Coaching Hard Work: Grit and Conscientiousness

We know training harder improves our success in cricket. This is another piece of evidence that psychology underpins our skill because attitude to work is a personality trait.

Another word for this is “conscientiousness”, which is one of the Big Five personality traits in psychological theory. Conscientiousness is the only one of the five traits that predicts improved performance in sport. This makes logical sense. Conscientious people strive for achievement, are self-organised, disciplined, productive, and tend to engage in deliberate practice more often. Those low in conscientiousness show less motivation to work and are less organised. We can easily see how personality - displayed as behaviours like training harder and more deliberately - has an impact on skill levels in the long term.

The next question, then, is how do coaches help players improve conscientiousness?

One popular theory uses a different word; grit.

Grit and conscientiousness

Grit has become a popular term due to research by Angela Duckworth into the trait, and its effect on school performance in children. She discovered grit better predicts success than IQ. Although there is much academic debate about the differences between terms like grit, conscientiousness and perseverance, as coaches were are just concerned with helping players display these helpful behaviours. We want players to stick with their cricket goals over the long term, often in the face of difficulties because we know it makes a difference. For this reason, I’ll use grit and conscientiousness interchangeably.

Grit is a personality trait, so some people are more naturally inclined to it. However, it does change over time. People in their 30s tend to be more conscientious than teenagers for example. This shows the trait is flexible. We can coach more grit into players, especially those who are still developing.

Coaching grit

Players can learn more grit like they can learn to bowl an away swinger or hit a cover drive. However, it is much more difficult because the results can’t be seen easily, or even guaranteed to work.

Nevertheless, there are several ways we can build an environment that allows determination to flourish. Much of it we have already discussed:

• Focus on behaviours as performance.

• Encourage a growth mindset.

• Challenge players to improve, and support them when they need it.

Tied to this are some additional practical solutions for players who are low in conscientiousness.

We all know the type; they say they want to work hard but their behaviours don’t match their statements. Chances are they are low in grit - possibly born that way - but the following techniques can develop more helpful behaviour in even the most tardy and slovenly!

Make a plan

The first solution is to have a plan. This sounds straightforward, but it’s tough for everyone and even tougher for those not inclined to planning. Coaches help with this process. We can establish motivations and agree expectations with players. We can also help enforce these behaviours with the Rule of Three. These are simple and effective measures.

Often this does not work efficiently because we are fighting ingrained habits so it could take more work for the players. Of course, those low in grit are also the least likely to work a more systematic programme of habit change, so this is not easy. Most players who struggle to maintain helpful behaviours are happy to admit they need to change. We can easily find this out by asking questions like,

• Do you make decisions that you regret?

• Do you want to do something to help your game but never seem to get to it?

• Is your current plan failing?

• Do you feel unsatisfied or anxious about your plan failing?

If the player wants to solve these kind of problems - and most do - then the most common response is to use willpower to break the bad habit. Despite overwhelming evidence, many people think they can tough it out. They will assure you they just need to try harder, or blame something out of their control. This time, they say to themselves (and anyone else), things will be different.

In fact, players in this position need to accept the only way out is to make a realistic plan. A plan that doesn’t rely on willpower. If we can convince players this is true, we can help them by asking them to,

• Make a list of everything on their mind

• Decide about each item; is it actionable or otherwise?

• If there’s no action needed, put it away or throw it away.

• If there is action needed, decide the next physical action.

• Keep those actions in a list.

• Check the list and do the actions regularly.

This is a simplified version of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system of planning and managing plans. I highly recommend it for players (and coaches) low in grit. It provides a clear, rules-based system to put a plan into action. And those people who are not naturally conscientious need rules. While you can apply GTD to your whole life - as author David Allen recommends - some find they only need it for their cricket. Either way, it helps to go through this process with someone supportive, like a coach. If for no other reason than it is more likely to build a helpful habit.

The second solution to low grit is an extension of the first: Now we have a to do list, we can also use a calendar. A calendar is really just another list, only this one is based on time. Making sure games and training are down on paper (or in a phone) helps significantly because it creates a firmer commitment that is harder to forget.

Calendars also lock down other useful habits: The gym, doing daily drills, even doing food shopping and prep, which leads to healthier eating. Combining set times for these things with a habit tracker is very useful. It might all seem like a lot of work planning, writing and being beholden to external calendars, but for those low in grit, we could easily argue about how the alternative has failed so far. Why wouldn’t you try?

The brotherhood

The final way to boost grit is to use support. Even the most introverted person needs help from and connection with, others, especially if a positive change is to be established. That means, as coaches, we can have a role in helping players admit they need a plan, come up with one and stick to it. This might be;

• Directly by becoming a sounding board. There is great power in simply listening.

• Indirectly by finding someone neutral to speak to. A disinterested third party is helpful because players can admit things they might be nervous saying to the coach.

However, many players still struggle with seeking support because it’s weak minded or embarrassing to “admit fault”: A thinking trap, of course, but one that seems very real to a player with low conscientiousness.

With players at this stage, it’s best to reframe emotional support as “brotherhood”. This has parallels with the military, which helps players realise support is a crucial tool. It also allows those with grit in the team to develop those without it. The brotherhood understand each other’s challenges and focus on,

• Clearly defined expectations.

• Accountability for each others actions.

• Behaviours not value judgements.

The brotherhood have a robust review system. The brotherhood use the Rule of Three to say “that’s not how we do things” in a non-judgemental way. For a player lacking grit, and wanting to change, this culture is a powerful motivator: Especially when combined with a practical plan and calendar.

The negative side of grit

If the above techniques help the players we coach become more conscientious, we will see more effective cricketers. However, there are down sides to applying grit in a cricket team. In general, the more grit player have, the more they are likely to be,

• Risk adverse. Conscientious cricketers work hard to a clear plan. They try to minimise risks. Often this is an incredibly successful strategy, especially for batsmen. However it can have a negative side, as adaptability in the moment becomes more difficult.

• Perfectionist. The obvious end point for hard work is perfection. We know this is impossible, yet many players don’t enjoy their successes because they are so focused on the things they did wrong. They end up chasing an impossible perfection which could increase anxiety and reduce performance.

• Low in creativity. Don’t ask player with a lot of grit to come up with something different in the moment. A medium pace bowler who relies on swing and seam will likely be reluctant to try a bouncer unless they have practiced it for hours to perfection.

Of course, these are extremes. It would be foolish to suggest players fit into such neat categories. Nevertheless, understanding how conscientious people think generally helps us to understand behaviours, and influence change where appropriate.

Summary

Conscientiousness is a personality trait linked to success in sport. It’s trainable and can increase or decrease over time. Sometimes this is referred to as grit.

Coaching grit is simple but not easy because players need to admit they need to improve. If they do so, players who need more grit can benefit from:

1. A clear plan with clearly defined rules.

2. A calendar.

3. A “brotherhood” or other support system.

Coaching Better Decison-Making in Cricket

Cricket has traditionally not been good at coaching independent decision making in players. Yet, as we have seen already, it’s a crucial part of the game for both mental skills and skill development. This section will offer a few ways to help coaches help players improve their decisions.

The traditional “command and control” style of coaching influences players to do what they are told rather than develop their own decision-making skills. The alternative is to embed decisions in as much of our training environment as possible, seeing the skill as another psychological underpinning.

With that rationale in mind, let’s look at the key level of decisions a cricketer has to make, and decide how to integrate such skills into cricket training.

Decision layers

Before we get into specifics, it’s worth taking a moment to regard the theory around decisions. This is a rich and well studied field and worth investigating yourself, especially the book The Chimp Paradox

To give a crude summary, cognitive research has found we make decisions in two ways: Fast and slow. Fast thinking is instinctive and takes less mental work, happening in the moment. It’s also prone to errors and bias as it takes so many shortcuts in the quest for instant delivery. Slow thinking is more rational and requires much more mental effort. As a result it makes fewer errors but takes much longer.

Both are essential. Fast thinking, for example, is needed for shot selection. Slow thinking can be used when deciding tactics like which ball to bowl to dismiss a certain batsman on a certain pitch.

Both are trainable, which is what we will look at in the following categories of decisions.

Cricket skill decisions

The most common decision making is skill based: What shot to play, what ball to bowl, which end to throw to, and so on. I would argue every ball in a cricket match contains multiple decisions. In addition, these decisions are taken by a mixture of fast and slow thinking. If that’s true, as coaches we need to ensure there are as many decisions being made by players in training, and those decisions are reflected upon regularly.

I often ask myself when designing a practice or session, “what decisions am I asking the players to make?” and if the answer is “nothing” then I rethink. For example, hitting a ball off a tee can be replaced by hitting a throw down.

This is where a constraints-led approach (CLA) approach to coaching is useful. One of the core ideas in CLA is the the game is a “dynamic system”. The game environment is constantly changing at multiple levels: Runs and wickets most obviously. We can drill down further to conditions, opposition (and our own) fatigue, confidence and motivation, the type of bowler, the style of batsman, and down further to perception of how the ball is moving (bowler to batsman, batsman to fielder, fielder to fielder or stumps).

If CLA - and the mantra of practice makes perfect - is right, the more players experience decision-making and “repetition without repetition” the more skilled they will become. This makes sense because we know fast decisions in a match require fast thinking, a function of our instinctive mind. We can’t use slow thinking to choose a shot as the ball goes past before we have decided. So instead, we force our fast thinking mind to learn what to do by making it do the work.

The implication for practice then, is to build our sessions around as many fast decisions as possible that are suitable for the level of players we coach, and critical outcomes. Batsmen will train up their decision-making far faster in middle practice, for example, than nets. Nets are faster than throw downs. Throw-downs are faster than static drills. Each rep is a way of checking how effective our decisions are, and training our decision making.

You’ll note the word “faster” was used rather than “better”. Speed of thinking is helpful when we get a decision that takes us closer to our critical outcome. However, a fast decision is not always better. It can go wrong if our instincts betray us.

A simple example is playing a short ball. If we follow instinct we have three possible reactions: We can fight and try and hit the ball, we can run away from it or we can freeze and do nothing. All are normal human instincts and whichever one emerges naturally when facing fast, short bowling is the fast brain doing its thing before the slow brain has time to argue. Naturally, fighting or dodging is a more effective response than freezing, but even fighting can lead to our demise at the hands of deep square leg.

In the short ball example, then, we can train player instincts by guiding them to learn how to respond with either attack or defence. Once this need is identified (say the batsman freezes and gets hit as their instinct response), we can work on decisions through the lens of technical drills with softer balls, then progress through faster feeds, more decisions (full or short ball) and harder balls as the player finds success. As we go through this process of removing constraints and adding decisions we are training the fast brain to understand the safest response is not, as it thought, to freeze. Instead it can either decide to smash it or duck it.

While this is one example, the wider point is simple; we can’t outthink fast thinking. As coaches we can coach player’s fast brains a more useful way, and use constraints to build up a new response. This works because of the way our brains work. A good read on this is The Talent Code, which explains how our brains are pliable to change - literally improving the strength and sped of connections in the physical brain - through deliberate training.

Timothy Gallwey, author of The Inner Game of Tennis, goes even further, saying trusting the power of instincts allows experienced players to quiet the mind. By relaxing into the feel of the motion, and observing the environment, we don’t overthink things. We no longer have frustrations about form. There is certainly merit in this approach of “letting the serve serve itself”. That’s the fast mind doing its thing without the slow mind in the way.

That said, there is still a role for slow thinking in skill decisions. While slow thinking can’t be applied live, it can be applied in natural breaks in play using a fast review. As we have already discussed, a fast review may only take 10 seconds but is plenty of time to allow players to switch from fast thinking to slow thinking. The benefit of slowing down is as we might imagine; it’s much harder to make assumptions when we are forcing ourselves to really think about a problem. If we stick with the shortcut-taking autopilot of fast thinking, we risk “going through the motions”. While this might be the right thing to do - sticking with a tried and tested Plan A because it will eventually come off - it can also blind us to opportunities to do something different and more helpful. Knowing when to stick and when to change tactical plans is a skill that requires slow thinking. So review often, even if the final decision is to stick. Then, get back to the fast thinking in the moment.

Behaviour decisions

As we already know, skills are built on behaviours. These behaviours are also subject to decisions at fast and slow levels. When we choose to act in a certain way we are using slow thinking. When we behave “without thinking” we are really using fast thinking. Both are possible.

I’m sure we can come up with dozens of examples of how both kinds of thinking are helpful and unhelpful. If we spend too much time slow thinking at training we get less practice done. But some slow thinking is useful to be mindful of our state and decide our success markers. If we purely use instincts to train and play we don’t learn from mistakes and are not self-aware until it’s too late. Yet, when we are running on helpful instincts, we play beautifully.

So, the trick is to find a balance in our decisions. Use the incredible speed of fast thinking and the more considered slow thinking. For example, a helpful behaviour is to go to the gym twice a week on top of cricket training. If players went to they gym out of fast thinking habit they don’t need much slow thinking beyond the occasional review of progress. However, fast thinking is failing if players want to go to the gym but rarely show up. Here, some slow thinking to adjust either the goal or the commitment is needed.

One could argue, from a positive psychology perspective, the ideal balance is flow: Being in the moment but also self-aware enough to adjust when needed. Flow is a delicate dance between fast and slow thinking. Flow is always available to players if they develop the ability to avoid thinking traps. While we know external factors can easily disrupt flow, the state is much more likely to happen if we have built an effective, safe and challenging environment. This environment is built particularly in both the Rule of Three and the fast review.

Additionally, behavioural decisions are not just on an individual level. We also act as a team, combining individual efforts to score runs and take wickets. Team culture is defined by our behaviour decisions in the moment, so we need to be clear on both our skill-based roles and tactics, and the cultural behaviours about “how we are” as a team.

This takes us back to the work we did about defining and enforcing purpose and principles. Players must be clear on both what they agreed to do while in the shirt, and why they agreed to do it. Then, they must enforce these behaviours relentlessly with themselves and each other. It’s in this enforcement that team spirit is built up, as players realise they will not allow each other to stray too far from the team path. Setting up this behaviour is a role of slow thinking. Being aware in the moment of how ourselves and others are acting is a function of fast thinking.

The most helpful outcome is to have a team who act instinctively in agreed ways, and also support each other when instincts fail. In other words, a strong embedded culture, or team spirit, can be “in flow” as well.

Summary

Decision-making is another plank in effective cricket in both skill execution and behaviours. Coaching can both hurt and help the decision-making process:

• Decisions can come quickly or slowly, both can be prone to error and both can be coached to be more effective.
• Coaching both fast and slow thinking is crucial, this is best achieved through athlete-centred coaching tools like Fast Review and the Rule of Three.
• Effective decision making is a combination of fast and slow thinking. Sometimes this is called flow.
• Removing decision making from the coaching environment (such as by telling players what to do) makes it difficult for players to know how to make helpful decisions in games.

Using Coaching to Build Resilient Cricketers

If we agree psychology underpins performance through behaviour, resilience is embedded in everything we do as coaches. As humans we need failure and adversity to grow. If we treat stress and resilience as something that everyone experiences, we can sharpen the tool.

Our players can use resilient actions to flourish, even from a young age.

As we know, resilience is built on awareness. It’s the ability to bounce back from failure, or behave helpfully in adverse or high stress situations. Clearly this is useful in a cricket context where failure happens all the time and success and failure are separated by small margins.

We all experience these moments, and we all have thoughts and feelings about them. This gives us all the chance to be resilient in our actions as a result. However, it also gives us a chance to slip back to red head thinking and unhelpful actions.

Two players might go into a big final, one feeling incredible pressure, one as cool as a cucumber. They are both self-aware. Each one can react with blue head thinking, avoid red head thinking and appearing incredibly resilient even as the team has a batting collapse around them. Equally, either can slip into thinking traps and end up behaving in harmful ways to the team, like playing a high risk shot.

Either way, as coaches, we can build an environment that helps our players be aware of their state and react in an resilient manner.

Challenge environment

A challenge environment is one where players are both challenged to improve, and supported in their efforts. If you are old school you might say “an iron fist in a silk glove”. It’s this combination that leads to resilience.

Lets say you are running a testing session where you racked up the difficulty and put more meaning on the outcome. The classic “pressure net” is saying “out means out”, but there are many ways to do this.

Another example is the “hunger games nets”. I played this recently with a squad who wanted to put their run scoring under pressure. The idea was bowlers who bowled two wides were eliminated and batsmen who faced three dots were eliminated. It lead to unfair results with one batsman surviving for a long time and one player not getting a bat.

A lot of coaches leave it there, letting the activity do the work. However, this is not enough in itself because players get caught in thinking traps.

Classically they will blame others, find excuses about “wasting” time or consider it unfair someone else got a longer bat. They are focused on ways of avoiding looking at their own red head mindset.

Coaching resilience

To combat this we use three methods.

First, we agree behaviours before the nets start. Resilience emerges from awareness of the feelings and physical reactions that come when anxious and when treated unfairly with no recourse. To manage this, players can agree success markers. For example, use their blue head reset every time and make sure to review effectively.

Second, the Rule of Three (R3) is used to relentlessly apply those markers. If a player is huffing about something they have agreed to manage, their team mates are the first reminder. The coach is the second reminder. This supportive part is often missed when applying extra pressure to practice. The goal is to agree outcomes then enforce them when players forget or get caught in a thinking trap.

When stopping a player in a moment like this, your first question is always to ask what the goal is and what’s happening (“why am I stopping you at this moment?”). The player will ideally remember the agreement and reset. However, if you start hearing excuses, justifications, blaming or any other overthinking, you can follow up with a question to reframe their thinking,

• What’s the worst that can happen?

Sometimes you will need to dig deeper, asking “then what?” after a surface fear covers up the real trap. However with the biggest fear stated, often players will realise its not that bad after all. They find themselves back in blue head as they relax and return to the moment.

If they need more help to get back to blue, you can follow up with a reframing question:

• Is there another way to view the situation?

This question encourages problem solving rather than excuses or justifications. It’s not positive for the sake of it, but it is supportive in trying to help a player react helpfully to disappointment after failure and focus on what to do next to reduce the risk next time.

As coach, we can also use R3 to break state in other ways. Questions with a serious tone work well, but so does humour. It’s hard to be angry or upset when someone is making light of a situation. If someone is laughing, or rolling their eyes, or bantering, they can’t be in a down state. There’s no harm in showing people they are not their feelings by changing how they feel in a second with a stupid joke. As long as you follow up with helpful reminders.

It’s worth noting that all these techniques can also be peer managed. The Rule of Two gives space for team mates to help each other. This is powerful because it engages with players direct need for connection. It feels good to be useful to another person, it feels good to be a valuable contributor to team spirit. By learning about state and helping others understand their state in the moment players can contribute directly to the team without scoring a run or taking a wicket.

Although players know this, it’s often the case they are caught up in their own game to notice the state of others. Becoming more connected is a process too. As coaches we can remind players they have the tools to build each other up. Ideally, this will start to happen without our intervention as players see and feel the benefits, but for a while you’ll need the third level of R3 as a reminder.

Resilience reviews

The final tool is effective reviews, which we have discussed here. The review allows players to dig deep into their thinking after a testing session or match. During an extended review players can be prompted by the coach to consider the “stop, start, continue” about their thinking as well as their actions.

For example, consider a player who gets angry about getting out. By throwing the bat and shouting in the dressing room they are displaying frustration not resilience. But where is this coming from? Are they blaming the umpire? Do they assume their place in the side is at stake? Are they frustrated the side is likely to lose? Getting to the root of the issue can be tricky but some probing around the review questions is helpful.

It starts with the player admitting they want to stop getting angry about getting out. This opens the door to follow up and ask why:

• Why do you feel like that in the moment?

• Is there an alternative reaction and what is it?

As coach, you can use the PACE method to help this player to stop looking at the issue as catastrophic proof of failure of their worth as a human being (a common thinking trap) and see it as what it really is; a game. A game where we can have goals and improve ourselves, but not one that defines our existence by the outcome, especially as we have very little control over so many factors; conditions, opposition strength, umpiring quality, luck and so on.

With this stoic awareness as the base, next make concrete actions to take. For the player caught up in anger, taking a moment in the dressing room to take those three blue head breaths and make a reframing statement like “I know what I need to do to prevent this happening, but for now the best thing is to support the batsmen still fighting for us”. Then, let the anger slip away and walk out to your team mates on the balcony committed to being the best supporter who ever lived. Isn’t that a more helpful choice than stewing alone on the other side of the outfield for an hour?

Although this is one example of choosing resilient behaviour, we can apply it across the board to any red head thinking. This includes the resilience review when you are successful. A player is not resilient because they took five wickets and the team won. Players might still be engaged in thinking traps after success. Reviews are just as valid and useful in these moments too. It’s important players feel able to discuss their thinking, regular reviewing in all circumstances allows for this to happen.

Summary

Resilience is not another box to tick, its part of the underpinning of cricket skills and tactics. We all have built in resilience but we can all learn to become aware of it and display more resilient behaviour. This is done by,

1. Having a supportive yet challenging environment, built around the Rule of Three.

2. Having regular reviews that allow players to discuss their thinking and understand what to do.

3. Remembering that thoughts and feeling do not dictate actions, and we can decide to be exceptional in behaviours in any circumstance.

Speaking of decisions, this is an area we have discussed a great deal in passing so far. As we know, this has traditionally not had much attention in coaching. It’s clear that we need to make sense of coaching decision-making next.

Running Effective Cricket Coaching Sessions

Contrary to the belief of many, effective coaching needs more than knowledge and experience in the game.

As coaches, we need a framework to build our expertise around. We began this framework by talking about performance as behaviours. This article continues to build that structure around skill development. We do this by building “performance environments”. More on what that means later.

First, good performance starts with something counter-intuitive: mindset.

Doing your best

We already know how difficult it is to coach players who don’t want to learn. The flip side is “coachable” players. They are a joy. They listen, they work hard, and they they are prepared to try new things. The result of these behaviours is faster skill development.

In short, coachable players try to do their best.

The good news for us as coaches is “doing your best” is an acheivable aim for everyone. It has no reliance on genetic talent, age, social class, gender or skin colour. It is a universal human ability.

This natural ability has been called the growth mindset.

(There’s a brilliant research-based book on the growth concept by Carol Dweck that is worth the further reading.)

Warriors and Corinthians

This mindset is not as common as it could be in cricket because of the way the game has grown up. “Trying” is often seen as negative. Cricket came up in a time when trying too hard was unsporting.

This has led in modern times to two attitudes to cricket. You will see both in your sessions. On one hand are the Warriors: performance-focused players where growth and effort is valued highly. On the other hand are the Corinthians: enjoyment and playing for fun has a much higher value. Effort has less worth, innate talent has more worth.

Neither are objectively wrong. It’s just a different view.

It’s also true that both mindsets are willing and able to win matches. Everyone is competitive and wants to win games. Both mindsets can achieve success in results. That’s because mindset and ability are unrelated. Talented players can be motivated more by leisure than development, just as total novices can be motivated by growth.

However, as we know, coaches have the greater impact on the coachable and they are growth-focused. They are Warriors. Our ideal is to coach growth mindset Warriors.

Where possible this means influencing Corinthians in your team to switch focus to Warriors. This is perfectly possible as it’s a mindset not an immutable characteristic. We can change it if we want. The fastest and most effective way to do this is by agreeing expectations of commitment and focus on constant improvement.

Your language as a coach is also important to influence people. Avoid praising outcomes or talking about talent. Instead, praise behaviours based in effort, trying new things, not giving up and players stretching themselves. Back this language up with clear expectations. Many players respond to this.

When we can’t influence a mindset change, we can ask the Corinthians to fill a different role: Support to the Warriors. Agree behaviours they can achieve that are helpful. This could be deep involvement as Rule of Two enforcers. It could as simple as assisting at training by throwing with the Sidearm to Warrior batsmen.

Agree it and apply it relentlessly as you would any other behaviour.

Then you can get to work with the Warriors.

Of course, it’s still not easy.

Not even the best Warrior does their best all the time. It’s hard work. It takes being in the moment and supreme self-awareness. It requires us to truly accept the counter-intuitive idea of failure as an essential part of learning. But as long as we all agree that a Warrior mindset as the aim, we can be vigilant and relentless in holding each other accountable.

Let’s take a look at how a training session looks based on this.

Effective environments

The buzz word around teams at the moment is “environment”. I quite like it as a term as it has a deeper meaning than practice drills, nets or training; although it is those things too. It encompasses everything about how you train and what you work on.

Environments shape skill development. As we have seen, an effective environment is built on a Warrior mindset but what do you actually do in a session to make the most of this mindset?

Here’s what I think.

Environments are most effective when we focus on one thing at a time. Each session or game must start with defining this outcome.

There are many names for it: OAT (one awesome thing), learning outcome, critical outcome, theme or goal. Call it anything you like, as long as everyone knows what you are striving to achieve.

It’s important to be one thing because if players try to focus on multiple areas at once they end up recalling nothing. As coaches we become frustrated. We get into this strange loop where we tell a player something, they achieve some success at first, then are unable to recreate it later. We say “I have told you this!” And they just can’t remember. Multiple goals are a distraction and a frustration.

Stick to eating your OAT, even when you are tempted to go off on a tangent. Nail one thing before moving on.

The outcome can be any skill, tactic or behaviour. However, the crucial part is players must agree the behaviours that will lead to a successful outcome. Guide the players agree this through questioning. The best question you can ask to start this process is,

• What does success in this outcome look like?

(Or flip it round if it’s easier and ask “what is unacceptable when trying to achieve this outcome?”)

With this question as a guide, you can set minimum acceptable standards for the session.

For example, lets say the goal is to learn to rotate the strike as the players are nowhere near the required standard, facing too many dots in game situations. To the players, success might mean playing with intent to score from more balls, hitting the ball into undefended areas or between fielders, and playing the spinners off the back foot more often. They might also say unacceptable behaviours are defending balls, staying on the crease against spinners and hitting the ball into highly defended areas against movement of the ball.

As with the cultural non-negotiable standards, these standards work best when they are limited to between one and three, specific, measurable and achievable. We want to be able to tell quickly if the standards are being upheld, so we minimise the stuff that is open to interpretation.

A final bonus is to define what might happen if we were to be exceptional in our behaviours around the outcome.

These goals are our “stretch goals” and are tougher to achieve than the minimum standard. You have to have success in the minimums before moving up. Going back to to our strike rotation example, players might say exceptional behaviours are coming down the pitch to spinners, experimenting with new shots to hit target areas or hitting safely into the movement of the ball. The team you coach may have different answers.

From here, you can build a practice or game around these clear aims. Everyone knows what they have agreed to do and why they are doing it.

I usually put these acceptable and exceptional goals in writing on a whiteboard or in another clearly visible way. It helps players remember their aims as they train.

Rule of Three

As we work through the session with our standards as a touch point we can use the Rule of Three to hold everyone accountable to their agreement.

The first part of this is asking,

• “How long can you maintain the minimum standard?”

The answer will dictate how much rope players give themselves to self-correct before you intervene. So, our strike rotators might agree you will wait five balls before intervening on an unacceptable behaviour like defending the ball.

Of course, this is the third part of the Rule of Three (R3), which we have covered. However, there is one key addition.

When working on technical and tactical problems, the power in R3 can be reversed:

1. The player recognises an issue and solves it themselves.

2. The player recognises an issue, but is unable to solve it so they turn to team-mates for assistance.

3. The player and team-mates combined are unable to solve the issue and ask the coach for assistance.

This is the ideal, but again it takes some work from the players to get into the habit of self-awareness and humility to ask for help. Most cricketers have gone through the game with people telling them what to do all the time. This method requires the player to recognise an issue themselves, work to resolve it unaided then ask for help if they can’t. That’s much harder to do, so be patient here. It’s worth it when they start to get it.

While they are learning to do this consistently, we still have our time constraint in place: If the issue is not recognised by player or team-mates in the agreed time, we will step in with the usual “Why have we stopped?” question.

Practice types

So far we have been focusing on behaviours - even in a skill context - for quite a while without mentioning a drill or net practice. Drills, games, techniques and tactics are where we live as coaches. But by now I hope I have convinced you that behaviours are what matter first.

The “why” and “how” defines what we do. Nevertheless, we still need those drills, practices and activities. So let’s assume we are starting to put the framework in place and have purpose, principles, expectations and behaviours agreed.

What do we actually do?

It’s hard to be prescriptive here because there are so many options and these options will be based on the unique needs of the players you coach. However, when deciding what to do at your sessions, there are some general principles.

First, practice fits into one of three categories:

• Learning. Developing a skill that has not been mastered.

• Testing. Putting an existing skill under match conditions to see if it stands up. This also includes actual games.

• Habituation. Trying to improve an existing skill outside of match conditions.

The category will determine the type of training to a large extent. If you are learning skills you spend more time on being able to do the basics. There tend to be more drills and nets. If you are testing them you find ways to add stress. The activities tend to be more game-based.

Habituation is the most common and the least useful. Think hitting half-volleys on the bowling machine as a classic example. It seems like it’s helping because it feels good but it lacks both skill development and testing under match conditions. As coaches we should be very careful about helping players habituate mindlessly. While it does have some useful applications such as “blowing away the cobwebs” after a long lay off or adapting to different conditions, it’s often used as the default and is done without focus or commitment to outcomes. Tred carefully and question a great deal.

Second, I strongly recommend building activity broadly around the constraints-led approach (CLA). Cricket suits this theoretical approach because all training is naturally constrained anyway. Think about a typical net session and you will see some of the principles at work:

• Perception-action coupling (PAC) as the batsman responds to the bowler, and bowler to the batsman.

• A constrained environment with netting or sports halls decreasing dimensions, shorter time scales and adapted rules.

• A requirement to use movement variability be adaptable to different styles of bowling or batsman.

• Encourages “hands off coaching” with individualised problem-solving.

Of course, nets are not perfect CLA tools. There is no PAC from batsman to fielders. It requires mental effort to bat in context rather than it just being the game situation. Yet we already have constraints built in to every net. Why not use CLA; a method that has a great deal of backing in research?

The point is, it doesn’t take a huge leap to turn your environment into CLA-style training: You focus on manipulating the environment to encourage skill to emerge naturally. 

The alternative is “command and control” style: Telling players what to do and drilling it repeatedly. While you can do this, it’s almost impossible in nets where the environment is too open ended. It’s also been criticised for being ineffective because players tend to rely on the coach for instruction and are less adaptable in game situations when the coach is unable to assist. That’s not to say CLA is the perfect solution either. How you coach is a personal choice based on your values. However, I do urge all coaches to consider mindfully how they deliver practice. In my mind, CLA has been most effective.

So how do you manipulate the environment based on CLA?

The best analogy I heard was thinking of yourself as a sheep herder. The sheep are players and can be allowed to roam free in the field (that’s free play). You also have a number of gates available to you that you can open or close to increase or decrease the size of the field. All gates closed is is fixed drill, and there is a range of activities between fully open and fully closed. Your role is to match the environment to needs.

For cricket, the gates are (STEP):

• Space. Often physical constraints such as netting or sports hall walls. However, you can get creative with cones and intervention poles to alter perception of space.

• Time. Not just actual time repeating a drill, this also includes number of deliveries bowled or faced to complete the task. It also includes any modified rules such as “straight hits worth double”.

• Equipment. Bat and ball size and weight. Number of stumps. Coaching aids like Sidearm, fielding bats and Katchet boards. All these modifications have an environmental effect we, as coaches, need to understand. The practice surface and climate are also part of this although often not under coach control.

• People. Number of fielders. Number of bowlers in a net. Batting in pairs, individually or in rotation. It also can mean the physical constraints of an individual (height, movement skill, injury and so on).

The “time” gate is also often tied to the testing category. Some might say “playing under pressure”, but I prefer to say testing under match conditions. Whatever you call it, this should only be applied during a testing practice. This is one of the hardest areas to manage because recreating intensity is a challenge. Game rules help a lot, but making sure players have committed to full intensity is even more important.

It’s at this point in the process that players and coaches start to realise something; the idea of “having a net” has become the wrong way to think about practice.

Yes, nets are a method of practice, but we need to know more before we mindlessly get the nets out. Is it a learning or a skill net? What is the critical outcome? What STEP structure can we use to meet our outcome? Are we committed 100%?

We might end up with no nets, a small sided-game like Battle zone, a focused activity or even fixed drills instead. If we start with the drill or net we are reducing our chances of success. Start at the other end, with the goal.

Now the skill of the coach comes with being a good designer. We may build an environment that is unfocused, too challenging or not challenging enough. It is no longer matching our agreed outcome. In that moment we need to recognise the issue and manage a swift change. For me, this is one of the most exciting and interesting aspects of modern coaching.

We can see how running sessions effectively is not just doing a bunch of drills around a technical area. There is a process which, to summarise, starts with a growth mindset. Then:

1. Define session outcome.

2. Define success (acceptable and exceptional).

3. Agree appropriate practice environment.

4. Practice with Warrior commitment and the Rule of Three.

The final step in this process is to review progress. We will discuss effective ways to do this next.