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.

Cricket Skill is Built on Behaviours: Here’s How to Coach Them

When coaching a cricket team, one of the big secrets is performance comes from behaviours: Winning games, improving skills, enjoying sessions and putting in the best performance on the field are achieved by how players go about their business.

This is true for everyone: beginners, young club players, performance pathway players, senior club cricketers and high performance players. The behaviours are different, but principle is the same.

If we take this as a fundamental, what is the role of the coach?

First, we help the players define the important behaviours. Second, we hold them to their promises with support and discipline.

Here's what I think that looks like.

Define acceptable behaviours

We have already talked about purpose and expectations. If you have not clearly defined those with everyone, do it as soon as possible. At the end of the process you will have agreed your one to three minimum acceptable behaviours.

These behaviours are not up for negotiation, so they are the most important standards everyone must agree to do all the time.

This is crucial.

Don’t skip it.

Even if you skipped or rushed all that stuff about purpose because it’s too touchy-feely and not tangible. If you think like that - I certainly do - this is the bit you do to avoid that frustration and confusion we talked about before.

To break defining behaviour down more, the rules are that each behaviour must be:

• Based on purpose. The behaviours must resonate with the team on the deepest level. They must believe in the power of sticking to them.

• Agreed by everyone. If even one person doesn’t agree overtly to do it, it can’t be a behaviour standard. So a behaviour can’t be handed down from the coach without input from players.

• Non-negotiable. Once agreed, no one can make an excuse about why the standards are not met. Failure to meet them can be accepted but not tolerated.

• Low in number. Ideally, to begin, you will only have one behaviour to make sure everyone nails it. Over time you can add more as players feel ready to take it on. There will be no more than three.

• Clearly defined. “Elite honesty” (for example) is not a behaviour because you can’t tell when someone is being honest to an elite level. A better example for honesty might be “no mankads”. You can tell right away if you met that standard.

• Minimums not aspirations. These behaviours are not the team at their best, they are the team at their least worst. Everyone should find them an achievable challenge, but not something aspirational that only a handful can regularly achieve. It’s a standard not a goal.

Some examples of minimum standards of behaviour are:

• Listen quietly when the coach is explaining.

• Practice twice a week.

• Wait patiently if team is batting.

• Turn up to games in full training kit.

• Warm up as a team, without coach prompting.

• Being a supportive balcony: always at least three players watching the match.

• Be able to clearly state your role in the team.

• Overtly recognise every exceptional performance in training and matches (for example through fist bump or handshake).

• Ask for advice regularly (at least once a session).

• Do gym work at least twice a week.

• Give 100% effort in practice: Go no more than three balls in nets without focus.

• Always have a focus during practice and review progress without prompting at least once per session.

• Help someone else at every session.

• Learn a new skill you could not do before and test it under match conditions.

• Do at least 15 minutes of fielding practice at every session.

Clearly we don’t use them all. You don’t have to use any of them. We can use these examples to prompt players, or we can come up with our own. Remember to keep it down to one (three at most). Players might want to create a longer list at first, but make sure they can meet the minimum standard consistently for a while before adding standards.

The final step is to agree how much chance you give players to self-correct before intervening. Then we get to work.

Accountability with the "Rule of Three"

So far this has been something of a paper exercise. Accountability is where we get going with some coaching.

It's not coaching the technical and tactical side directly (although don't worry you will get plenty of chance to do that). It's coaching behaviours. It's keeping the players on track to their agreed standards.

The best way I have found to do this is to use the "Rule of Three" first outlined by Mark Bennett. Here is how it works.

Rule of One is the ideal state.

The player is self-aware of their behaviours in the moment and understands if they are acceptable or not. If they are not acceptable they self-correct.

Rule of Two is the second line of defence. Here an individual player is not behaving acceptably but their team-mates have noticed and told the player in the moment what is happening to get them back to Rule of One.

This rule is critical to successful accountability but is the hardest to learn as it requires high levels of trust, self-awareness and confidence from a team. It takes time to get this one right, but stick with it.

Finally, Rule of Three comes in when One and Two have failed to bring behaviours back to acceptable. The coach steps in to get the players back to Two or One quickly.

This third level is what most coaches would consider a traditional intervention. Good news for coaches; we are still needed! It also takes skill. If we jump to it too quickly we don't give players the chance to self-correct and they become reliant on us as the police. If we wait too long players see us and the rules as inconsistent. Frustration reigns either way.

Nevertheless, get the timing of your intervention right, and behaviours will be outstanding.

For example, in session you can stop the entire session, or a sub-section; the offending group in the net or drill. You can ask something like,

• "Why am I stopping you at this moment?"

• "What did you notice about what you were doing when I stopped you?"

If they remember the agreed standard they will tell you.

If they don't remember you need to go back to the drawing board about agreeing standards.

However, assuming they remember, you can follow up by asking them to show you the drill, net or activity done at Rule One or Two.  Finish with a statement like

• "Can you show me what you need to do to get back on track?"

Resist the urge to give a long lecture, talk about anything except the behaviour, or ask lots of questions. That's something I have to remember all the time. I'm a verbal coach. Keep it extremely short and let them get back to the task once the reminder is given. Stay focused on the behaviour.

If the unhelpful behaviour continues, you can repeat the cycle until it is self-correcting. If the players can’t self-correct, eventually you will need to review the agreement; it's probably too difficult.

During games or if your behaviours are agreed over longer periods, you can follow the same process. Let's use training attendance as an example. Imagine someone doesn't train two sessions in a row when they have agreed to train every session. Ideally, the player will - without prompting - apologise to you and the team after one failure and recommit to the agreement (Rule of One). If they don't, the rest of the team will pick up on it within two failures and remind the player who apologises and recommits. Only if this does not happen do you intervene as coach and try to get the player - and his team mates who missed it - back to One or Two.

Sanctions and punishments

One coaching tool that has not been mentioned yet is punishments.

The idea is simple and often very effective with younger cricketers. If behaviours are unacceptable, the coach will issue a punishment. They can be as severe as sending people home or dropping them from the team, or as simple as a time out or clearing up kit.

Punishment is tricky because it can be misused. Many coaches in the past have punished inconsistently and severely out of anger. This won't help even it if feels good in the short-term. If you feel angry or frustrated at behaviour, take a moment. Instead of meting out an immediate punishment, explain why you are stopping the activity. When coaching younger players we can explain how the player could have handled the situation differently.

However, this may not work with children who have a underdeveloped focus. The activity can take far to long to to restart with an issue every few moments. Sanctioning is an easy way to get past a problem and back into an activity that is otherwise totally disrupted.

Like any other standard, agree the rules first.

We might agree with players they get 10 seconds to realise what they are doing and self-correct, then they get one warning, on repeat they have to sit out for one minute. Even during a sanction we must be clear they understand why, and what they can do to get back to Rule One or Two.

Recognise exceptional behaviours

The other side of performance behaviour is to recognise when cricketers have gone beyond the acceptable and into the exceptional. Here we have gone from catching people out, to catching people in. And that's much more fun as a coach!

Exceptional behaviours are much closer to goals: achievable but at a stretch. Also like goals they are best when specific and measurable. However they are not as tightly constrained as minimum standards. In other words, if someone does something great out of the blue, take time to recognise it.

The Rule of Three applies here as well. Players are encouraged to recognise the exceptional in the moment, with the coach only stepping in if something brilliant goes unrewarded.

When players first start applying the Rule of Three, it’s often much harder to do it for exceptional behaviour than for the unacceptable. This is because it’s harder to clearly define the exceptional. We can come up with some examples but we will never cover the entire gamut of things people can do to be exceptional. This means we might need to spend more time intervening at first, depending how fast players pick up on exceptional behaviours.

What you can agree is how a player will behave when someone does something exceptional: A fist bump, clap, high five, nod to the coach, whatever. The response itself doesn’t matter, but understanding we have a symbol of recognition is important.

I like to restrict praise for the exceptional to times where it is both truly merited and unrecognised by peers. If our star batsman hits a half volley out of the middle, that’s helpful but not exceptional. We were probably expecting it. It’s far more useful - according to research from Carol Dweck - to praise exceptional effort and clear improvement. In my experience, player’s certainly value this feedback more.

Summary

If we accept performance comes from behaviours, we need to be as clear about them as we are about cricket techniques and tactics. This article has given you a framework to define behaviours and hold players accountable to them at any age or ability level.

The core of this is the Rule of Three. We will return to the Rule of Three again - especially Rule Two - but for now as long as you understand the basics of it, you have the structure to get players agreeing performance behaviours and working towards nailing them.

Next we will examine how the lessons from performance behaviour can be applied more directly in to designing and running sessions.

Why We are Here: Coaching Cricket with Purpose

It’s easy to jump into coaching with warm ups and drills. The “what” of coaching. I do it all the time. It feels right and comfortable. We want to get on with it as fast as we can. So do the players we coach.

But hold on.

First, we need to know why we play and how we can work together to achieve our aims: Our purpose and principles.

You might think it’s obvious.

Yet we have already learned jumping in too fast is unhelpful. Coaching before purpose makes it difficult to develop players. We overthink or run on emotion. To manage this we need to know our motivations. Our deepest purpose.

Or to put it another way; how can you get somewhere unless you know where it is?

I feel this process is now a vital part of modern coaching. If we don’t have a purpose we don’t set expectations clearly: We end up unfocused, frustrated and confused. Business solved this issue decades ago: Every planned project starts with a purpose and core principles.

Clinical psychology has a similarly well-established method. In CBT, we learn behaviours are drawn from thoughts and feelings. The goal is to become aware of what we think and feel so we can alter our actions. If we are feeling angry and confused we know we have not identified our mutual purpose and principles yet. We can prevent this confusion with clarity of behaviour.

These ideas are easily transferred to coaching.

Practical purpose

So how do we achieve this step zero, this crucial meta-coaching?

Find out.

Ask “how” and “what”.

Of course, you want true, honest answers. Getting that from a group of beginner six year olds is different from a professional cricket team. Nevertheless, we are looking for the same thing. We are looking for a mutually agreed purpose. Here are the key questions:

• Why do you play cricket?

• Why do you come to training?

Most people say to have fun and to get better at playing cricket. But dig deeper if you can. We don’t all agree what is fun and we don’t all agree what to get better at. Here are some deeper questions:

• What’s the most enjoyable part of cricket?

• What style of cricket do you want to play?

• What type of team do we want to be?

• What do you expect from your coach?

• What support do you expect from your team mates?

• What support do you think your team mates expect from you?

• What does someone in our team do when they are at their best?

• What do you think your coach expects from you?

• What can stop us being successful?

You don’t need to know the answer to all of them in detail. Ask as much as you need to have a clear purpose for the team: The big unique idea, the motivation that gets us up on cold winter mornings and travelling miles to matches on wet summer afternoons. The reason why we choose this life and not one of a million others.

It’s not just rabble rousing inspiration: Together with the players you can agree well-defined standards based on your ideal. And we know what happens once we nail those expectations down.

Is there a problem?

It’s not always as smooth as this. Any change to the status quo is hard and meets resistance. Purpose is a vague idea. It smacks of Instagram posts telling us the “Chase our rainbow”. We know differently but players can be cynical.

For example, players start to clam up and agree to anything because they are running on emotion; bored, insecure, impatient, angry, frustrated, afraid or confused.

In this moment they want to to get past the painful talking and “just hit balls”. That’s secure. That works. That feels right. They don’t see the big picture and they want to get on with something tangible like having a net. This is a perfectly understandable reaction, especially from a group who are not yet self-aware of their emotional state (sounds like most children and most cricketers to me).

However, we also can’t let it go. That’s an abdication of our responsibility as a coach to get the best from players.

Dig in.

If you face this kind of resistance - passive or clearly stated - ask an even deeper question:

• What do we want to change?

This question is great because everybody wants to change something. Nobody wants to have problems. Everybody knows the only way to solve them is to change behaviour. Even the players who think they need to change nothing personally can get behind the idea the team can make improvements as a whole. It’s something tangible to hold on to. It gets people back into a clear and present state of mind.

The answer you get back will be unique to the players and team you coach. Things to change usually hover around words like commitment, focus, effort, mindset or teamwork. Often it’s about something technical (because again it’s the easiest thing to see). Whatever your specifics, the next two questions are:

• Are we prepared to change this?

• Can we accept help to make the change?

If the answer is yes to both, we can start to make progress. If more examination is needed you can go deeper still with these questions:

• What pain is caused by making a change?

• What is the cost of not changing?

• What benefits are there to changing?

• What ways can we have more fun if we change?

• How is this problem stopping our success as a team?

• Is this problem causing a loss of respect between team mates?

• What part of the problem do others notice the most?

• Why has the problem not been solved yet?

• Are we willing to do whatever it takes to solve the problem?

• Do we accept making change requires us to think and act differently?

• What single goal can we all work towards to make this change?

• What could go wrong if we change our perspective to try and solve the problem?

• Are we open to a new plan?

If players recognise the need for change, you won’t ever get this deep into the discussion. You can outline your purpose, set out your key principles and move along quickly towards the batting and bowling. However, these questions are tools if you need them.

The goal is to help players see how important it is to focus on both training the way you play, and playing the way that rings true to your ideals. We are unlikely to solve our cricket problems any other way.

Whether you have worked with a team for years, or are doing your first session, it’s crucial everyone knows this. Take as long as it takes to get to your purpose and define your principles. We face a lot of frustration and wheel-spinning if we take another route.

Don’t get me wrong, action is still paramount.

Once purpose is in place we can get on with doing stuff, safe in the knowledge we are moving towards mutual purpose.

But that’s not the end either. It’s not a one off. We all need commitment to reviewing and applying our purpose and principles. We can’t spend time on purpose and defining our core principles then never apply those expectations. We need to live this every day in the way we act.

The nuts and bolts of how we do this, and help players do this, is next.