The Truth About Talent Pathways & Trials

Which Lancashire county age group team do you think Jimmy Anderson first got picked for?

The under 11s?

Nope.

The under 13s.

Incorrect.

Then the under 15s.

And that’s my final answer.

Close.

Having been overlooked for the 11s, the 13s and the 15s, he was eventually chosen for the Lancashire under 15B team.

Seriously deadly.

And we’re talking about one of the greatest bowlers the game has ever seen.

Which probably tells you that player development and identification isn’t as straightforward as many people think.

Exactly.

Because nowadays it’s not uncommon for parents and young players to start panicking if they haven’t been selected for a county age group team by the time they reach 12 or.

Or 13 years old.

Well, some players who are in those systems end up feeling like every game is an audition.

Yep.

Every match, every trial, every training session.

Which is probably why some talented young cricketers either never really fulfil their potential or stop enjoying the game they once loved.

Well, that’s why today’s conversation should be really interesting.

We’re going to be talking with someone who has worked across county and international cricket about the good, the bad and the downright ugly of talent pathways.

Yeah.

And we’re going to be discussing the pressure that can come with trying to get in and stay in a county setup, as well as coaching overload, how to stand out in trials and what actually helps young players to develop over the longer term.

Right then, let’s get into the show.

I’m Bryony Brock.

And I’m Nathan Wood.

Welcome to the Cricket Mind podcast.

So today’s guest is Ben Silver, an ECB Level 4 coach and coach developer who’s worked across a wide range of high performance environments with within the game.

He’s currently head of coaching at the City Cricket Academy in Leicester and also works as a consultant coach with ECB Disability Cricket.

Previously, Ben’s also worked within the county game at both Leicestershire and Yorkshire and was also the head coach of the England PD team.

All of which gives him a really interesting perspective on talent pathways, player development, coaching environments, and what actually helps young cricketers progress long term.

And alongside that, Ben also works with us here at Cricket Mind as a high performance coach, helping players improve and optimise the quality of their training and practice.

So, Ben, welcome to the show.

Great to have you on.

Thanks, buddy.

That was a dying review.

Very kind.

I’ll do my best.

So my first question, Ben, is about trialing and players trying to get into a team such as their county age group side.

So in your experience, what actually makes a young player stand out during a trial or, or a short observation period?

Yeah, it’s a, it’s a difficult one.

That would he.

I mean, I think it depends on the, the age and stage of the player.

So obviously you’re looking for different, different things at different ends of a, of a pathway.

But I’d say often coaches are looking for skills that will transfer through the game.

So for example, if you, if you spot a young batter who can read length well, move forward and back against pace and spin, I think that’s something you’d be saying to yourself, especially at a younger age, those skills are going to transfer really well up through the pathway to the professional game.

And I guess you’re hoping that coaches are looking for that because it can be easy to.

It can be easy to have your eye drawn to someone who maybe hits the ball with more power because they’re physically more developed at a certain age.

But we’re trying to remember that there are sort of different types of good, if that makes sense.

That, you know, one player who strikes the ball really powerfully, that’s obviously one type of good.

But another player who reads length well, that’s another type of good that you’re looking for in the pathway.

And there’s probably room for both of those players.

And how do you differentiate between a player that’s clearly been heavily coached, you know, one to ones multiple times a week or even just once a week over the course of a year leading up to it versus A, versus somebody that’s maybe a little bit more raw?

Is it easy for you to be able to distinguish kind of where that ceiling might be for that player and whether it’s worth kind of giving them a chance based on the lack of coaching they’ve had?

Yeah, that’s a really interesting point.

So I remember specifically one, one player in the disability pathway who.

One of the conversations we had about them was where could this player get to if they were given access to the program because they’ve, they’ve not had it, had it before.

I guess it’s really hard.

I mean, what you’re trying to do, I think, is, is not to select to a specific number because if you say.

If you set your stall out and say we’ve got.

We’re going to have 15 players in the squad and the 16th player would be good enough to compete with that group of players and potentially progress to the, to the next stage, you’d obviously want to be able to include them.

And likewise, if you felt you only had 14 that you wanted to work with for that particular period of time, then you’d probably want to go with the 14 rather than bringing someone in who, who maybe will benefit from remaining in the environment that they’re currently in.

I don’t know if I have answered the question there, but I tried.

So I guess, I guess what I’m really asking is when you pick, do you pick based on what that player can currently do or what you could.

What you think they might be capable of doing?

I think you basically try and make an assessment as to whether they’re going to be able to progress and compete at the next stage of cricket.

So, for example, if someone’s being selected on a county age group program, I think the question I’d be asking is, do they have the potential to progress into an EPP program?

And if they’re being selected on that, do they have the potential to progress to an academy program?

And obviously those are difficult questions to answer, but you try to look at things relevant to their skill set as well.

Like, for example, what I mentioned before, if, if batters can move in certain ways against different types of bowling, that’s a good indicator that they’re going to be able to, to progress up through the, through those stages.

And I guess you might have some players and say, well, this is an area where they need to work on and what you’re doing is not necessarily just improving the player, but you’re trying to raise their ceiling height that you sort of mentioned a moment ago.

It’s not necessarily putting a cap on a player and saying this is where you can get to.

That’s where I think you’re going to be, is by providing you with these new skills, can we raise your ceiling so that you can go a bit further than we originally got?

So when you’re assessing these players to see if they got the potential to go to the EPP or the academy, one of the things that we get asked quite a bit, so we do get quite a lot of clients actually coming to us specifically to prepare for a trial, got a big trial coming up and they want to get in a good space for it.

And a lot of the conversations we have, certainly I have initial consultation stage, is that they’re very keen to demonstrate in these trials that we’ve got a good technique and they’re almost.

They don’t want to make mistakes, they want to kind of almost play it safe.

When you’re looking at these high ceilings, because you hear that a lot, don’t you, in the game now he’s Got a high ceiling.

I’m not 100 sure what that means actually.

But if you’re looking for these high ceiling players, how does a young player manage that risk and reward?

You know, they might have the potential to belt it out the ground, but if they’re going in and they don’t want to make a mistake as a selector, how do you balance that equation?

I think again, it’s, it’s what I said a moment ago and trying to remember there’s different types of good.

So I’d want players to show what they can do.

So if that, for example, was, if that, if their strength was scoring quickly against pace, for example, want them to demonstrate how they’re going to do that and if they got out a few times doing it, we’re just saying, well, at the minute this person has a lot of scoring options, can score quickly, but, you know, we might have to help them to be able to pack for more balls.

And if there was someone else who’s got the ability, especially at a younger age, to back for a lot of balls, that’s a great skill.

So show us that you can back for a lot of balls.

And then our job as coaches, when that, when they’re selected into a program is, or can we add to their game a little bit, can we, can we give them a couple of extra scoring shots so that when they bat for 60 balls they’re on 40 rather than 20?

So do you think it comes down to then it’s about them showcasing their strengths as opposed to kind of being the complete package at that age.

Is that a Fair summary?

Yeah, 100%.

Because I know it’s difficult because you go into, you go into a trial environment, especially in nets.

I don’t necessarily think a net environment is always the best one to assess players, but sometimes you have no choice.

You know, if the weather’s poor at the end of season and your outside observations get cancelled, or, you know, in county age group cricket that don’t have the luxury that maybe you have in other environments of having multiple eyes on players all the time.

So you might have to, you might have to make some observations in, in that scenarios.

But I think people get drawn into worrying about, oh, I got out three times and, and that means I’m definitely not getting selected or like, I struggled against this sort of bowling.

But I think what, what coaches are doing, a lot of times they’re trying to look at what you can do so that they’re, especially at the younger age, they look at what does this player have to offer at the minute and how can we add to it?

So if someone’s a really strong sweeper, but they’ve, they’ve gone into the NET and about 75, 80% of the time they’ve nailed their sweeps both sides of the wicket, they’ve got out a couple of times.

I don’t, I genuinely don’t think the coaches are going to be thinking, oh, they got out a couple of times, we can’t pick them.

They’ll be thinking, that’s a really good skill that players got.

We can work with them.

They can have more success in the future.

But if you just pat it back, they’ll never know.

Yeah.

And I guess.

Well, I mean, one of my questions actually, and this kind of ties into.

I was going to, I was going to ask you, do you, do you value courage and bravery in these situations?

But a broader question would be, how important are things?

So obviously your skill level is important, but how important are things like body language, communication, attitude?

Things like bravery, Courage, the attitude that I am going to look to dominate here, Even though it’s a trial and even though, you know, not playing it safe, I would say what should be on that?

Yeah, I think it doesn’t necessarily have to mean going in and trying to, trying to whack it.

That doesn’t necessarily define what bravery is in those situations.

It could be that you’re, you’re not particularly competent against quick bowling, but you’re trying your best to stay in line with it.

Hit the ball back at the ball when it’s the stumps and leaving, leaving it when they, when they bowl, back of length, offshore.

So that could also be about demonstrating some bravery or a bowler, in a bowler’s context, it could be.

I don’t, you know, I know I’ve got this slower ball and I practiced it a bit, but I want to show the coaches that I’m willing to learn as well.

So when you talk about body language and bravery, it could be, well, even though I’ve not done this much, I want to demonstrate that I’m coachable, willing to explore things.

And so if a coach comes to me and says in a trial, have you ever thought about doing this?

You go, ah, well, actually, not really, but I’ll give it a go.

And not being too worried about, you know, running fried knuckleball and it goes into the side net, like, doesn’t matter in that context, you’re better off giving it a go, aren’t you?

I think that’s one of the things in the Past we have discussed is that players come into those observations, you almost want to coach them a little bit to see how they respond, present them with new ideas and see whether they go, oh, no, no, no, I do it like this, or my dad’s told me to do this.

Something that you can sometimes hear.

But if you get someone that says, oh, yeah, I’ll give that a go, why not?

Sometimes that can stand players in good stead.

I think just generally, as an attitude towards no ideas, especially at younger ages, is a good idea.

And are you discouraged as coaches from doing that?

Because I know people who’ve trialled and they sort of say, well, coaches stand at the back with a clipboard, felt a lot of pressure, wasn’t very far, and we just sort of batted and bowled.

And do you think that.

Yeah.

A, are you discouraged from doing that as coaches by whatever, you know, the powers that be, and B, do you think that’s the way to engage people, young people in county age groups, by setting that kind of precedent of we’re assessing you.

This is serious now.

This isn’t fun and games.

What do you think about that?

I definitely have been in an environment where we had those conversations and one that changed from we’ll stand back and observe to one where we got more involved tonight.

And I definitely feel getting more involved, having more interactions with the players, you learn more about them and gain more context.

So I don’t think there’s much to gain by being standoffish and judgmental, if you like.

I think there’s.

There’s more to gain in trying to have more interactions with players.

And actually, if someone comes to an observation and they.

They don’t get selected, but a coach has tried to provide them with some new ideas, I don’t necessarily think that’s the worst thing either.

It might improve their experience and their relationship with trialing.

I think, Ben, you were talking before about the value of coachability of players and, well, in all situations, I guess a challenge here to you, a gentle challenge, would be that some of the greatest players have been almost famous for not taking everything on that a coach says that they’ve had the strength of character, go, thanks, but no thanks.

And sometimes as a coach, that can be hard to deal with, can’t it?

You make a suggestion to a young player and they’re like, well, actually, I’m happy with.

With this.

So, again, interesting balance there between someone who appears high on coachability and then also somebody who has the strength to go, no, I’m going to do it.

This way, that’s an interesting one because you ultimately, when you come into county age cricket, that there’ll be, say you have a private coach that the player works with, they might have influence from club cricket school, the county, so they’re going to get presented with new ideas all the time.

I think what, what players should be trying to be doing in those situations, almost acting a little bit like a sif.

So, like, I’m willing to take this on board and listen to you and respect it, might be willing to give it a go, but if it, if it doesn’t work for me, then I’m comfortable, like you said, saying, I’m happy sticking with what I’ve previously done.

So it’s not necessarily saying flat out like, oh, no, I’m not going to listen to any advice.

I think the way you put it there was, you know, if someone respectfully says, well, yeah, I’ve tried that before and I don’t think it works for me, I think it actually could work in their favor as well.

So the player’s gone to the trial, they’re being selected or they’re not being selected.

In terms of the reality of talent pathways, do players need to be in a talent pathway early on to have a realistic chance of getting into the epp, the academy and eventually becoming a professional, if that’s their goal?

I think that’s a really interesting question because there’s a couple of different ways of looking at it.

One is that obviously if someone gets into a talent pathway early, they’re getting more exposure, contact time with coaches, time on task earlier, which puts them at a bit of an advantage in the, in the next couple of years?

I think that’s the.

Is it relative age effect, Woody, where older players who are slightly older and potentially more physically developed in their year group have more chance of getting sighted initially and then because of that, have more chance of being selected year on year because of the early exposures.

But then whether that leads on to them becoming professional cricketers, I’m not 100% sure because you see plenty of players, they take up the game slightly later who are good sports people, they play multiple sports.

I think that’s something that’s a massive, massive benefit.

If someone’s got really high movement competency because they play lots of different sports, they’re likely to be able to pick up new skills a little bit faster and potentially even if they started later or entered the pathway later, might progress faster than some of the other players that are in, in the environment from the beginning.

So I wouldn’t say it’s a necessity.

And you.

I know that counties obviously now have to.

Have to look into their data on, on what quarter of the year that their players are from.

So it’s taken into consideration whether they’re just basically picking all the, all the biggest kids at the start and keeping them in.

But, yeah, I think it’s, it’s a very difficult one to answer, but I would say it’s not a necessity.

It’s interesting now what you say about, obviously they get that exposure if they do get it, and then that, and especially if they play fixtures, you know, they’re potentially facing the next generation of bowlers or, you know, playing against higher opposition.

But then at the same time, as you say, there’s a bit of an opportunity cost with that.

If you’re spending your winter training carrying on through cricket because you’re in a county age group, then you’re not playing hockey or you’re not playing rugby.

So there’s that.

There’s always an opportunity cost with our time.

But I guess what I’d also ask with, we.

I’m Middlesex based, like London based, and we have quite a lot of children who, who want to play for Middlesex.

Maybe they live in Hertfordshire, go to school in Middlesex or the other way around, so they’re eligible for both.

And they’ll, they’ll want Middlesex or they’ll want Surrey and they won’t want Bucks and they won’t want, you know, the, the minor counties.

What’s your take on that?

Because my take is always if you’re in, then you’re playing matches, you’re getting that cricket.

But if you’re waiting and putting all your hopes on this kind of national county and you’re trialing and failing and trialing and failing and trialing and failing and thinking that that’s your route, professionalization.

Surely just more cricket is better.

Yeah, I think that’s a, that’s a really interesting discussion that counties can have with each other as well, because I think we’ve got to look at, rather than looking at the accolade.

So, like playing for Middlesex is the accolade that they, they might want what’s best for the player.

So I can think of two, two good examples.

My age group growing up were safe.

Zaib, who’s now at Northamptonshire, and Max Holden at Middlesex were both at minor counties.

I remember them both getting to open the batting regularly and obviously save would get overs with a ball as well.

Whereas had they have played for Middlesex, Northamptonshire, respectively, in those age groups, they might not have got as many opportunities growing up to take the key roles in games.

Obviously that’s all, you know, anecdotal, isn’t it?

It’s just, it’s what’s happened.

But, but I do think there’s a, there’s a case to be made for if you’re, if you’re a cricketer who, who could qualify to play for Buckinghamshire like the safe did, for example, that if it looks like you’re going to get more opportunity in that environment in the early years then it might actually be better place to be because you can always progress onto the county’s academy when the time comes.

You know, if you’re scoring lots and lots of runs in national counties cricket at a young age, I think that’s, that’s going to get noticed.

So.

Yeah.

So it’s not necessarily always a disadvantage.

No.

And I guess as a sort of add on to that.

What do you think about.

I know counties heavily discourage it, but I also know people do it anyway.

Trialing for two counties and seeing which one they get into this sort of, as you say, the accolades and the hierarchy.

Do you think it’s worth kind of shopping around if you can or do you think it’s kind of just.

I think that’s potentially more the responsibility.

The onus would be on the counties rather than the players and the parents.

So for example, if, if someone trialed for a first class county and they’re.

They also potentially qualified to play for the, the nearest national county and they, they didn’t get into that squad I would expect.

I know that obviously in, in the sort of the proactive counties will signpost players to other national counties and say pick up the phone to X X county and say look, we’ve not selected this player but how many right arm seamers have you got?

Because we think that actually he could still play county or she could still play county edge with cricket.

I don’t want them to miss out on that opportunity because they trialed at this county and not the other.

And I think that should be two way that national.

You’d expect national counties to pick up the phone, say I’ve got this 16 year old girl, I think she’s got the potential to play professional cricketer.

Have you got space for X?

So yeah, I’d say that the onus there would be on the counties to do that to work in the best interest of the player.

What I’m hearing from that discussion is sometimes it’s better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little Fish in a big pond.

Why do you think, Ben, that so many talented young cricketers stop enjoying the game within the these so called talent pathways?

So they get in, they get into it, they, they achieve what they want, they’re in the county age group side and then they just stop enjoying it.

What, what’s going on there?

I think part of it can potentially be what you just said there is that they, that have viewed it as they’ve achieved what they wanted, they’re in now and then all they’re working towards is just remaining in rather than trying to be as good as they can and enjoying their cricket.

Something that John Neal said on his podcast that I listened to is really interesting, is that we play the game because it’s fun, but they get into a catty age group system and suddenly it’s all very serious, but they’re just children playing a game because it’s fun.

So yeah, I think that potentially can have an impact on players enjoyment, just that internal pressure of wanting to remain in the system, remain with the identity.

But also that we’re kind of trying to professionalize children like they’re in a job interview that lasts five years.

I think it’s, I think it’s also interesting that we, we assume as coaches that.

Well, I definitely have done previously, we assume that every player in a pathway wants to be a professional.

But I work with a player at the minute who’s, who’s in a pathway and he does, I don’t think he wants to be a professional creator, just wants to be as good as he can be and enjoy himself.

And actually that might stand him in good stead performance wise because he’s probably not feeling the same internal pressure that some of the others are placing on themselves.

So I do think that’s interesting because you speak to some kids and they’re playing carrier cricket and just because they’re in the pathway, I think you just want to be a professional cricketer.

They turn around and say actually quite like to be an actor.

Yeah, fair enough.

Yeah.

That is interesting that because I, I do hear quite a lot when I, when you listen to really top players and invariably they’re not from this country, Australia, New Zealand, and they talk about being a pro wasn’t even on their radar.

Even though they were having success and they were playing well, being a pro wasn’t on their radar.

And then somebody says come and be a pro and it’s like, oh, okay, it was almost a surprise.

But in this country it feels like it’s more not destined, but it’s you’re on that path much earlier.

And I’m not sure if that’s healthy or not.

Yeah, it’s a challenging one, isn’t it?

Because you’re beginning to create expectation for people and say to them, you know, you need to be doing X, Y and Z and pathways, you know, they’re, they’re adding on more and more contact time all the time.

S and C programs where they have to go in and work in the gym.

So rather than just their skill set session and their age group session, they might have three sessions a week.

And then like Bryony said earlier, that might take away the opportunity to play another sport which probably would have ticked the S and C box and presented them with better skills.

I think one thing I like to ask our clients, you know, when we work with people that I find quite interesting, is would you rather your team won and you perform badly or didn’t get a good score or whatever, or would you rather your team lost but you performed really well?

And for the most part, people say, I’d rather my team won unless it’s my county team.

And then I don’t really care and I just want to do well.

So how do you go about building a sense of kind of togetherness playing for the team when they also have at the back of their mind, I need to perform, I need to be better than my kind of sort of friend here because I want to be picked and there’s only so many slots in the academy or there’s only, we’re getting cold next year, will I still stay in?

How do you create that team?

It’s, it’s, it’s really challenging that.

I remember having a discussion with a player last week about them trialing in, in county cricket, county second team cricket and playing T20 and white ball stuff and how he was expected to bat, whether he should be trying to give himself a bit of a chance, getting so that he can get scores and the numbers look better at the end of the year, or doing what he felt was right for the game at the time.

And I think the conclusion that we came to with that is that if he was a player, you seem to be doing what the game needs at that specific time.

So you come to think, what does the game need from me now?

And then act in that way.

You’ve got to trust that the coaching staff are skillful enough to recognize that, right, this player, they might have got out, but they were trying to move the game forward.

They were trying to do what we needed at that specific time and that therefore makes them what we want as a, as a cricketer in terms of creating that team environment.

I do think it’s a real challenge because you might, for example, have trialists come in, players who don’t regularly play together.

I think it’s important that even if at times our language as coach.

Sorry, even if at times our thought process as coaches in pathways is about development, that our language is about winning as a team and doing what the game needs to win games of cricket.

Because then at least that way it’s quite clear to the players what our expectations are.

We might make decisions behind the scenes that look slightly different.

So for example, taking an opening batter, batting them in the middle order so they have to come in and start against spin because if they progress into professional game, they might not open the batting, they might have to start at six and keep wicket, for example, if that’s their secondary skill, just to get in the team.

And they might have to come in with two spinners on in a Red Bull game.

And that experience of batting the middle order would have given them, would have given them better exposure before progressing.

Although it means that that age group team might not be as likely to win that game of cricket.

But the language that we portray has to still be, we’re all doing what we can to try and win games of cricket.

This is where stats can be dangerous because cricket is such a stats based game and actually there is a lot of judgment on the stats.

And so if you’ve got that situation where you as a coach are in the moment and you’re looking at a player and they’ve made a decision for the benefit of the win, for the benefit of the team, but they get out doing it and their stats are affected by that.

But then somebody else who’s selecting another team looks at the stats, that can become an issue.

I think this is an age old question.

This.

I, I think it boils.

I think, I think it’s, it’s human nature, isn’t it?

I think it boils down to how, how settled you feel in the team that you’re playing in.

And if you feel settled and like you’re one of the first picks, you’ll probably want the team to win first, won’t you?

But if you’re trying to get in that team or you’re trying to make your way in the game, I think it’s human nature to go, actually my performance is most important because obviously I want the team to win, but I probably don’t want to finish My career in this team, whether that’s a Lancashire under 14s or, I don’t know, the.

The club first team, if you want to go on and become a professional.

So they see it as a stepping stone, don’t they?

And that’s very difficult to assess, I would say.

Yeah, it’s that.

It’s that environment about, like, how safe, like you said, how safe the.

The players feel to play the way that they need to play to win games of cricket.

And I think one of the key things there, from a pathway perspective, is the way that we communicate with people.

So if we’re very honest and clear and say to people, look, selections are just a moment in time and actually getting dropped out of a system, it doesn’t necessarily.

That’s not, that’s not necessarily the end of the road.

It’s not.

It’s not a closed, Closed door.

You’d hope that, you know, the players given feedback, they go away, do what they need to do and then come back in and you see that.

No end of times, actually.

And it’s not necessarily the worst thing to have like a bit more rotation in a squad, because if you have a player that’s never been dropped all the way through and then suddenly they face some adversity because they no doubt will at some point, they’ve had no exposure to it.

So it’s not always the worst thing for someone to be dropped, whether it’s from a team or from a pathway, so that they then know how to deal with it.

Really,.

I think it’s really healthy.

So you’ve got a star player, standout player, he or she’s dominated their age groups from whenever they’ve been playing.

I think it’s really healthy for them to, I call them speed bumps.

So to manufacture speed bumps into their career, because if they, they will, they will hit a speed bump at some point.

And if the first time they hit that speed bump is when they’ve got signed as a pro or where they want to get to, actually, if they’ve not dealt with that before, then they don’t have the tools to deal with it and they sometimes they never come back from it because they’re used to being top dog.

So, yeah, those speed bumps are really important.

So, okay, Ben, if you’ve got that situation, how would you put a speed bump in?

Would you drop them or would you put them down the order and ask them to bat in a position they don’t want to?

Well, come on, give us some ideas as to how you can help with Their development by basically putting a roadblock in front of them.

Yeah, I think that, I mean that’s a, that’s a challenging one.

But I think one of the things is that principle that gets spoken about for Olympic athletes, which is having a third, a third, a third of their sort of game time being maybe slightly below the level where they’re, they’re the best player, bit of time when they’re appropriately challenged and an amount of time where they’re being stretched and also the language that you use around it.

So basically saying that each, each game in a pathway is, it’s an opportunity, not an expectation.

So if we ring someone up and say, look, we’ve got an opportunity for you to play for the age group above.

You can come in, show this is the role that I’d like you to play in this particular game and not say you’re now playing in the age group above on a regular basis.

This is an opportunity for you to play in the age group above.

I think the language is quite important on that and how it’s perceived because stuff like that is, I’ve heard it no end of times, but it’s very easy to give and very difficult to take away.

If you’ve put someone on a program, you put someone on a program and say you’re giving them a label, you’re now an EPP player, it’s very difficult to take that away.

Whereas if, for example, you’ve got an EPP program and you’ve got a space for a one to one with a coach that you don’t want to leave empty, you can ring one of your county age group players who you think might progress onto it and say, oh, I’ve got a, got a training session that you can come and be a part of.

So I think that’s probably one way of doing it because then you’re naturally, you’re taking them out of their depth and then after that they go back to where they were before.

So it’s not like a massive bump in the road for them, but it’s just a little right, here’s, here’s what the next level looks like and you’re probably going to be below that at the moment, whether it’s a training or playing environment.

And then you’re going to go back to where you were previously.

Bit of a tricky one for you to answer this.

Maybe because you sat there at the city Academy today.

Obviously clearly you’re doing some coaching, maybe some private coaching, I’m not sure, but many young and you alluded to earlier, many young players these days, particularly those talented players or the ones who have been identified as talented and they’re in the county pathway, they can get access to a lot of coaching and a lot of coaches.

So do you think there’s a flip side, a danger of them now receiving too much coaching, too much feedback, too much technical input?

What’s your view on that?

Yeah, there’s a lot to this, which is that I view.

So I do like a lot of work with a lot of players on a, on a one to one basis at the minute.

And I a kind of view what I do is to present them with ideas and then let them go away and try and work it out on their own.

There has to be that element of free play.

So for example, if someone’s coming in for a one to one every day with a coach, you kind of be like, well there’s not, there’s not the need for that.

But you don’t need to be spending money on it, on a private coach to just throw balls.

What really we want is come in to be presented with some new ideas, have some discussions about game plans and then go and try and implement it in a game and have a period of time where you’re just working on that stuff and, and seeing what works for you, learning more about your own game.

Because ultimately when you go out in the middle, there’s no one else hitting the ball for you or bowling the ball for you.

And I think it’s one of the things that’s been lost like over the last few years.

I remember when I was a kid, I’m saying something like that makes you sound so old, isn’t it?

When I was a kid, you go down to the nets and there’d be like loads of other kids also using the nets.

You might have to wait for a bit to use the nets at your local club, whereas now it never happens.

So I think almost sometimes as coaches we have a bit of a responsibility to build in messy practice and free play and allowing players to go and learn on their own because the variables in the game are infinite.

Let me, let me make you feel even older, Ben.

When you were playing, which is a long time ago, but not as long as me, there would have been, well, there wouldn’t have been any social media, I wouldn’t have thought.

Or there’d have been much less social media and online analysis.

Because if you go on social media, if you, you know, the algorithms determine what you see and if you, you know, want to watch cricket, then you get inundated these days on people giving coaching tips and anal and funky drills.

What’s your advice to players there?

Because it’s there, it’s in front of them.

It’s.

Some of these are quite entertaining.

Is there a danger of, I don’t know, getting sucked into that and taking too much information on board through people who essentially.

You don’t know, they don’t know.

You don’t know whether the coaches or not, but they give the.

They’re definitely given advice and information.

Yeah.

It’s a tough one, isn’t it, because social media is given to a certain extent everyone a voice or a platform to share their view.

I think it’s similar to what I said about having different coaches in a way.

Obviously, there’s just more to deal with, there’s more noise.

But if you can look through stuff and be like, oh, that’s quite a good idea, that might work for me.

Or hear someone speaking about a different game plan that they’ve taken against certain type of bowling and you can go and practice it.

I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with that, but it’s being able to work out what.

What actually works for you in the environments you’re playing, the surfaces you play on.

Yeah, I think it’s sort of being that.

That sieve again is like to.

Right, that’s.

This is useful information.

This is not useful information.

I think free to discuss it with the people that you work with and trust as well.

And just with any coaching, like take with a pinch of salt, if this person doesn’t act like they don’t watch you play out in the middle, then you have to.

You have to not almost be a skeptic, but like a little bit.

Little bit of pinch of salt with some of the stuff that comes in because it might not necessarily always apply.

And do you think with that, Nathan, I talked about this earlier.

Do you think that coaches have a responsibility to.

To coach beyond the technical side and beyond and look at that mental side of things?

Because sort of people that we work with increasingly, you know, they’ve been selected for a county side often based on video and net sessions and they’re picked as a batter and then they can’t score any runs in a game because they struggle to transfer from nets to matches, which is a common struggle with the cricketers can have.

And it’s obviously something that we work to address when we work with our one to one sessions, but.

And then they get dropped the next year and I sort of feel that there’s a bit of a responsibility on the coaches there.

You’re recognizing that this player has talent and has the ability to choose the right shot and execute the right shot most of the time.

And then they can’t be do it.

They can’t.

They don’t seem able to do it in matches.

Do you think that it is the coach’s responsibility to try and support the mental side of their game as well as just as much as the technical side?

I’d say so, yeah.

It’s a challenging one because there’s an interesting question to be raised about how we select pathways in that if hypothetically note they have different selection points some places.

If you select 20 players for a winter program and then you select again in April and you reduce it slightly, I obviously like.

So there’s some onus that goes on to the players.

Maybe they’ve not, you know, done the work that they need to do or progressed in the way that the coaches have hoped.

But actually, if you’ve brought them into that program and provided them with all that practice and training, really what we should be doing is saying it’s our job to get you into the next selection point.

It’s our job to make sure you do the things that you need to do to get there.

And some of that, for example, might be.

Might be the mental side of the game.

I think we’ve got a really interesting thing about the practice environment, especially with batting, that there’s just no consequence too much of the time.

So, like when you go out and play in a game, there’s absolute consequence.

You get out and in the practice environment, there’s no consequence often.

And that’s often why I think you see different types of players and you see different surfaces that we play on.

We use different bits of kit that don’t happen to be there in the game.

So I think there’s almost room in what we do to try and create a little bit more jeopardy when any type of practice fielding is an interesting one as well, because we do that with no pressure all the time in practice.

Absolutely no pressure.

And then when a ball goes up in the game, there’s suddenly something riding on it and it makes the task so much more difficult because we have practiced it like that.

I think one of the things I did this winter with a.

A lad who’s at a university nearby, really like watching that really talented cricketer hits the ball in the middle of the bat all the time, like very, very good ball striker.

But the conversation we had at the start of the winter was just you don’t give, you don’t bat for enough balls.

So if you chip one to cover every 20 balls, doesn’t matter how well you struck it in between, you’re not going to score that many runs.

So with him it was just every single session we did had to have jeopardy.

There had to be consequence for getting out, for, for almost all of the time that we were working together because that’s what’s going to make the biggest difference to his game, I felt at the time anyway.

And you’d hope that that makes a difference to how he approaches it in the middle as well.

So going on from Brian’s question about mental attributes and also kind of tying it in with long term development versus short term wins, there’s a well known story that about 20 years ago there was a small lad open the bat in Yorkshire under 14s and when he scored runs, Yorkshire tended to lose the game because he couldn’t get the ball off the square and he chewed up loads of balls.

And there were lots of parents and people on the periphery who were demanding for this young kid to be dropped from the team.

But Yorkshire took the view that this kid had something special and that they were prepared to lose games of cricket under 14 level because they took the long term view that in a few years time this kid would start winning games of cricket for the Yorkshire first team, the professional team.

And what they saw was good skills technically, but some mental toughness because he was getting all this pressure from parents saying he shouldn’t be in the team and they stuck with him.

And that kid was Joe rooted.

In other words, Yorkshire prioritize a long win over that, over that short win in terms of balancing development with short term performance.

Ben, what, what do you, what do you think actually helps young players to keep improving over long term?

And it’s not, this is, you know, this is the whole shebang.

Now let’s look holistically, not just about skill development but tactical awareness.

And anyway, I’ll let you answer the question, but in terms of what encourages players to win the long game, not the short game, what’s your best advice for young players out there?

I guess the difficulty there is best advice for young players.

It’s just trying to take the opportunities that are presented to them.

And then as coaches our job is to keep presenting them with different opportunities where they have the chance to be successful.

But success looks different in different ways.

I think that’s what you were saying is that although it’s like what I said before, although in Age group cricket, the language of the coaching staff is going to be about trying to win games of cricket and they’re going to be encouraging this player to try and win the game, move the game forward and demonstrate his skills.

But they might also be thinking, actually age group cricket isn’t about winning, it’s not about winning those individual games of cricket.

From a, from an overall perspective, it’s that actually being involved in a, in a tight loss is going to be better for the learning of the entire team or learning how to get over the line when the odds are slightly against them.

There’s going to be more learning that comes out of that.

And like you said, particularly from a mental skills perspective, if, if we take a player who we think is talented but take them out of their depth a little bit and place them into say an under 18 team when they’re 15, they’re going to have to be more, develop some mental robustness to deal with that.

But it’s at the risk of the team losing quite often.

But that’s not always, not always the worst thing because like you say, it’s kind of, it’s not necessarily always about winning the game tomorrow with age group cricket.

And so by opportunities, Ben, do you mean match play?

Like for you, is match play one of the key ways of developing a cricketer over the long term?

I think it’s about things being sort of varied, I guess.

So you match play as part of it, but it’s like having to do different things.

So if you normally open the bowling and I give you the new ball every single game and you’ve got loads of confidence opening the bowling but then you move into the academy.

You move, yeah, you move into an academy game and you bowl five overs at the top in a 50 over game and you’ve got to come back at all at death with an old ball and you’re stood there like, oh, I’ve not done this before, I don’t have any confidence to, I don’t know what my best options are, I don’t know how to deal with this or the bat has just hit me for four and they’ve played a shot that never been played against me because I always bowl in the power play with this field and the board swings around.

So I think that’s kind of what I mean by opportunities.

I think it’s our responsibility as coaches to give players these exposures so they have the, not only the technical skill but also the mental skills to deal with those challenges as and when they’re presented.

So I Think a really interesting one on this.

I know I’m going slightly off topic for this, but is at the younger end of a pathway.

Or in club cricket, for example, I’d quite like to see more games played on astroturf wickets because then the batters have to deal with playing the ball off the back foot.

The ball carries through to the keeper so there’s more catches behind the wicket.

We’re giving players more representative challenges that are going to face as they move up through the levels of the game.

There’s not necessarily about playing all of the games on Astro.

If you know that your club under 13s often play on the end wicket that isn’t very good and the ball never gets above knee high and you’ve got the opportunity to play some games on an Astro, it might not necessarily be the worst thing because then your batters are thinking, well now, like the short balls in the game, for example, or the keeper’s suddenly saying, I can practice standing back against the seamers.

I’ve not had the chance to do that before because the ball’s always about four times before it got to me.

So those are other examples of like slightly different opportunities you might find, like guess manufacture for players to make them deal with different skill challenges but also feel different like pressures.

What do you think about indoor cricket?

Do you think that’s a useful thing that could be implemented more through the winter?

I think it depends on what, what type and like what you were doing.

So I think there’s a, there’s a big place for like competitive scenario practice and like getting the space opened out a little bit and potentially having like a mid on, mid off in.

I think we had some real success.

I’ve seen some success doing that in, in the disability environment where we’re trying to get people to be a little bit more competitive.

We also did a bit of stuff with the PD team in the past where I bring in bowlers that they wouldn’t, wouldn’t have played against before.

Because if you constantly doing scenario practice against your teammates, you know what their go to options are.

So you’re not, it comes a point where you, you’re not necessarily learning.

I’ve heard you, Brian, speak before about almost diminishing returns from nets and it’s that same thing as if I constantly get presented with the same skill challenge, I only have to produce one answer.

Whereas if suddenly, you know, I brought in lads who just play league cricket to come and bowl at the, at the PD players and from a skill perspective, they matched up pretty Pretty well.

And it presented our guys with a new challenge because they didn’t necessarily know what skills the bowlers had.

And then obviously, when we went out to then play India in a series, they might have a new player that we’ve not seen before.

And that’s something they’re going to have to learn to deal with on the spot.

Yeah.

Yesterday I was speaking to Matt Dawson, who’s head coach of the Cricket Asylum, one of our partner businesses up in Yorkshire, and he was talking about they’ve moved away from before Christmas time, basically.

They’ve gone away from.

They haven’t.

They have an academy, a performance academy.

They’ve gone away from nets and technical practice and basically now just doing indoor games because, one, it’s refreshing and fun and it’s a long winter just to be doing technical lane work.

But two, he was saying the benefit that they get from game awareness and running between the wickets and calling and the competitive element has seen that their.

Their development for their players has gone through the roof.

And he’s a big fan of it, actually.

Yeah.

It’s the same in the summer, isn’t it, when you.

When you have a practice night, as opposed to running a net session, you might set up a game, but tweak the rules a little bit so you see the desired outcomes.

If you wanted batters to hit straight more, you set up a game and just bring the straight boundary and by 20 yards, and hopefully then you’d see players looking to hit the ball that way more because they’re going to get more reward for it and hopefully recognize that I’ve got that skill, I should use that more in games.

So I think that’s probably a better way of bringing out learning than just hopping in a net and saying, try and hit it straight if you can.

Let’s stick to practice design, because that’s something that you do here at Cricket Mind, with the clients kind of helping with the practice and training.

I’ve got a question for you from a previous guest, a quote from a previous guest, Rob Furley, who used to play for Kent.

He said at the end of one of the podcasts, a coach gives you some advice and it doesn’t work within three balls, then bin it.

Right.

So my first question is, what do you think about that?

And more broadly, what does good practice design look like for young players, then?

I think that’s.

I mean, that’s quite an interesting way of looking at it, and I guess it’s a faster version of the sieve that you get to your answer A bit faster.

I’m just going to give this one go.

Why three?

Three goes three.

Three balls.

I got three balls at it.

Three balls.

Three balls.

I think, I think it, I think it depends, doesn’t it?

I mean like I, I think I understand the premise behind it which is that basically you’re going to get presented with lots of different ideas and you’re trying to, trying to work out what works for you.

So that’s to just to kind of summarize it.

So I don’t, I don’t, I don’t necessarily hate it, but I, I do wonder whether there’s, there’s certain times where look like if you can add something to your game and it’s going to take you a little bit more time than that, it might be hitting the ball a different area, a new shot, a new type of delivery as a bowler that there’s real value in practicing.

It might take more than three balls, but maybe you give it four.

So yeah, but yeah, practice design’s a really interesting one.

Like going back to the trialing thing, I just.

Because it loops into this.

But I remember once we did some observations and there was a bowling machine involved and there was, there were a couple of players who looked really good on bowling machine.

Really good.

Oh yeah, they can play and then they bat against the bowlers and they look a little bit different.

And I think what we learned was that they might have been players who had more exposure to coaching and more exposure to using a bowling machine than the other players who were there, especially at a really young age.

So actually there’s, there’s kind of value in, I think in observations and in practice trying to, trying to represent the game or the challenges that the game presents where you can.

And I think if you stick to that, you know that you’re, you’re having a good chance of improving that, that player’s development with, with skill and mentality.

Because ultimately I could, we could do lots and lots of work developing skill on a bowling machine, for example, but there’s a chance that that isn’t transferring as well.

Whereas I know that if we try and develop the same skills in a game based context and know that I’m closer for the player to be able to use it, it just might take a little bit more time and it might look a bit messier at times.

I think that’s one thing that we, we often get scared of as coaches.

And I’ve definitely felt like this before, like you’ve got someone you’re working with and you really want them to feel good about their practice and feel like they’re getting better.

But actually sometimes there’s going to be periods where they, they aren’t having that much success.

You know, if they’re practicing a new, a new option against a certain type of bowling and you’re asking them to play it X number of times in a, in a net session and they, they get out a few times, they’re not going to feel good about it.

But it’s just being comfortable with that and be like, that’s part of the learning process.

It’s okay like, like to try it more.

And the more times you try it, the more success you’re going to have.

It’s one of the things we did with the analyst with the PD team was get them to code the nets that were happening in competitive scenarios.

The number of times certain shots were used and the level of success that was happening because there were some players who had high levels of success with certain scoring options but then didn’t use them.

So the conversations obviously then, well, why don’t you use this a little bit more and see what happens?

So that’s trying to sort of bring the game inside, if you like.

Earlier you mentioned messy practice.

Ben, just, can you just explain to the listeners and viewers if we’ve got any weight what you mean by that?

I think it’s kind of more like unstructured play.

So, like trying to get players to set up their own scenarios, set up their own games, come up with their own ideas, and then almost stand back and just let things unfold a little bit.

Because I think a lot of the learning that can take place, especially around like game plans for different types of scenarios in the game are things that players just work out on their own based on how things feel.

So it’s quite hard to coach that, to say to someone, oh, like I’d like you to do this, this and this.

When this bowler comes on, when actually they might feel like, oh, well, like having done that before.

I feel like for me the best option is, is X, because I’ve got positive experiences from the past of having success doing that.

The only way they can create that is by those situations arising.

Yeah, and when I say messy, I sort of mean that kind of there being failure as well, if, if that makes sense.

So we could, we could, for example, have a young kid come in who’s quite talented and they want to work on a new shot and we start with underarm feeds and they aren’t hitting them that well.

And then we Give them a couple of coaching points and they start to hit the underarm feeds better.

But I think it will look good from the outside because it looks like the players hitting the ball better.

But ultimately, when the feed isn’t how the bowler’s going to bowl the ball towards them, and once they know what the movement feels like, they’re not gaining that much from doing that over and over again.

Like, if we just pop a ball on top of a tee and say drill it, just make this shape.

Well, the ball’s not always going to be right there.

They need to be able to play the ball, hit the ball in different areas, when the ball’s in different places.

And with that comes periods of not having success in hitting the ball.

Well, that’s what Messi to me is being comfortable with it, with it not necessarily looking great all the time.

Do you think that too many players stay comfortable in practice because they want to feel good and they want to build the confidence up that way?

Do you think that a lot of them do kind of stay in that comfort zone?

Yeah, but it’s tricky one, because obviously if you, for example, like you have some people, if they’re thinking about performance on the morning of a game, then there is a benefit to them feeling good about their game.

So I get that.

But also, is that the only way, really?

Like, if you do what you’ve always done, you’re going to get what you’ve always got.

And if we’re trying to move our games forward and become better, then at some point I’m going to have to go, well, am I going to get better just by carrying on doing the same thing over and over and over again, or am I going to stay where I am?

And if I’m comfortable staying where I am, and that’s fine.

But if, if I want to move my game forward, then I’m going to have to do something that.

That might make me feel a little bit uncomfortable.

So I think, yeah, I think players do do that a lot, but I think a lot of the time it’s, can we as coaches make them feel a little bit more.

Make them feel sorry, safer about that uncomfortable practice or failure or whatever, whether that’s saying to them, you know, I’d like you to do X, Y and Z in practice, and we don’t mind if there are some dismissals because we know that it’s new for you or whether it’s.

We’re going to do some practice on something that you’re.

That you’re not that confident with.

At the minute, but we’re going to do it with a slightly softer ball or in a safer environment.

We’re going to do short ball practice against quick falling, but with an indoor ball so you feel more comfortable to.

To take it on.

For example.

Yeah, I was talking about this with somebody yesterday, actually, and about how pairs go, like reverting back to pairs.

Cricket can be quite helpful for that in some ways, because if you.

If you’re encouraging them to sort of hit over the top and they try and hit over the top in a game and get caught, it’s probably, you know, you might as a coach be like, I’m okay with that.

You know, that’s what we’ve been working on.

You.

You took a risk.

They may get other feedback, but it’s less helpful and they may not feel great in themselves and they may be unlikely to do it again.

But if you create kind of scenarios where they can try and then try again, because it’s so often, particularly with batting, I think you try and then the consequence is so immediate and you don’t have another game till next week, it takes a lot to then go out and do that again.

Whereas, like, reverting back to some sort of training scenarios or friendlies where you do pairs, even at kind of under 12 or something, I feel like that can sometimes be quite helpful to actually work through.

Through those challenges.

Definitely.

I mean, I think in friendly games and in sort of internal practice games, you can tweak the rules to do.

To do whatever you want to get the desired out of them.

I mean, I’ve seen a game before the coach set up where they.

They just said, no one can.

Like when the spinners come on in the middle overs, no one can be out stumped.

Yeah.

And then all the players started coming down the wicket, obviously, because there was.

There was no consequence to it.

Yeah.

But I don’t think they had that.

I don’t think they made very many mistakes anyway.

So hopefully for them that’s like.

Oh, like, I’ve got lots of positive experience now attached to this because I had success doing it.

Yeah.

So that’s.

Yeah, I think there’s.

There’s massive benefit to sort of tweaking the rules of games in that way to get your desired outcome.

Ben, we’re coming up to time and also my battery indicator is flashing on the laptop and I’m worried that we’re going to get cut off at any moment.

So bring it to a close.

I’ve got a magic wand there, Ben, and I’m Just going to award you a new job and the new job is for ECB and it’s Head of Junior Cricket across the land and you can do whatever you want.

So my final question is with this new role, which is fictitious by the way, you know anybody out there, if you could change one thing about youth cricket development, what would it be?

That’s incredibly tough.

I think I would be encouraging both clubs and counties to play more friendly style games, especially at the start of a season with agreed sort of outcomes that they wanted beforehand based on their, on their pathways or needs.

So I think that’s like, I guess more.

And counties do definitely already do it.

There’s some really proactive people out there, but I guess more collaboration around practice, potentially even indoors in the winter as well, taking your players over to visit another county and do indoor competitive stuff.

I think, I think that would, that would help players develop skills that will transfer to the game faster than, I guess, I guess our traditional methods of block of skill work, a bit of competitive practice and then some pre season friendlies with normal rules.

If there’s a parent out there of a child who is either in a county age group team or not in a county age group team but wants to be, what’s the best advice that you can give that parent?

I think, to be honest, is if you’re just worried rather than worrying about like the selection point, because it’s just that it’s a moment in time you’re trying to be concerned with essentially like the next ball, like in a game, all you can deal with is the next ball.

So if you’re constantly in the pursuit of improving yourself as a cricketer and a person, then you’re giving yourself the best chance of being selected and those selection points should take care of themselves.

So whether that’s for example, doing what the team needs of you in a game scenario to help the team win, or whether it’s like practicing well in the winter, buying into everything, making sure you do all your S and C work, or pick up ideas from players that you might get access to playing with in different environments.

As to how to approach things from a mental perspective, I think if you look after that, if you kind of keep your house in order to the selection, things should take care of themselves obviously when providing you perform, which is obviously the difficult part, isn’t it?

Ultimately.

But I think you want to be concerning yourself about constantly trying to improve your cricket and not viewing county age group as the end point.

It’s a step on the ladder for the goal of professional cricket or just being as good as you can be.

Very sound advice.

Ben, thank you so much for joining us on the pod today.

It’s been great having you on.

No, thank you very much, Matt.

I really enjoyed it.

Thanks.

Bye.

Thank you.

Hopefully, one of the big takeaways from from this is that player development is really straightforward in that one trial, one season or one selection decision.

Actually, it very rarely defines a young cricketer’s future.

So as always, thanks for listening or watching.

If you’ve enjoyed the episode, please do subscribe and leave us a review.

It really does help.

And if you’d like to learn more about working with Ben or any other team here at Cricket Mind, then head over to the website.

You can find all those details in the show notes.

So until next time, let’s call that stumps.

See you next time.