually when you think about fast bowling, it has a different type of rigor. But in many ways, bowling spin, especially long spells is probably

solve.

you know, as rigorous or if not harder, I suppose.

So when you watch somebody bowl spin today, whether that’s a junior or a professional player, what tells you that they’re someone who can genuinely influence the game as opposed to being someone who just looks technically good? In other words, what makes a good spinner for you?

I think it’s an interesting question. depends on what age. I would say I don’t really look at that to see whether or not someone can impact the game first and foremost. My first sort of question as a coach would be why are they here, what do they want to achieve? Because oftentimes through the experiences that you mentioned, we like to project our own.

sort of careers onto people and think, this guy wants to go and be a professional cricketer. And we start that journey really early and actually, you know, someone might just be really loving the fact they see the ball spin. and so one of the things I’d say about a good spinner, I suppose, if you said what does make a good spinner, ⁓ I would say actually I’ve broadened that out to cricket in general. think cricket is problem solving in uncertain conditions.

And therefore a good spinner is one that can problem solve in uncertain conditions. You might think, well, Rob, that’s ridiculously vague. Try and drill down into, come on, I want to know the golden bullet. What is the thing that’s going to make someone brilliant? But the truth of the matter is there is no formula, is there? If I said, you you’ve got a bowl at 55 miles per hour, then Adil Rashid says, hang on a minute. What about me? I’m pretty good. A bowl at 48.

Or if you say you got a rip it like Shane Warne, Anil Kumble sticks his hand up and says, well, I only moved it that far both ways. What about me? I was okay. Wasn’t I? And so the beauty of the game is in the problem solving and lots of people talk about cricket replicating life. and actually if you think broaden it out to life, what is life? Life is actually problem solving in uncertain conditions. And so when you think about that,

And you think about, you know, what makes a good spinner in the environments we create. Yes, there are going to be some things that allow them to problem solve better. And if they have more ability to spin the ball hard or spin the ball in both directions, they’re going to be able to solve a wider number of problems. But there are some very, very good spinners who bowled very, very well doing one thing really, really well. And oftentimes they got unstuck maybe once or twice a year.

But actually, they were very, very successful just doing that one niche thing. And so I suppose in answer to your question would be, when I look at someone, are they really passionate? Are they really enjoying it? Are they asking questions and immersing themselves in the problems that come up? And even better, can they create them?

in which is what a pretty sterile environment for seven months. what I hate seeing is people standing side on with no run up bowling at a cone. ⁓ which I see a lot of, and it doesn’t match my experience to say that that will help that player. And we see a lot of people just working really hard and putting in a lot of effort, but then

They don’t see the progression, get frustrated and then, you know, at times fall out of love with the game. And we see that quite a lot.

So what do you think progression looks like for a spinner? Because for a pace bowler, I guess it’s kind of a little bit more obvious. You’d be looking to get quicker as you got older and maybe be more consistent. for spin, yeah, how do you see that? How do you see that progression? What can they expect to be looking out for as they’re moving along in their journeys?

Yeah, it’s a good question. And it’s difficult to answer, isn’t it? Because I suppose the first question I always ask is what’s the context of who is standing in front of me. And you think about, well, anyone, they’re just like the most ridiculous Rubik’s cube that you’re trying to help solve. And you know, you’ve got these two by two, I remember my son getting those two by two ones, which are really easy to solve.

And then you’ve got the, if you actually look them up, we’ve got ones that are like 23 by 23. I think maybe I might be a 23 by 23 and, and, you’re trying to work out with their guidance, what they want to do. Right. Because ultimately again, I know, I know I’m banging on about this, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter what I want them to do. I actually, part of me, I can’t think of anything worse than bowling spin right now. That’s me done. So why would I, why should I?

Why should I project anything onto this person? Because they’re coming from a much purer place right now. And it’s their journey. And we know from, you know, the science, that if you give people autonomy, the choice to do things themselves, that it helps to develop that passion. And I said before, I look for passion. So the first question I would ask is how do I create an environment where they have that passion?

I do have a framework that I would like young cricketers to go through and it might not be necessarily what you’re looking for in terms of a technical, but actually in terms of cricket mind, I think this actually relates quite well and it is how does someone relate to the game? So first and foremost, if I was working with someone, can we get them to feel like they belong in the game? That they feel safe in that space to try to explore new things? What can they do?

Maybe there’s someone who can do something that we couldn’t do. You know, there’s different ways. The leg spinner Gleeson came up with a way of spinning the ball in a different way. Saqlain came up with something before anyone else. What about this young person? Have they got something that we haven’t seen before that could be quite special? And try not to shut that down and allow them to know that in this environment it’s safe to make mistakes. And if we can create that in the young people.

and create that passion, they’re going to have that longevity. And I think before you guys have talked about how to get resilience in sport, how to get resilience in cricket. Actually, the best way to have resilience is just to have passion because you don’t think it’s difficult. You just enjoy being in those moments. And often we shut things down early because we might have a session plan and it’s not going the way we wanted it to go because this guy’s just doing

what he wants. You can’t do what you want in my sessions. Well, actually, if you think about it, that’s a ridiculous thing to say, isn’t it? If it’s safe and the person’s doing what they want, well, wow, that’s a great thing. And often in educational environments, if you think about young people now, when do they actually get to do what they want? They’re spoon-fed quite a lot. They have to do 10 GCSEs. Sport gives them a real opportunity to go and do and be who they want.

And at times we’ll all have seen it, coaches have a different agenda and they want them to be a certain way. And I think that’s dangerous. ⁓ making sure that they feel safe to try and do new things is really, really important. ⁓ but then I’d sort of add onto that, like getting them as a next stage to understand the context that they’re in. so what, what am I actually doing today? ⁓ who’s batting?

What’s the field? What’s the scenario? And try and build up that picture and experience because that’s what they’ll be pulling from in future times. And that’s actually how we learn. We pull from our previous memories, good and bad, and we create the next memory.

I totally get that. I agree with the passion. You said something at the start. You said something like, I can’t think of anything worse than bowling spin at the moment. What did you mean by that?

Oh, that’s just the pain that goes with the body and the realization. Actually, I was thinking about this podcast and I was thinking about, this is the crazy thing. So I talk about how do we create an environment where we solve the problems we’re to solve. And if I was talking about my career, like the thing I failed at, I was quite good at one day cricket in England.

You get wheeled out twice a year and you’re told at Old Trafford, take 12 wickets in the game and win the game for us. Well, we never, we never practiced that all winter. Like we’d never create a scenario where I was the man, it was my turn and I was going to bowl someone out on a spinning wicket. And I thought back just now and I thought to myself, it’s actually crazy to think that, ⁓

that someone would be able to do that if they were never put in that situation very often. And I’d hope that if we were creating environments now for young people that we do start to create those different environments. I mean, that’s a bit of a niche skill now, isn’t it? If you think about where the game’s going, but if we’re not giving people the opportunity. So when you get to the end of the, and again, I don’t know if it’s really talk about, it’s not really a therapy session for me, but when it gets to end of your career,

I think Woody you probably think and feel and have told me the same, like you don’t actually want to go out and perform because you’ve got that much fear in you that you can’t do the job and you feel like you’re going to let people down. And you don’t really know what you’re doing. Like all the stuff that I’m talking about, don’t think I knew that when I was playing because I absolutely didn’t. And, actually spin as an industry is very, very underserved. They don’t have.

Counties don’t really have spin coaches that are with them like they do. know, your bowling coach is there all the time, tends to be a seam bowling coach, bang for buck, you’ve got six seamers. So the spin coach often, if you were to ring up 18 counties, I reckon 16, say, yeah, no, we cover spin. We’ve got X on 30 days a year. And I say, what about the young spinner for the next, you know, the tough, one of the toughest arts, but he can ring someone up.

because he’s always at the end of the phone, as long as it’s in that 30 days. so that support isn’t there. So that’s a, that’s a petrifying thing, isn’t it? So that’s probably why, but I think the overriding thing, I think I could probably get over it. And if my body was not in so much pain from, from wheeling away.

Okay. So with the passion thing, what are the indicators that someone does have that level of passion that you’re looking for? Because some people in my experience are pretty good at hiding that passion. How do you, you know, how do you reveal that in somebody? How do you know if somebody’s got that passion?

You know, I keep talking about environments. So while it would be a shame, someone would hide that in the environments that we create because that’s something that would be really valued and rewarded. So I doubt they would in our environments, but you give opportunities for them to show that, don’t you? So we ⁓ often, if I was in charge of any program and I had the resource, I would have free play. So.

not just nets where people can come and not like naughty boy nets where you have to turn up because the coach expects it. Like genuine free play. But also, ⁓

Other ways for people to engage in the game. we play a lot of outdoor cricket on Astros with people that are not compelled to come. In fact, all areas of my programs that I run personally, and I would do the same for pretty much all of it, aren’t compulsory. You don’t have to be there. So people showed passion by turning up, right? But also people showed passion by just bugging you. Like, can we do an extra session? Like, actually…

Yeah, we can, but this is like your 18th this week. Can we, can we turn it down a little bit? So, you know, ultimately people show that passion by their actions and their behaviours. I would say, ⁓ what do you think? How do you think people show that?

I think you’re absolutely right about the environment because sometimes an environment can subdue that passion. Some people don’t feel confident enough to bring that out because the environment might criticize them or it might belittle them or it might mock them for being so passionate. So the environment is important, but I think not everybody will be, not every player will be fortunate enough to be in a Rob Ferley environment. There’ll be plenty of players who

are in different environments that perhaps they don’t feel comfortable enough to be able to show that passion. ⁓ It is quite a difficult one, but ⁓ I do take your point. You mentioned also about managing pressure. What do you think are the main psychological challenges that spinners face? And do you think actually that those challenges are fully understood within the game?

It’s hard to know whether they’re fully understood. There isn’t a huge amount of evidence to say that people are thinking about this. ⁓ but I’m not going around every center watching. So that’s my caveat that in terms of managing pressure,

I think it comes into, if you think about what pressure is, it’s when you have a situation and you don’t feel like you have the tools to meet the demand that’s in front of you. And that’s essentially the definition of anxiety, isn’t it? So if you think about again, about your environments, if we were to say to, if we got a young spinner on or we were the young spinner, often people would say, well, what are you working on in the nets? I bet they would.

talk about where their arms and feet went, first and foremost. But I like to frame it in a different way. Like what problem are you solving today? And in terms of helping people to manage pressure, it’s the same as any type of inoculation. So I’d call it stress inoculation. So what is the thing that you are finding pressurized?

You don’t like it. You don’t want to be there. It’s creating fear and anxiety. Okay. We need to give you a little dose of that. And we need to prepare you for that. And we need to allow you to keep building up. So when COVID came around, we all got a little dose of COVID and we were essentially inoculized against it. And we were protected against it. The same with cricket. We have to put people into those scenarios, but not make that stretch too high that they can’t succeed.

So they can keep jumping over the barrier, jumping over the barrier. And then one day they’ll surprise themselves and they’ll be somewhere where they didn’t think they’d be. And they’ve understood that journey and understood they can do it. And it’s interesting, isn’t it? You’ll see in batters, a lot of the time they’ll score their first hundred, often the next week they’ll score their second as well, because they’ve realized that they can do it and they’ve got a plan of how to do it. So that would be how I would think about trying to create.

situations where people can manage pressure.

With the, you talked about there at the beginning, you feel you don’t have the resources to meet the demands. ⁓ One of the resources that we encourage people to use and is research-based as being effective is support from others. And from what you’ve said so far, it sounds like maybe bowling spin can be quite isolating and it can feel like there is less support there for a spinner, particularly

when they maybe when they’re younger and things like that. Would you say that that’s kind of accurate?

Yeah, I think that’s definitely the case. I can think of spinners in the county game that I know that really just

they don’t, they don’t get any support. And there’s a lot of them you would think are really confident and there’s a lot of provado, but that’s all they really have because they have to bluff. And actually what that does, and we talked about this Woody just now is it creates this barrier to being open because they don’t feel then they create this provado because they don’t have any support and they’ve got to look like they’re coping. But that also means that they then

You know, the coach might be trying to make them feel open, but they won’t necessarily feel that secure. And I think we’ve seen this a lot in professional game where people are actually having coaches outside of their environments because they say it’s the place that they feel that they can actually go and be vulnerable. And I was hoping that as we evolve and what we know about environments, and actually it’s not necessarily about

the coaches not coaching well, it’s actually understanding what’s coming up. You know, we’ve got a generation of young people who’ve gone through COVID, who are engaged in social media, have a lot of different ways of looking at life. And actually, you know, I’m 44, I’m a dinosaur now. Like that’s crazy, isn’t it? Like, I feel like I’m really young and I feel like I understand kids, but to be honest with they’re massively different to me. And if I wasn’t working with them every day.

I sometimes they still blow my mind with the stuff they come out with. I think, Christ, I’m now old, right? But most of the people running those environments are actually older than me as well and actually haven’t been exposed to the environments of seeing these young people come through. And actually that’s probably at times creating that little bit of a barrier to that full understanding and creating those environments.

If you’re a dinosaur at 44 Rob, then I’m not sure what that makes me, but it doesn’t make me feel better. I was in a good mood before.

⁓ no, exactly.

For those who haven’t got much experience of bowling spin or coaching spinners, when you’re in a match situation, can you explain how being hit for a boundary can affect the thinking, the feeling, the behaviour of a spinner? Can you take us back to that being a 14-year-old, not the 44-year-old version?

I mean

Can you take yourself back and just give a sense of what it’s like?

I think one of the strengths I had was that was blissfully unaware, ⁓ if I’m honest. I just didn’t ever really engage. I actually don’t think I had a huge amount of skill, but I didn’t necessarily feel pressure. I felt quite confident and I was reasonably successful going through and I think that helped. I think, again, it depends on the environment, doesn’t it?

You know, I would say to anyone managing a side or captaining that side, I would say, if you think about a young spinner bowling.

And again, this is challenging because I don’t particularly care about the result, ⁓ because I’m care about developing players. So certainly in club environments, as you go through either, if you’re saying you want to help people develop, then often the result is not necessarily that important. We’re trying to win, but if you take the result out of it, like how would you act? Someone hitting, getting hit for four wouldn’t necessarily change what you would want to do,

I sort of skipped around the question there, but in terms of that real advice, and I go back to Shane Warne, remember Rob Key told me his story about he was playing in Perth and he was playing quite well and he actually got 50. He ran down the wicket. England were in terrible trouble, had lost loads of wickets. They were not doing well. And he ran down the wicket and he hit Shane Warne for six over mid-off. And I remember watching that and Shane Warne put someone on the boundary.

on long off, like, and they were under the pump and he just, and Keysey was like, what am I going to do now? Like, I’ve actually got no options. He’s just blocked off my options. if again, hit for four is a negative for a young spinner, which, it might be seen as. think actually younger people don’t necessarily, I think they’re a bit braver. I certainly don’t seem to think that people necessarily get that affected by that, but if they are.

Actually, how we frame fielders on the boundary and stopping those boundaries actually being a positive and trying to control the batter into hitting balls into areas that they’re less comfortable with, I think can be framed as a real positive. So actually if you’re setting a field for a spinner, having people out, like I remember someone saying you should never set a field for a bad ball. And my challenge back to that is what if I’m going to bowl one twice and over?

It’s trying to be a very good idea to do that. Like, I know you can say, well, you need to be better, mate, but it’s like, well, actually, no, I think you’d prefer me to go for two rather than eight, right? So I don’t really see it as, I mean, I think it would be ridiculous to not have people out on the boundary for those two reasons. One, it’s going to save a boundary, so it’s defensive, but it’s also attacking, isn’t it? Because it blocks off areas.

Yeah, Shane talks about, or he did talk about attacking with the ball and defending with the field didn’t he which is what you alluded to before. There is a view that captains in this country anyway don’t tend to, don’t always get the best out of the spinners. Do you agree with this? And if so, why do you think that is the case?

I think it depends on what level and what game. I think if you look at the professional game, there’s two sides of that coin because a lot of the sides that do well in short format, other sides with the spin, good spinners, especially the people that bowl leg spin have been mystery about them. But when you look at the four day stuff with when it’s been played, the counties aren’t rewarded for.

sort of.

bowling spin are they? I always hate to sort of a bit harsh, isn’t it? People always talk about Darren Stevens even he’s been retired for three years now, you know, people would like he gets bowled rather than a spinner because actually early on in April and late in September, that’s he’s quite a difficult problem to solve, right? and it’s very, very difficult to bowl spin when it’s freezing cold. Like it’s actually really hard ⁓ so these are environmental factors that make it pretty difficult. ⁓

And I often think, imagine if you could be in charge of the game and your remit was like, we’re going to develop spinners. I actually think it’s quite a good idea to say that, to have like a quota of the amount of overs that need to be bowled by a spinner for both sides. Because ultimately, the only way that spin is developed is with people bowling lots of balls and bowling in match situations.

in terms of young spinners, ⁓ I think captaincy is pretty difficult for any young person. And if you think about it, I remember having this argument with a netball coach. ⁓ I said, captaincy in netball and captaincy in cricket are completely different. There is no other sport where you have as a player, the

the whole game in your hands and you can ruin someone’s game. You just don’t bowl them and don’t bat them, which is a remarkable power to be wielding, right? Or you’ve got a feeling about something and you just tell people what to do. No other sport has a captain that has that bigger impact on the game. I can’t think of one where they have that much control. And we give that to 11 year olds.

They don’t know what they’re doing, do they? It’s very, very difficult. So one of the bits of advice I would say to someone is as a bowler and as a captain, you have to be able to let someone set their field. And you may know that their field isn’t going to work, but it’s really important that they have the freedom to make that call and learn that lesson. Because again, I still challenge anyone, you might think, know,

I’ve actually seen this in girls cricket quite a lot where I look at a field and I think to myself, hmm, not sure about this field. And then three balls later, caught in the position that I said was wrong, was wrong. Like, because they’re in the game. And if you think about the game, it’s, it’s what is the scenario? Where do I want to put my chess pieces to get the dismissal? So like, if they’re right, they’re right, right? If it ends up being right, it’s right.

If not, what happens they learn and they learn from those scenarios. So there’s so many good things that can happen if you let someone take charge in that way.

On ⁓

both the captain-player relationship and the perception of spinners, do you think there’s a difference between a batter who bowls a bit of spin and a spinner who can’t really bat in terms of how they are treated, the support they’re given, the respect they’re given, all of that kind of thing?

Yes. It’s something I never thought about, Briony That’s an interesting one. What I do know is that, um, the game seems to value, obviously a batter who can bowl a bit of spin. So the craft of bowling spin is, is, has been marginalized in my view. So I would say, I don’t know whether it’s a respect thing, but I would say that, you know, Will Jacks, for example, is seen as a valuable asset.

but a pure spinner. Nathan Lyon isn’t getting picked up in the IPL, he? So there is this perception that we can get away with spin, you know, and we don’t need to pick a full-time spinner. And I think that’s really flawed because if you think about critical moments, when you think about championships, when you think about world cups, they’re often played on pictures that have been worn.

And often at the back end of tournaments, a really good spinner will win you games. And you’re throwing the ball to, you know, a part-time spinner and expect them to do the job. And I think, I mean, I don’t really want to get into the England setup, but I think that they have, have essentially,

taken a punt on, on spin and not necessarily seen it as something that’s really valuable, but all of the best sides in the world have always had some, a frontline spinner that has been able to impact the game in two main ways, which is one, control the game when the deck is flat. And then, you know, when it’s spinning, they win games of cricket for them.

So you become the new England head coach of the Red Ball team and all things being equal and I know you might say it depends but all things being equal.

Who do you put your investment in? The decent spinner who is a decent batter or the brilliant spinner who’s a walking wicket?

Well, the question is how good are they? Right. Cause if it’s Warne or Murali you’re picking them. Right. So you’re always asking those questions. ⁓ but I think again, this is where I think we’re too binary. Why are we making such binary choices? Why not develop loads of people? It’s not that difficult. Is it? But the ECB should be, if this is a problem, I don’t know what they talk about in their reviews, but I’d be talking about.

How do we create these over the next four years? How are we going to create a situation where we’ve got, we can pick from 10 spinners and they’re all really good. What would we need to do to achieve that? And I think that’s quite easy, which is.

The ECB know that they can’t rely on counties to ⁓ create spinners because the need is to win games of cricket in the championship. So they’ll pick what they pick. So you might have spin you might not. But there’s a hell of a lot of time in the season now. And there is in the women’s game as well to create opportunities for spinners to go out of their county environment.

into an ECB environment. And you know, you could work with someone 20, 25 days a year or over the course of the year, you could work and create programs where you’re spending 50, 60 days creating problems, specific problems that allow you to talent ID and spot, um, you know, who’s good at solving problems. Um, not just the results that they’ve had, but what are they like in this scenario? What are they like in this scenario? Rather than just taking a guess and.

you know, looking at someone’s height and thinking that that might relate to someone being good, ⁓ very binary sort of, ⁓ service level talent id I suppose, because you could do things like, and by the way, we’re not very good at playing spin are we at the top level? So how about having a four day game where you just pick spinners and batters and you play on worn wickets and you just bowl spin all day and you bat against spin all day. And at the end of the year, you’ve had

40 people through that program who have had 30 days of those experiences. So when they do track over to India, they could genuinely, perhaps, I still think you should probably have some sort of a warmup but you could get straight into it, right? So again, I just don’t think, you your question really is who do you invest in? You invest in everyone, right? We’re England cricket. We’ve got a lot of money. We should be investing in a lot of people.

But I think with that, is a part, even children, young children already put themselves in a bit of a box. You’ll often find their I’m a batter and then they moved to hardball and actually now, ⁓ I’m a bowler now. They sort of like to be, I think people, a lot of us like to be very good at one thing rather than decent at multiple things. It’s nice to feel like you could actually have your…

kind of unique selling point within a team.

Yeah. But I think again, I mean, maybe I’m too optimistic. think you can, if you think about Olympic sport, they train for six hours a day, right? We go and have a net for an hour and think that we’ve worked hard, but you can be brilliant at both things. You can be a brilliant batter or good enough, like, especially by the way, now the currency has been out at six is I think you can be good at both.

I don’t think there’s, I think it’s harder to just do one thing as well. If you’re a batter and you don’t bowl, then what are you doing the rest of the time? You might as well have a bowl. so I think, you know, the messaging around being a ⁓ multi-dimensional cricketer is there from a young age. I actually think, Briony you’re right. I think they do get boxed.

because they get picked early as something. And then the opportunities that they’re given because they were good at that something was that we actually, you’re my fast bowler so you bat 10. And therefore they’re not giving those opportunities from ages 11, 12, 13. And ultimately they become linked to that identity. And that’s where I would probably challenge the environment again and say, actually, when we’re creating these opportunities, why are we?

not sharing around batting orders. aren’t we having, why is the wicket keeper not getting the opportunity to bowl? Ultimately, I know this will infuriate people, but it really doesn’t matter. When you’re 11, 12, 13, what is the end game? If you’re really competitive and you want to win things, well, what do you want to win? Because you can win at 13 or you can win at 18, 19, 20.

I’d far rather be winning at 18, 19, 20, which means that at 12, 13, 14, we need to be opening up those opportunities and giving lots of other people chances. So I think it’s difficult because a lot of the questions that you’re asking me, I feel like I’m giving really vague answers to. It’s not my intention, but I think it’s all about like the systems and the environments. actually I’ve found it fascinating that we haven’t…

We have not even drilled down into like arms and legs and technique, which is kind of, again, just keeps reiterating to me like that the spin more than any other endeavor is, is, he’s all in the mind and that ability to, to control oneself and be able to keep fronting up.

So I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is you’ve been sacked as England head coach because you wanted to pick everyone and you couldn’t decide on a final final team. But the good news, Rob, is that you’ve now been made ECB spin bowling lead and you have carte blanche to develop the system for young spin bowlers. So what in this new role that you’ve got, what

areas would you want coaches and those developing young spinners to prioritise?

I might get sucked here, you know, as well. ⁓ because the, the answers like I think are pretty straightforward.

Create, and by the way, I just don’t think this happens. Create a problem in your session and let someone solve it. And when it gets hard and they can’t, don’t give them the answer.

Give them options to change like the session. could be like, um, you know, you can change your field or, you know,

E E E E

You can change the target, make it more difficult, make it easier. And I think you’d be surprised at how people would evolve and develop. the curriculum, I mean, I have a curriculum and I have a set of games, but to change all of this, you have to change the environments that we train in. ⁓ And I think the biggest problem that young spinners have is

For seven months of the year, they go into a hall. It’s pretty flat in those halls. If you’ve ever trained on those green things, I mean, they’re soul destroying, ball hardly turns. And then you get batters who just love smashing you and you think to yourself, I’m rubbish, right? So you haven’t even engaged in the game there. You’ve run out and you’ve tried to bowl the ball either at a cone or you’ve tried to hide it because you don’t want someone to whack it. And so you’re not playing the game.

So

If I was in charge, I would be looking at each of the environments and saying, how do we create environments that allow us to develop spinners who spin the ball? So one of the interesting facts about the best spinners that we’ve produced in the last 20 years is they’ve all the time played on wickets where counties have either raked or affected their wickets and the ball has spun more, they’ve had more reward and they then want to do it. They want to.

spin the ball harder because they can see something actually happening. And so how could we change the flooring to make it spin? And you can do that. There’s certain mats you can put down, but again, how often do they get put down? Like twice a year. We’re going to try that now. The mat should be down all the time. Like the ball should be spinning all the time. It’s fascinating. I think there’s a story here and I think this is really, really important and it’s fundamental to any coaching.

There’s a story that Neil Tyson de Grasse, the scientist tells, and it’s a very, simple story. He’s walking in New York and there’s a child with a parent and they’re walking along and it’s raining and there’s puddles and they’ve got all of the protective equipment in there. They’re all really safe. They can’t get wet and they’re walking up to it and he’s watching this kid and he’s going, please let her jump in the puddle. Let her jump in the puddle. Cause his mind’s going.

That’s a whole world of science, action, reforce, you know, all of the molecules, everything happened, immersing this great thing that is science in action. And the, just as they get to it, the, the, ⁓ the parent pulls her away and doesn’t let her dive in And in that moment, you’ve squashed that bit of curiosity, that little childlike fun. So in our sessions, this around about way of saying, if

Spin is interesting. It’s interesting because the ball spins or bounces or does something unusual. But without seeing that and being reinforced, how are you going to create that curiosity and passion and want to come back and do it again? And that’s why, know, Shane Warne would say, when you’re a spinner, like spin the ball really hard. But if you don’t get any reward for spinning the ball really hard, why are you going to bother? You might as well just be more accurate and just

you know, just come down the side of the ball. Um, and so there are things you can do. Um, how often do we set fields and how often are we accountable for where the ball goes and how many runs we’ve got. And you can create those environments. Um, I told you, Nathan, I’m not a salesman, but I’ve actually created my own environment and I’m not selling it, but, um, it’s got, it’s got different areas.

So every time someone bowls in our nets, there is a field that’s set. We can play games. We have one game. So I’ll tell you what it is. We’ve got banners that go around the side, they’re different colors and it’s called colour wheel. And it’s a brilliant game between spinners. And all you have to do is you’ve got a think trivial pursuit and you’ve got little wedges and the spit you say to your mate, he’s going to hit it in the green.

Right. And you have to get the batter to hit it in the green. And if they do, you tick that off and you go round. And if you get a wicket, you can knock off whatever one you want as well. So you’ve got a choice there because you can now try and be attacking and take a wicket and therefore knock off the harder areas, or you can try and control that. And if you think about that game, what you’re doing there is you’re saying to someone, how can I control someone?

by the field that I set because for example, if you want to get someone to hit it through mid on and you’re bowling left arm spin, that’s not a strong option. Well, why don’t you take out your mid on and try and encourage them to hit it there? You know, and they’ll say, well, actually they’ll move that and they’ll say, well, I can’t get them to hit it there. And you say to them, well, actually what else can you do? And this comes back again, we keep coming back to him, the great Shane Warne what would he do? He’d have a bit of a chat, wouldn’t he?

Do you not think you’re good enough to hit me through there? I thought you were supposed to be a good batter. I’ve left a massive gap and you can’t even hit me down there. And ultimately you’re trying to get the batsmen to do what you want to do and immerse themselves in the art. But ⁓ if there’s nothing good that’s happening out of the environment and the ball’s just sliding on, you’re getting hit all the time and you don’t think you’re good enough.

then you’re not getting rewarded for doing the things that we want to see. And therefore you’re not going to develop those skills and end up being where we want to be. So what I would do as lead is I would change the environment. It doesn’t have to be my system, but create situations where there are problems that need to be solved. And if you create those environments, you won’t need me or you to tell coaches what to do. They’ll have so many ideas when they’re in those environments.

And actually, if you give kids responsibility, they come up with even better games because what the kids love doing, they love playing games. And like we’re, we’re dinosaurs, so we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a kid and play games. And when you do play games and, and like people say, this games-based coaching is a load of nonsense. So well, actually what you’re doing is you’re creating those situations where there’s a win and a loss. You’re creating situations where people have to manage emotions.

You creating situations where people have to control what the batter is going to do. And so all of the things that we’re not very good at, at the top level, you’re just giving exposure to. that’s so, again, not a very, not like one, this is what I do list one, two and three, but I’ll just be forensically looking at environments and saying, what is it that we want from these people and how do we shape the environment to do it?

We will come on to the square one because I do want to explore that. Steve Bull, who was a sports psychologist a long time ago at ECB, he used to talk about environment-shaped behaviour. It’s not a new theory, is it? But it’s something that hasn’t been perhaps used to the maximum in most coaching environments. So we’ll come on to that. But before we do, you mentioned two words there.

which kind of got my ears burning. You mentioned science and then you mentioned art and people often use phrases like the art of spin bowling or the craft of spin bowling, but you don’t often hear, or I don’t hear people talk about the science of spin bowling. So why do you think that is? And would you like to start hearing people use that phrase a bit more? Because you hear it with fast bowling, don’t you? You know, there’s science around fast bowling, but spin.

It tends to be art, tends to be craft. What are your thoughts on that Rob?

Yeah, I think we’ve got a lot of work to do, especially in women’s sport. don’t have enough, well, we have very, very few scientific papers on women’s sports. So we’re projecting what we think we know onto women, which may be right, may be wrong. Who knows? So there needs to be more into that, but it comes back to these investment in it, doesn’t it? Because the only reason people research things is, well, this is a bit pessimistic, but

If you go back to when the big bulk of research happened, it was in the late 80s and 90s when it became really profitable to win. So in American sports, instead of, because there’s large amounts of money’s now being involved and the professionalization of sport, it was now really important to actually work out, well, actually, what does the science say about this? Because I want to be making sure that I’m not wasting my money and we’re getting the biggest bang for buck.

So when you come back to spin bowling, it’s quite a niche area, isn’t it? So there isn’t, there isn’t much data on it. I think there are a couple, well, I know there are a couple of papers on spin bowling, but they don’t really draw too many conclusions. And one in particular one is, you probably not that valid. It’s a longitudinal study and it just looks back and people have had

interviews and talk about what they think they did rather than actually any scientific ⁓ experiences. So

Do I think we need it? well, it’d be nice to know, wouldn’t it? And you know, what is, what is the art and what is science? It is, it’s an interesting question, isn’t it? People talk about, you know, art being more about feel and science being a bit more clinical than that. ⁓ so again, I mean, you’ve, I think you’ve asked me 10 questions and I haven’t really answered one like properly yet. So I feel very embarrassed.

wonder if the art bit is also some sort subtle reference to the psychological aspects of spin that we’ve talked about here about how that is such a big factor and that is much harder to measure and to ⁓ kind of learn because you can have somebody who’s got it all, can turn the ball, whatever, and then they get the yips or whatever and they just suddenly can’t do it anymore and every ball’s a drag down. the science is…

less helpful in that sort of situation because they don’t know what’s happening with their body and it just feels like they can’t do it. And that seems to happen less in fast, in pace bowling.

Yeah, I think, I mean, it’s interesting because, in terms of an environment, if we’re thinking about the Yips, I think there has actually been quite a few studies on the Yips as well, especially in golf. ⁓ but I would then lean and think about how we’re coaching young people and over the last 10 years with the professionalization of coaching, with the fact that, you know, people have paid to coach. people want this tangible idea that

in

my son or daughter has been helped and therefore I can’t justify standing there for an hour and saying nothing to this person. So I’m going to tell them to, you know, get their alignment right or, you know, get their front arm going here or come have this certain type of runner. And what that does is it brings a lot of conscious awareness to spinners. And the more that we think, the less likely we are that we’re going to be able to

perform that under pressure. don’t need to tell you guys this, you know this, but like for me, in terms of like coaching young spinners, how do we again, create the environment for that change to happen? And I learned a few years back about this term reinvestment theory and it really, really helped me in my coaching because I learned that the more that someone has to think about someone thing when they’re learning it.

the less likely they are to be able to perform that under pressure. So if you think about the yips, for example, something goes wrong, someone’s goes looking for answers. They can’t find them. So they start thinking about it more. They start investing more energy in thinking about it. And all of a sudden, when it comes to actually bowling the ball, they can’t actually do it because there’s too much going on. So it makes perfect sense when you have that piece of information. The science part of it, when you say

Now this actually is more science in the mental side. There are terms like reinvestment. People actually, there are a lot of things that people can do that we know scientifically will help them. But actually from a technique point of view, what we know about bowling spin is we know one thing at this point in time that if you release the ball in front here with your, with your hips slightly past the horizontal, then

theoretically you should get more spin on the ball, which means there’s a million ways of actually getting into that position. So we actually know more from a science point of view, from the mental side than we do from a technical side.

Rob, I’m conscious that ⁓ Briony has got a flight to catch and you’ve got dinner booked. So probably about 10 more minutes. Let’s talk about some of those environments that you’ve been creating at Square One, which is for listeners who aren’t familiar Square One, it’s a huge new cricket center in Brighton and it’s got a lot of technology and innovation embedded into the facility.

Rob, can you give us a sense of what it’s all about, the reason why it’s needed and what your long-term vision for Square One is?

Yes. So square one ultimately wants to be the most inclusive cricket center in the world. So we want to create a place where if you’re issue your first time playing the game or you’re a pro is a, it’s elite level. like the best experience that anyone can have as a first timer, as well as if you’re a professional cricketer and it is a remarkable place. And I feel confidence to say there is no other place on the planet like it.

And there are very specific reasons for this. Everything that we do is evidence-based. I say that with a smirk after what I’ve just said. But it comes out of the fact that we wanted to create an environment that allowed people to gamify and play the game. I think we’ve become very good at training drills and training for cricket, but we haven’t been very good at training cricket.

i.e. problem solving in uncertain conditions. What we know is if we’re trying to develop anything that we must play within the game because often the game, if we’re training technique alone, we’re never playing in a game where technique alone will stand up. And actually, if you go to a net, often we’re only thinking about our ball, we don’t see the outcome, there’s no pressure, there’s none of the mental skills required.

So just by having a game, you bring it back to being involving the technical, technical, physical, mental, ⁓ social, cognitive, emotional, whatever you want to say. But the whole thing is being trained. What we have in there is the opportunity for someone to come along, bowl the ball, hit the ball and get scoring ⁓ out of the back of it. So if you’ve ever been to the golf range where you see what happens to your bowl, or you could hit the ball into a

a sort of screen and you can play around the golf. In our environment, in every single lane, you can play those games. But what we’ve also done is we’ve layered on top this color based system that allows people to have a reference as well. you know, they can look up on the screen and see that someone’s standing in the red area. And when they look into the net, they see the red area and they might look up again and see that lilac

has no fielder in there. And when they look in, they can see the lilac and they can match up so they can start to build that picture in their heads. And what we do know is that professional players like a Joe Root when he goes into the net, he sees this all the time. But when we’re younger, we don’t see that when we’re young, we don’t have those memories to pull on. So it’s basically creating opportunities to have a reference system that is accurate.

And then ties up the feeling to actually then hit where they want to do want to bowl. So again, why would encourage anyone to do is have a look online or, come and have a look because ultimately that sounds a little like nonsense. Doesn’t it’s hard to explain, but when you see it, you probably get it.

No, it’s a terrific system that you’ve developed there. Brighton is quite far from us up in the North and other people. Have you got any plans to create any more centres up and down the country or is it just Brighton and it’s worth going for, no matter where you are in the country?

We did have a boy who in the Scottish half term, because the other thing we’re doing is making our access really cheap. He, was cheaper for him to book as an off-peak member. He came, he flew down with his mum stayed in the hotel, played cricket in our center five hours a day and flew back up. And it was cheaper than booking a net in Edinburgh. So I’m not suggesting you do that. ⁓ Our plan, like what’s our big wish? So if we want to make cricket more inclusive.

We, we stated our aim really is to, is to build this to be in 150 sites so that wherever you are in the country, you can access a brilliant environment that’s going to be welcoming and inclusive. It’s going to give you options to take part in cricket in the way that you want to on your own time. And is non-judgmental. Like you don’t have to go and play league cricket. You don’t have to want to be a professional cricketer.

You can turn up, you can use the center as you want, and then you can go home. And that’s fine because you’re engaging in cricket and you know, we believe there’s a powerful game and there’s lots to learn that can transfer into life. And so however you want to access that, that’s great.

Very, very exciting. You said earlier that you’re conscious that you didn’t answer any of our questions. So you’ve got one final chance and you’ve got one minute to answer this. So a bit of time pressure. For any young spinners listening to this, what’s the one piece of advice that you’d give them to become a top performer if that’s what they wanted?

When you’re given a piece of advice from a coach, if it doesn’t make you better within three balls, forget about it.

I love it. And that was short That’s amazing. Rob, thank you so much for joining us on the pod. think it turns out that chat GPT did get it right after all, actually. Before we let you go, for those who want to find out a bit more about square one and what you’re building there, where is the best place for them to go and find out that info?

Yeah, Square One Cricket Complex on Instagram and, or support@squareoneducation.co.uk. And we’ll get back to them with any questions, but we’ve got some fun content. We, partner with Cricket District and there’s some really good stuff going on at the center. So Instagram’s probably the best place.

great. We’ll stick those details in the show notes. ⁓ Thank you again. ⁓ We do wish you the very best of luck with it. I don’t think you need luck, well, everyone needs a bit of luck, don’t they? But it sounds a terrific initiative and an ambitious one. So, you know, go well with that, Rob.

No, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on. And a sort of a plug for me. If anyone is thinking about your ⁓ programs and thinking about whether or not they should take the plunge, I would fully encourage them, given how much we’ve talked about, how much the mind is important in, in not just for spin bowling, but for cricket, but to get online and hit you guys up to get some help from you.

That five pound is in the post. Thank you so much. Right. Coming up on the next episode, we’ve got Ellie Threlkheld joining us, the Lancashire wicket keeper who will also be playing in this season’s Hundred for MI London. So if you don’t want to miss that or any other episodes and please do subscribe to the pod and maybe even give us a cheeky rating and review.

Briony, it’s holiday time, I think. So shall we call that stumps Yes, let’s. We’ll see you next time. Bye, everyone.