At Christmas, most people relax about their cricket. So it's the perfect time to get ahead for those who really want to improve their game.
If you're a player keen to boost your game, I am available in Glasgow throughout the winter period for coaching.
If you are further afield, still contact me and we can talk about my online coaching options such as training plans and mentoring.
I read a tweet recently saying a famous coach was not good enough because the team were doing badly. I disagreed.
Even at the highest level, it's impossible to judge a coach purely on results because there are so many other factors at play: form, talent, confidence, conditions and opposition. You can play to your maximum potential, you can be as well-coached as possible and still lose the match.
I think the measure of a good coach is different. It's down to having the trust of the players. You have a good relationships. They believe you. They feel safe with you. You build their confidence with honesty. You fit into and help mould the character of the team. They want you with them.
These are not as easy to measure as results or as easy to see as technical changes, but they are a fairer reflection of what the coach can do. A coach can't control players like they are a computer game. They can sow seeds, create a safe environment and hope they grow.
At the lower levels, we can measure this more easily. Do kids keep coming to cricket sessions you put on week after week, year after year? If they do, you can feel successful regardless of the results of your team's matches, or the technical perfection of your players (most kids don't care much about these things anyway).
The result is part of the process, not the end goal.
What do you think?
I've tried lots of different ways of feedback, and one of the most powerful ways I found is the feedback loop style shown above.
If I ask a bowler to bowl at a cone, they will consider it for a moment, then try to hit the cone. If they fail, they try again. More than likely after making a slight adjustment. The feedback is instant and easy to see.
I can see this working. Bowlers tend to get more accurate when bowling at a cone, with no other intervention.
The same is true for asking batsmen in nets to play the ball through a certain area.
I realise this is anecdotal, but research agrees. The controversial "10,000 hour rule" is a debated rule, but the research does show that instant, measurable feedback develops skill in most people.
Whatever your style of coaching, for me, communication is at it's best when you and the player can test-review-adjust and loop around again.
While I am sure this is not original, here's a drill we came up with this week to help batsmen experiment and adapt while also tracking performance.
Feel free to adapt it to your needs. here is what we did:
For the batsman in this session, we also said that he had to call and run on every ball rotated.
We also defined where counted as a boundary (straight and midwicket) to give him some focus on scoring areas.
The batter and I decided to build flexibility and adaptability into the game in two ways:
The reason for this is because we didn't want the drill to become too predictable or easy. If the player found a way to nail a boundary every time, I would mix up the feed or he could change the target area.
The other reason is to give the player space to adapt his game by setting his own taget areas. This chap, for example, is very strong on the reverse sweep and switch hit. This drill gives him room to experiment with playing the shots to different types of bowling and seeing the outcome as a number.
This, of course, means the end of session review is very important. What the player learned about game is more important than what I wanted them to discover. It's playing, but in a slightly more formal way.
Give it a go, it seemed to engage this player at least!
“...all you can do, like a farmer, is to create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”
We don't show corn the proper technique to grow. We plant it. We feed and water it. We get rid of the weeds that choke. We let time and nature do the rest.
I have realised that cricket is the same.
Give players the space and environment and let them grow.
There’s a few changes coming up here, and while I can’t talk about anything yet I am keen to hear from you if you like my stuff, coach or play cricket.
Please email me or get me on twitter for a proper badger chat about cricket and a couple of questions about what you like to see to help your coaching or playing.
If you do reach out, thanks for your time. I will make it useful!
One of the easiest ways to turn off enthusiasm is to use unhelpful language.
This occurred to me during the ECBCA Conference. There was a lot of practical stuff, but there was also tonnes of theory delivered quickly and often out of context. If I struggled to keep up with talk of “talent journeys” and the like, players will too.
In a conference context, this was not an error. But what would be an error would be taking the complex language and directly using it with the players we coach. I’m constantly checking myself to make sure that I don’t tip into words that are unclear with players.
Here are a few that I need to be careful around:
All these are useful words in the right context of course. But I am a professional communicator so I need to build a language that can be understood to develop players, not turn them off through confusion or worse, deliver a different message from intended.
”Pressure” is my favourite example because I use it all the time but really it’s unhelpful. Pressure is a feeling generated from the inside. We can manage that so it doesn’t change performance.
By shouting to a kid “10 to win from the last six balls, no pressure!” I am pushing the player to think pressure is caused by something external like tight cricket situations.
What I am trying to do now is not use the word pressure at all. I prefer “critical moment”. Which still makes sense to most people. Then I can build in questioning like “what do you do differently in critical moments to stay in control?”, or “How can you control how you feel?”. It creates a space to learn the difference between external pressure and internal pressure and deal with it.
I’m still learning this art but I am fascinated by it.
I was talking with a coach today about the style and structure of sessions and kept coming back to a net session I tried this week that worked well despite my lack of planning.
I was with a small group of 12-15 year olds. They are club level kids and some of them are challenging to work with. It's my long term mission to engage them fully.
So, with that in mind, I went into their session without a plan other than to ask them "what do you want to work on".
This might have backfired spectacularly, but in reality they outperformed my expectations and took us through a session that was fun, engaging and nothing to do with what I thought it would be!
Here's how it went.
Me: "So, what do you think we need to work on to be better by summer?"
Kids: "er. how about teamwork?"
Me: "Wow. OK! So how do we work on that when we only have nets to work in?
Kids: "um... *pause* running between the wickets?"
Me: "sounds fun! How do we make it a game?"
They then proceeded, to come up with a game where you had to run when you hit the ball in certain areas.
I added a bonus incentive, saying that if they called and ran as if it were in a game (yes and no, walking not running) I would do 20 press ups. But only if they whole team did it the whole session.
They were motivated, working hard and trying to make it a realistic outcome based game. All from a couple of questions and some constraints from me, then letting them get on with it.
They didnt quite make me do the press ups, but they almost did. I bet they will try even harder next time!
Fielding was improved for West in 2017 mainly with the introduction of three very good out fielders and a full time wicketkeeper into the side. This was as targeted, but we did make some chances to fielding measurement and preparation that are worth discussing in detail.
Here's what we found.
The targets for 2017 were:
These are based on last year's performance. And tracked every game, as per last year.
We also introduced a new standard called "Fielding Impact" (FI). This is a way of working out roughly how many runs the team lost and saved through fielding. We had no metrics for this, so it was a season of working out what was acceptable. More on that later.
Catching was improved vastly on last season with 70% of chances held: 74 balls went to hand and West clung on to 52 of them.
This broke down into 31 chances in close (slips, close catchers, wicketkeeper, and caught and bowled), 35 chances in the ring and 8 chances on the boundary:
It was pleasing to see that close and inner ring catching had a high catch percentage as we have never tracked these stats before. Infield catching was especially good with 74% held.
Boundary catches were more rare and more likely to be dropped. It's hard to know how much this is an issue because of the small number of chances on the rope. That said, it's worth looking at how we practice based on the information we see.
For the first time we were also able to breakdown catches by player.
15 players had at least one chance. the average chances per season for outfielders (excluding wicketkeepers) was 3.9 (for the two keepers used it was 11.5). The low number of chances, even for regulars shows how important it is to be able to take those chances when they come under pressure!
Individual success varied. Five players held every chance. Another two were above the 70% mark. Four more were above 60%. That's 11 of 15 who met the target for the season. Of course, these percentages are from low numbers, but you work with what you have.
Next year the target will be higher. Nevertheless, these are good signs of improvement. With this information we can tailor training to make sure players get better at holding chances in the right areas and get more over 70%. We can also target the guys who catch less than 60% at the moment and work on improving the numbers of the less effective guys this season.
For example, one player - a good fielder - dropped four from eight chances. Looking at his stats we can see he dropped two caught and bowled while his outfield catching was four from six (67%). We can see he needs more work on catching from his own bowling than catching in his favoured position at point.
One small thing to note here is we changed the way we measured a chance this year, grading them as either standard (G1) or world-class (G2). World-class drops were not counted to encourage players to go for them (and West got 4 absolute worldies this season as a result).
This was slightly different to last year where all drops were counted the same. However, we think this grading system is both fairer and more motivating for players. Even adjusting for last year's method, catches exceeded 60% and so there was improvement.
How did performance change over the season?
Catches and drops: dotted lines are the rolling average.
As you can see, catching was a little wobbly at the start, but settled into a much better ratio by the end of the year. We are constantly searching for consistency, but it does stand to reason that catch percentages will improve as volume of practice goes up.
The other key indicator of good fielding is ground work: stopping and throwing.
We wanted to measure this to give a benchmark. We had a broad idea from last year (less than five misfields). In 2017 we tracked it in more detail and by fielder as well as by team:
While there is a lot of interpretation about this, there are also clear moments that can be recorded. So we did.
In terms of raw performance, ground fielding looked like this as a team:
Number of ground fielding chances, split by stops and misfields
This chart is totals for the season across all fielding positions. It works out as 3 misfields per match, well below target.
Per player it looked like this:
Percentage of stops to misfields for the 9 fielders with several chances
We can see a sharp variation in the standards by fielders. The best fielder did not make a mistake in five chances, the worst had four misfields in six chances. A tiny dataset, but clearer that the feeling someone is "good" or not.
This allows us to see exactly who is fielding well and give far more specific coaching. So, the player who made three world-class stops but also had four misfields (in 14 chances) would have a different training plan to one who made eight good stops (but no world-class ones) in 10 chances.
We are also able to sift this by position (close, ring, boundary) to see even more granular ground fielding skills on show and further personalise training.
When it comes to run outs, there were very few chances across the season. There were 21 run out chances, nine resulted in either a run out or a close appeal for a run out: A 42% success rate. That is well above the 25% target so very pleasing.
Of course that number can be improved further with practice, but it is well on target and enough to put doubt in the mind of any opposition batsman trying a sharp single: His chances are close to fifty-fifty!
Also, a side point here here is how important focus is on fielding.
The average outfielder averages less than one fielding effort a match (keepers had 1.2). Even the out fielder with the most chances had 1.5 per match.
The opportunity to save runs is small individually but can make a huge difference on a team level (8.6 opportunities to save runs per game, leading to an average runs saved of around 17, enough to win most games.
Which brings us onto our grand fielding unification theory: Fielding Impact.
We brought these stats together into one number called Fielding Impact (FI). At a glance, it allows us to see how the team is doing and how individuals compare.
The idea of FI is to put a runs number on fielding.
Every fielding act had an impact on the score: Run out a batsman and you save runs he was likely to get. Drop him and you cost runs. This all feeds into one number.
We had no expectations on what was a good performance in FI, other than it is ideal to be in the positive (saved runs overall rather than cost runs).
On average, West's FI was 5.1 (runs saved per match)
On average opposition teams FI was -2.1 (runs cost per match).
However, the variation was great. West's best FI was 32 and the worst was -32. Opposition scores had simlair wide variance (24 to -28). Off the back of this, one aim may be to work on consistency of fielding. It should really gradually improve through the season as player's practice more. Here is the detailed breakdown by match:
Fielding Impact per match, rolling average is the dotted line.
Now we have a broad number, it opens up other such as what effect FI has on overall scores. This is hard to measure as fielding is only one part of a bowling performance, but we can look at some raw numbers.
There was no correlation between a better FI and a lower opposition score. Also, if you adjust each game to include the FI in the final scores, no games would have had a reversal in outcome. However, the margin of victory was larger in every case.
Catches may not have won West matches this year, but in closer run games, I can see how a game where 20 or 30 runs are saved will make the difference in 2018. We will see.
We also now know what standard we are at and work on improving team performances by tracking results next year. We can increase the team average FI target and get to work improving it.
The other benefit of FI is to inspire some competion between players. Here is the FI list for the main fielders:
You can see a huge difference in FI between fielders. It seems saving more than 50 runs is a good target, and keeping the number of errors to a minimum is also useful.
The overall FI of a good fielder seems to be more than 10, and this correlates to the guys who are considered the best fielders in the side just by general opinion.
It also seems that the less skilled fielders can probably still shoot for a positive FI, as only four fielders were in the negative.
Speaking of which, two of the fielders at the bottom of the table are generally considered excellent in the field. So, why are they low down and does this show FI up?
I think the system still works because it removes the emotions from fielding. Both numbers 8 and 11 in the list are brilliant; fast, athletic, good hands and strong arms. However, 8 missed two simple run outs and dropped two simple catches. 11 dropped four straight-forward catches so while he barelay made a mistake all year, those catches killed his score. Neither did anything world-class like a diving catch or direct hit run out with one stump to aim at.
Those simple outcomes (what happened, not what looks good) proved that looking good and doing it when it counts are different things.
To prove the point, two fielders who are not considered as good as 8 and 11 finished in the positive. One did not make an error all season.
This lead to the challenge this year of "proving" that FI is a good thing to track for the players. Most like the competition, but some found it easy to say "well, 11 is at the bottom and we all know he is a gun fielder, so that average must be flawed".
In fact, it's important we press home the stat merely reports outcomes in an easy to digest way. So if you see yourself at the bottom of the table, it's not the table at fault, you need to hold more catches and hit the stumps more often!
Like all stats, FI is just a tool by which you can plan tactics and practice, and for that we are very pleased to have it. It will continue in 2018.
There is no doubt West improved their fielding in 2017. Even by the simple stat of fewer drops and misfields the difference is clear.
This year we have had much more information to work with to poinpoint how to improve further. It seems we are on the right track, but will look at further improvements:
As always, the focus at West is never on using information to prove someone worthy or unworthy, but as grist for the mill to further development. In the Premier League we will need to make as few errors as possible, so now is the time to start tweaking skills upwards further and make FI even better in 2018.
In the second part of my review of the 2017 cricket season, batting is examined.
2017 was a dramatic improvement with the bat over the previous year, although there is still some work to do now promotion is secured.
Due to all the extra analysis, the work can be identified very specifically and we can look to add extra dimensions in the knowledge we will be up against stronger bowling attacks next year.
Let's go through it now.
Tactically, the aim was to bat first, build a total we knew we could bowl at and win with the ball. This worked in every game that we reached our goals.
Sadly, on the few occasions West chased, it looked far less convincing, winning two and losing two despite chasing low scores. More on that later.
At the start of the season we identified three scores as targets when batting first:
West went about this in a traditional manner, accelerating through the innings. Broadly the aim was to get 35 in the first 10, be on at least 90 by over 30, score 50 between overs 31-40 (predeath) and look to hit out in the last 10 if wickets were in hand. As you can see this worked well:
Average RpO at each 10 over phase
Every phase exceeded expectations except the death overs where performance was mixed. That is certainly an area of focus for next year.
The average score batting first was 211.
This was exactly according to plan. The highlights were 347 (admittedly against a very weak side), 260 and 270 against league opposition and 202 against a Premier side in the Scottish Cup. There was also an exceptional rain affected performance, getting 170 in 30 overs which the DLS told us was worth almost 200.
The only real lowlight was struggling to 135 against Heriot's in the Scottish Cup. Even though conditions were difficult and the bowling was exceptional, 173 was still a viable target.
This target setting worked well as a way of focusing the mind for players. It will be repeated next year, but the targets will need to go up as Premier League scores are generally higher.
West's chasing skills were less effective in 2017, although this was based on fewer games. If we include a preseason friendly against a local Premier League team, two matches were won and two were lost.
Clearly, it's hard to read much into such a small number of games, but the two losses chasing 166 and 141 are a concern when you consider West blazed past 200 several times batting first, and only got less than 170 once. The highest successful chase was 133.
Why did this happen?
And how can it be prevented?
The plan, as with setting a target, was to score in phases. The first 30 overs can be played exactly the same: Score 35 in the first 10, be at 90 by over 30. West know that 90-5 can reach past 200 if we stay calm and play the game. This happened in the one win, scoring at 32-2 (10) to 125-5 (30) setting up a win on a flat pitch.
In the other games things were not much different:
So the difference boils down to one or two wickets too many falling in the first 30 overs. The rate was fine (slightly better than strictly needed) but those extra couple of wickets show the difference.
In both those games we were one or two top batsman lighter than usual, but this does expose what happens when no one takes the game by the scruff of the neck as we did in other matches (Kelburne and GHK were examples of a collapse and recovery).
To prevent the chances of this in future, we are going to work on two things. First, make sure that we head into the last 20 overs with five or fewer wickets down. This will help build confidence.
Second - for those times when backs are against the wall - develop a "never say die" approach to chasing runs. West have the ability to keep up with the rate, even when wickets fall. The mentality of "keep going and we will get this" needs to be ingrained even in the face of climbing run rate and falling wickets.
Next year, scores will be higher with 170 the new 130, and 210+ a par score. That can only be done if the mindset is one of determined fight, even when times are tough.
It's worth examining how these runs were scored both setting and chasing.
West used 18 players with the bat in 2017. 13 faced more than 30 balls to be included as a "regular". 10 of those batted in the top seven which makes them a top order batsman. The others we will call the lower order (not in for their batting specifically).
Notably, one player from this started as a lower order batsman, did well and moved up to the top order, mostly at seven. He spent more games at six or seven than eight so we will count his runs as top order.
The top seven scored 92% of the runs - up from 72% last year - at an average of 24 per game. One batsman passed 400 run, three were in the 300 bracket (I'm counting one who got 290), and two passed 100.
This is a huge improvement on 2016, where the lower order had a much bigger role in recovering the team several times. This year they did not have as much of a chance, but it is a testament to those guys skills that one broke through as a batsman and another still managed to score over 100 runs in seven innings at 19.33.
For the record, that's 10 players breaking the 100 run mark.
We set the target of five more runs per batsman, and it was done. A great team effort.
One of the stated targets in 2017 was to improve strike rotation and get more runs from the same number of balls. The simplest measure is Scoring Ball Pecentage (SB%) which is the number of balls a run is scored from.
SB% was up on last year from 32% to 36%.
Breakdown of % of balls scored from
Even better, When an innings exceeded 36% SB% the average score rose to 236. When it dropped below the the mean, the score dipped to 196. This is still exceptional but highlights the importance of good strike rotation, and something else that can be maintained in a higher division with hard work in the winter.
For the first time, we also tracked how SB% changed over the innings. As you can see, it also tracked along with RpO:
Naturally, we wanted to see how much of SB% was caused by pure strike rotation skill of the batsman.
First we looked at Balls Rotated (a subset of SB% made up of non-boundary runs scored from shots like pushes, flicks, nudges and drop and runs). The average was 48 balls per innings (18%). This was compared to the oppositions 23 (11%).
Balls rotated per game, with a rolling average
In above average scores the average BR went up to 66, showing the benefit of rotating the strike on final score.
This was also examined per batsman. Here's how the top batsman did this year at rotating:
Breakdown of rotation, SB% and stolen single averages
You can also see in this table we have tracked "stolen runs". These are the classic drop and run, taking on the arm to get a second or other cheeky runs the opposition are not expecting.
These are the first time we have looked at these numbers, so we did not have any targets, but now we know the benchmarks, we can work to improving all batsmen's ability to turn dots into runs, and push average scores up.
We can also use these stats to show batsmen their style (more rotation or more hit out). From here we can get best practices from those who are better than others at hitting the gaps and running hard. It's a great skill and one that is not often measured and tried to improve.
It looks like SB% can be considered great over 35% and acceptable over 30%. Rotation is fine over 15% and stolen average is OK over 2.00.
This year, boundaries became more important. Last year it was all about strike rotation to boost scores, but looking at boundary numbers, it seems they have crept ahead in the priority list slightly.
West hit a boundary every 18.67 balls against seamers and 19.11 balls against spinners.
When the RpO was below the mean, there were an average of 11.33 boundaries (26.46 Balls per Boundary). When RpO was above the mean there were 23.25 boundaries (12.31 BpB). This clearly shows a difference to last year, when boundary numbers hardly changed and strike rotation was the biggest driver in getting higher scores.
Our guess is this is because of more boundary focused batsmen getting more runs this year. Three of the top order are much happier hitting the rope than pinching four singles. The other main batters (including the pro) strike a balance but can all hit a long ball as well as rotate with skill.
BpB and Runs per Scoring Shot give a picture of how much batsmen rely on boundaries to score.
This was an unexpected but welcome development. A balanced side presents a range of challenges to the fielding team. A couple of boundary hitters cause headlines, meanwhile the strike rotation guys can pick up more runs in the gaps left.
It seems a BpB of 12 or lower is a good target for most batsmen, however if the batsman is a "hitter" that number needs to be lower to account for fewer runs scored with rotation.
Moving forward, we will work on developing boundary options for all batsmen, especially in the death overs where West underperformed: Either more shots for the guys who already do it well, or better execution for the guys who prefer to rotate.
There's always a way if you ask "how do we make 17 BpB this year into 15 next year?" Two extra boundaries is 8-12 more runs and would put West in the top average score for Premier cricket!
Last year we started to look at Control % (C%) for the team as a way of predicting wins.
C% is a judgement on the batsman: did they play a shot under control or not. Beaten on the outside edge or nicking off is not in control, hitting a four over the bowlers head is usually in control! The most useful point was that if the team C% was above 77.7%, West won most games.
This year we expanded the metric to also include individual batsmen and what type of control we saw: on the ground, in the air, beaten and so on. This lead to an overall drop in C% for the team as we could track what was controlled more accurately.
The most notable point from this is that C% and RpO had an almost perfect correlation (batting first):
This is not a huge surprise: The more balls you control, the more likely you are to score runs. However, for it to track quite so closely is interesting. It shows us that luck is not as important as skill (in team run scoring at least).
We also noted that the old rule of 77% did not apply here. Partially because the overall C% dropped as we fine-tuned the metric, but mainly because West won all but one game batting first regardless of control.
C% for the year was 75.54% which did not track closely to wins.
Games were won with C% as low as 71% and lost with as high as 76%. You might think that these numbers depend on conditions, so we looked at comparing C% with the opposition. A higher C% than the opposition did correlate to a higher chance of winning, but it was not a guarantee.
Comparison of C% per game (red bars are lost matches)
C% is a good measure of consistency. The smaller the gap between the best and worst, the better the consistency of the team. West saw a difference of 14% between top and bottom C%. Opposition C% varied by 35%. Our sense is, on better wickets in the Premier League, this consistency has every chance to improve (and the opposition's will certainly not be as bad).
C% against different types of bowling is also useful to see how the team did against seam and spin bowling
As you can see, control was different between seam and spin. The ball was left more and the bat was beaten more against seam. The ball was hit more under control against spin but overall control (leaving the ball counts as in control) against both are good: 80.81% and 84.15%
We learned that the overall C% is useful, because it focuses the mind on playing with fewer errors. However, it is not a magic metric that reveals every secret about scoring runs and winning games. It's merely a guide that reveals more about your performed than the runs alone.
C% also allows you to see at a glance how well you are doing during the game.
If you are keeping up with the run rate but at a much lower C% than the opposition, you are still likely to lose unless you get lucky or turn that control around. For this reason, C% is updated live during West games to keep eyes locked on how well the batting is going.
A useful addition this year has been individual control stats for players:
The headline is as you would expect; more control means more runs for individual batsmen. We also found it a motivational metric for batsmen. We can see which batsmen stayed in control and built innings, which ones rode their luck with lower control and more runs, and which batsmen were unlucky, having good control but a lower average.
You can combine this by looking at what kind of control the batsman had. For example, if you are getting beaten a lot more than average and leaving the ball less (as one of the batsman above) you can look at why this is. Perhaps judgement of off stump needs work, for example. It's a strong way to further assess performance.
We are also able to look at C% of different shot types. As with the bowling, we had four shot categories and can see how well the team did:
C% for front and back foot shots
SB% for front and back foot: back foot is more productive by a significant amount
Strike Rate (balls per Wicket) of each shot type: back foot play is much safer.
The only surprise here is how much better West batsmen are off the back foot. With most balls played on the front foot, you might imagine back foot shots might not be as efficient. That was certainly the case with opposition batsmen who were much worse on the back foot. For West, when the ball was shorter, the batsmen played better.
One explanation of this could be the practice nets. They are fast, bouncy and good to practice off the back foot. In the past many have criticised the difference between indoor nets and Scottish wickets, but if the results of years of indoor practice on concrete makes a team of great back foot players then perhaps it's not so bad after all.
Division One opposition top bowlers are generally better than the batsmen, and bowling depth is better too. So, while West bowlers will take the headlines for not dropping a game, the batsmen should take some quiet applause for consistently putting a plan into action in difficult circumstances.
A couple of slip ups aside (and even those where more about wickets falling than intent to score) the batting consistently beat scoring targets, passing 173 seven times from 10 and never scoring less than the minimum aim of 130. In most cases this was done with confidence even in the face of wickets falling.
While chasing was more of a concern, the performances were almost there and with some more work over the winter on chasing, West batsmen will feel confident of going into any match with the skills to take down the best.
It may be a tougher season to be consistent with the bat in 2018 because of better bowling and confidence needing to be built that the team are able to compete, but getting over that hump will see this group of players become formidable in the next few season.
This is the first in a series looking at the 2017 season for McCrea West of Scotland. This section analyses the bowling performance.
There's no doubt that bowling is West's best skill set. Partially this is due to bowler friendly conditions, but the bowling unit is also well-established and balanced.
Tactically, West built on the good work of last year. The template was to open with real pace, turn to the spinners and bowl opposition out for a below par total. This worked a treat with West's opposition averaging 106 when chasing (143 batting first) and the game finishing inside 32 overs.
This was mainly caused by,
This broke down slightly differently than last year.
Fewer wickets fell in the first 10 overs, with an average score of 30-2. This was more than made up for in the following 20 overs, with opposition on 91-7 after 30 overs.
Here is the breakdown of runs and wickets by 10 over phase:
Average RpO for each 10 over stage.
% of balls scored (and dots bowled) by spinners and seamers.
Average wickets falling at each 10 over stage.
This was caused by six main bowlers: Four seamers took 67 wickets in 305 overs at 13.12. Two spinners took 40 wickets in 108 overs at 14.03 (under 15 is excellent).
Most wickets were out caught, as you can see below, although not as many as you might imagine. Bowled and LBW combined made up about the same number of dismissals, which reveals West bowlers are very good at sticking to the "bowl at the stumps" tactic:
We will look in more detail at how catches were taken in the fielding analysis.
The same two pace bowlers were used up front in the first 10 all season. Their performance last year was stellar, but in 2017 it was a touch more containing than wicket taking. Bowling average was 19.81 in the opening overs, which is higher than hoped because our main strike bowler took fewer wickets (7 at 24.14).
However, the containment stats speak for themselves:
With the aim to have an average below 15, DpO above 4.1 and C% below 71%, it was a start that kept the runs below 30.
Averages for overs 1-10 (DB% = Percentage of Dot Balls, C% = Batting Control Percentage)
This work was followed up in the next 20 overs with some outstanding bowling from a trio of bowlers.
The overseas fast bowler took 18 wickets in this phase averaging just over eight. He was kept honest by the left arm spinner who took 21 wickets at just over nine.
The other main bowler was a nippy medium pacer who had up and down form. However, he caused trouble bowling early (overs 11-20), when he averaged 12 in 21 overs bowled in this phase. His form later in the innings was less convincing, which we put down to losing a bit of confidence after a technical flaw crept in. We will work on this over the winter.
Despite less control over the run rate (RpO crept over 3), creating chances and taking wickets (74% of chances taken) in this phase of the game allowed West to control matches.
Overall the numbers were impressive, with the most dominant phase between 11-20 overs:
Overs 11-20
Averages for overs 11-20 (M1 Phase)
Overs 21-30
This dominant phase led into the "predeath" overs from 31-40, where West were almost always totally in control of the game by this point.
The dominance of this phase is overblown because so many wickets had usually fallen, but West's bowlers at this point did not release the pressure and the game was often over before the 41st over.
The same bowlers also did damage here, as did a new bowler, a leg spinner, in his first season. He took 9 wickets at an average of 9.22 with C% down at 62%. This was mostly against weaker batsmen, but nevertheless it was an outstanding return (beaten only by the left arm spinner who was even more astonishing, taking 9 wickets at 5.33 in the pre-death).
The leggie also showed he could do it earlier in the piece, taking 7 wickets at 12.14. His RpO was a little high but he also created a lot of chances, as you would expect from an wrist spinner.
At the end, West did not have many death overs to bowl: 35 all season. No one bowled more than 60 balls in the death all year, so it's hard to judge performance. The RpO of well under 5 shows it was a done deal in most games.
The final element is a breakdown of the types of shots that were played, and what we can learn about West's bowling.
This year, games included analysis of shot type for each bowler in four broad categories: Front and back foot defence, and front and back foot attack. The former is shots like the forward defence, back foot punch and flick off the legs. The latter is drives, cuts, sweeps and pulls.
This was an experiment to see if we could work out what kind of shots were most and least effective against West bowlers. It also shows (roughly) what kind of lengths each bowler bowled.
As you can see in the chart below, the most dismissals came from defensive shots on the front foot. There was a fairly even balance between bowled, caught and LBW. This is interesting because we generally assume catches will always be the largest by some margin, but West bowlers seem to be better at bowling at the stumps on a good length leading to three main dismissals:
Breakdown of what show was played to each dismsissal.
As expected, catches were more dominant in the other shots, especially when batsmen attack. It shows how important it is to bowl at the stumps to almost triple your chances of a wicket.
We can build on this by looking at the Strike Rate of each shot type. Remember the overall SR was 22.76:
The most likely form of dismissal is the back foot attacking shots (BFA), which are mostly played to bad balls (long hops). Bouncers are an exception and, while we did not record the number of bouncers bowled, there were not so many to account for this.
Individual SR, showing how bowlers differed in type of shot per dismissal.
The lesson here is that a bad ball can get a wicket too, and this season it did it very well!
A word of caution is that back foot attack shots were West's strength, second only to back foot defence in strike rate (39.80 and 58.50). Perhaps it reflects poorly on opposition batsmen's ability to hit long hops and short balls from the seamers on the ground; certainly an indicator that Premier League teams will not be so willing to waste the chance of a bad ball by getting out.
The SR certainly doesn't stop the opposition scoring from short balls, as the SB% for BFA is 56.44% and for front foot attacking shots (FFA) is 53.65%:
All this leads to an interesting tactical discussion: Clearly pitching the ball up at the stumps gets a lot of wickets at an excellent strike rate around 20. It's also clear that bowling shorter is not as effective for wicket taking when the batter defends. When they attack, a wicket falls every 13 balls! Can this be exploited? We will consider the possibilities over the winter.
It's handy to record bowling accuracy to compare it to the line and length figures we get from PitchVision. However, this was not done directly because I don't trust judgement of length from the edge of the boundary!
We did look at an alternative: counting a good ball as one that resulted in a dot from a FFD. Imperfect as it was, it seemed to be a good rough guide. However, the results it spat out did not correlate to other measures of bowling skill like RpO, SB% and C%, and we could not work out why. We gave up on the idea and instead present an overall set of stats that contribute clues to accuracy based on outcomes:
This season it did not matter much, as even the bottom bowler in the list had a decent season in every category. The top couple of places were interchangeable with four bowlers. Next year we may look at other ways to measure length and line stats. It's important to remember that the outcomes matter most, rather than if you hit your lengths (one tends to lead to the other anyway).
We can be sure of a few things:
With the ball, the season was so dominant it's hard to find lessons to learn.
Even against strong opposition, the bowling was superb, never going for more than 179 all year. Even against the might of Heriot's in the cup; West kept them to 3.3 per over and had them 9 down. Against weak opponents, the bowling was incredibly overpowered, bowling teams out for under 100 five times.
That said, West could do better upfront, as the main strike bowler was out of form (by his standards). We have already started the process of getting him back on track for next year.
The fourth seamer was inconsistent and he needs to work on a technical issue. He needs to improve to become more consistent and find a role in the team. The balance of the side could do with a third spinner who turns the ball in to right hand bats. There are a couple of potential recruitment options in the works there. But that is all still in the air for a while.
We also need to be mindful that overs 30-50 saw no real challenge to the bowlers all year. We can look to focus on bowling under pressure at this stage over the winter.
The realistic challenge over the winter is to impress on the core bowlers the need to maintain and improve good lengths with no loss of focus on pace and rip: They will get away with fewer bad balls.
It's a possible option to look at ways of taking wickets with shorter balls. Bouncers show some potential as the data has show a great strike rate when batsmen go for shorter balls. That is for discussion rather than a sure thing.
Nevertheless, the unit is a great combination of control, raw pace, big ripping spin and good seam movement. As it is right now, I am confident they will win matches next year.
“One thing we can’t argue about is this; trying your best always works.
If you put in full effort you will learn something, no matter what the practice. It’s all about your attitude. Go into practice with a focus on something you want to develop then try to develop it. Your efforts might fail, but as we know, failure is an essential part of the learning process. You can’t progress unless you have learned through failure. So get learning and get stuck in.
Ask yourself what the alternative is: To complain will get no nowhere. To put in low effort or leave the session is no help to you. Even your favourite pet practice needs a rest now and again.So, why not get stuck into the practice that is on instead? At least you give yourself a chance for success.”
I'm sitting on my sofa on a summer Saturday morning. There's no cricket today because the game was called off last night. This makes West champions of the WDCU Division One by default.
Despite feeling flat about such a rubbish way to win the league, we still won the league, and that's great work. Time for some reflections (even though there is a game to go).
I'll do a longer post on all the analysis and averages later, but it looks good!
The next challenge is the Premier League. I have already started planning what improvements we need to make over the winter to get up to scratch (including recruitment). Again, this will be another post in future.
As we stand - assuming the side is unchanged - I think we would finish mid table with some big scalps but also some heavy defeats. The good news is I think we can thrive in the Prem and develop into a league-challenging side within a couple seasons. It all rests on building a culture where players work hard, stick together and keep developing.
Well played West!
As the season progresses, I am keeping my eye on how we are doing against better sides to gauge how ready we are to play Premier League cricket.
We have played Premier opposition a few times this season and competed in most games despite results being mixed.
It's hard to gauge things exactly due to the nature of the matches: midweek T20 (four games), Scottish Cup (two games) and a preseason friendly mean no opposition was at full strength, but often neither were we. Nevertheless, here's what we have learned.
Overall, I feel we are in a strong position so far. We do not lean on any one player too much and all the key players are Premier League ready with both skills and confidence. The rest of the season is about continuing to develop those skills so we feel as ready as we can. If we do that we will go up as champions and stay in the top division easily.
West have played much better with the bat in 2017 than last summer. Average score is still about 200 (compared to 154 last year). And while that is overpriced due to a big score (346) and batting first in full length games, we are still clearly more confident with the bat.
I still think we are on for adding 25+ to the team average compared to last year because of this.
But there are still signs of the old team now and again.
In a high-emotional finish in the Scottish Cup, we lost by one wicket to, on paper, a strong Edinburgh side. It was close because we bowled and fielded brilliantly to almost defend 135, which we know we can do when we go well.
The batting was some of the old stuff though. We lost wickets regularly, unable to build partnerships, and went a little into our shells to try and dig out a total. We did face good bowling, but we also lost the strike rotation option, picking up only 5 quick singles (we average 15) and rotating only 10% of the balls we face (average is 19%). I'd estimate the loss of confidence cost us about 30 runs. And scoring 165 would have put us as favourites rather that at fifty/fifty of 135.
This was following on from last few games where SB% has dipped under 30%. (One of my goals for the season is to get SB% above 35%).
We still have intent to score more quickly, but a combination of factors has knocked confidence in this, which we need to address:
So while I am not worried too much about the dip in rotation, we do need to focus on staying confident and batting with intent. The way I see doing this is to work with the "hitters" to get them to push rotation up a little alongside maintaining their boundary rate. Also, I'd like to build the form of the rotators as getting them facing more balls will push up the overall average.
As I said at the end of last year, rotation is vital. It shows confidence and skill of a batting side, so I monitor it in detail.
It was a 307 run win on Saturday. The result was insane, getting 347 without trying very hard then bowling St Michael's out for 40. My question is this; what can we learn?
We did what was needed with focus and intensity despite being clear favourites from the first over (they didn't even bother with one slip).
Obviously bigger challenges lay before us.
But for now the key message for me is: 1. Don't get complacent, we have not "completed cricket" and 2. Use this time of form to strive for further improvements. Learn a new shot, practice your yorkers, work out how to turn a hundred into 150, practice playing under pressure when the score is 40-4, as it will be sometime in the future (although not for a while I am hoping).
In all honesty I won't have time to provide full reports on matches over the summer.
However I hope to drop a few notes in now and again as much as a way of processing my own thinking. Here's game one:
Celebrating a preseason win
The results of these games were just part of the process of getting back into cricket. We won won easily and lost the other badly, but with nothing at stake I stressed to the guys it was a chance to learn.
The overseas guys both came out of the games with things to work on. Not least the Aussie keeper learning how to keep his hands warm in Scottish spring conditions!
We learned we could make a positive intent work with the bat. We scored 133 in short time to win the first game, picking up runs quickly with no risks. We also scored 50 runs in eight overs against a very strong team on Sunday.
This did not pan out as well, with five first team batsmen failing to capitalise on the start. We still have a bit of work to do around staying confident when things go awry.
In the field, we fielded very well in both games. A couple of rusty errors aside, I am pleased to see almost no weaknesses in the fielding. The energy was good through the first game. It was harder to stay upbeat in the second game as the openers went about knocking the runs off with little ceremony. However, we kept pushing and a second string bowler took his chance to bowl with pace and knocking hard on the door of selection.
Our overseas pro also learned the right length to bowl in Scottish club cricket, which is not the same length as Sri Lankan first-class cricket!
Another learning point is how to make something happen when we are failing to do much in the field with plan A.
As solid and workmanlike as we were, we could not take a wicket and we got into a little rut of going through the motions. Everyone was still trying hard but you need a little magic or creativity or luck in those moments. We didn't strive for those things. We can learn to try something crazy now and again.
The first league game is on Saturday and training is well attended. I hope the weather holds.
PitchVision video analysis and ball tracking at West of Scotland Cricket Club indoor nets.
We kept up the training themes this week as attendance soared with the season starting on Saturday.
We moved through boundaries, into strike rotation and finally quick singles. I ran the nets, focusing on keeping players in "combat" mode by having one on one bowlers against batters. In a group of six in two nets, this works perfectly. It's short, sharp, focused and intense. No one is bowling for too long (four overs each with plenty of rest) and the batsmen only have 24 balls in which to achieve the outcome.
More important, the guys get into it with gusto. Even the players who "just want to hit balls" try their best to achieve the aim of the session, be it hitting every ball for four or taking three quick singles an over.
I'm hoping a big part of this is because they all get reminded every session that this is their session, not mine. They have control over how much effort they put in and how they deal with what I present. If you don't like it, I say every time, get together and change it. Nobody as all the drills and answers. Self-sufficiency is crucial to a good cricketer.
Batting scenario in cricket nets. Players enjoy the context rather than "just batting".
I have given over the outfield stuff, so far, to our new coaches. I have left them to it because I can't be everywhere at once, and I am getting feedback afterwards. They are reporting the themes are a handy way to stay on message but it give them freedoms to do what they want. I can see they both still need to learn some stuff, but don't we all? Broadly I'm happy we just need to hone the teamwork to get in a good rhythm. It does mean we have missed out on a couple of drills I wanted to do this week, including range hitting and tip and run stuff that only really works outdoors. But we are hitting most things most if the time and so I'm happy, as long as we keep striving to improve as a coaching team.
We have had a player train as a guest from another club: He lives locally and it's much easier for him to attend nets with us than his club in Edinburgh. He has reported that he is impressed with the amount of fielding work we do, which is exactly what I want to hear. I want us to go up a notch in the field this year and we have really hit it hard. It's a slight shame we have not had as many first team players come as regularly as I would hope, but that's club cricket. People commit as much as they can. It's my job to make training an appealing place to be!
Our overseas players are both in situ now. I have only seen one of them perform and it was an impressive display. More importantly, he seems to be a strong character. He works hard, doesn't complain, gives plenty of banter and always has a smile on his face. After last year, where I abdicated to the overseas player's lassaiz-fair approach, I am being slightly more active in offering my coaching, asking questions and building up a coach-player relationship with these key guys. It's early days yet, but we will see how it goes.
The boundary rope gets put out for West of Scotland CC's first game of cricket in 2017
Saturday and Sunday see the first warm up matches, so we can finally turn all this practice into actual cricket.
While this is friendly cricket and we are a couple of players off full strength, it is a big opportunity to,
"Instructing is: 'I know, let me tell you what to do'. Advising is: 'I know. Let me make a suggestion and leave the decision up to you'. In the modern day when people talk about empowering players and saying, 'Well you figure it out and do what you need to do', that's abdicating. "Coaching is a process where I help you find your own best answer for yourself through a process of questioning, testing your thinking, maybe giving you information and asking how you make sense of it. So I coach. Whereas most coaches today are actually instructors. They tell people what to do, when to practice, when to bat, for how long, where to bowl, etc."
I love this clarification. I know I have both instructed and abdicated thinking that it's coaching. I know many players think coaching is nothing but instruction. Hopefully we are changing that.
"As soon as there is a coach in place telling players what to do, it stops players having to think. For a lot of players that's quite alluring because you don't have to do the thinking, and if something goes wrong you have someone else to blame."
For all of us, disengaging the brain is easy and natural. You run on instinct. Humans are amazing at doing this because you can't live in a complex world without it. You have to work to stay engaged. As a coach, I need to work to keep people engaged.
"I will sit with the player and the analyst and ask, 'What is it that you want that will leave you prepared?'"
Like that. Because the alternative is to tell someone your amazing advice because you know it works every time.
Or do you?
"Players who have had an extended career will say anywhere between one and three out of 100 things that they have been told by an expert actually makes a point. So I know that if I give a player a piece of input, there is a 99 per cent chance it is going to be useless."
99%!
