YS Sports

THE FOUR PILLARS OF SUCCESS

Our purpose at the Kraft Cricket Academy is to develop not only good players but also good people and complete cricketers with good habits, behaviors and skills on and off the field.

TECHNICAL

Probably the most obvious pillar and the one that most people spend the majority of their time developing. Most players, coaches and coaching programs spend time developing ONLY this pillar, which is a mistake and you’ll learn why.

What is the technical pillar?

It’s your skills and your technique. Hitting balls, catching balls, bowling balls. Out swing, in swing, wrist position, high front arm, elbow up, foot to the ball - all the things you’ve heard before. All hugely important. You must have good skills and a technique that works to be successful in cricket. But for two reasons… 1. Because a lot of coaches underestimate the learning power of children and how much information they can actually absorb. 2. Because most coaches only know the technical pillar. They fail to educate themselves, up skill and practice what they preach in the other 3 pillars

Now how do we go about helping a player improve technically?

SELF REFLECTION

A huge focus in our programs. The faster a player can gain an understanding of their game, their strengths and their weaknesses, the faster they will develop. To gain an understanding of their game they actually have to spend time thinking about it.

SPECIFIC PLANS

From that self reflection we then help players create specific plans on how they’re going to improve that part of their game. E.G. “I was hitting my drives in the air a lot because my weight was back and I was too early in my shots.” Ok how are you going to specifically improve on that? “I’m going to get to training early every day this week and spend 15 minutes on the bowling machine doing the circle drill and focus on getting my weight forward and hitting the ball as late as possible.”

REPETITION

Drills are key to repetition. And repetition is key to skill development. We create environments where players can work on specifics for long periods of time. The standard 10 minute bat in the nets at club training doesn’t allow that so players have to get repetition in in their own time.

OUTCOME BASED LEARNING

Too many coaches get caught up in the ‘how’ (elbow here, front foot here, head there) rather than the ‘what’ (the result). Players are going to have different techniques and ways of getting the result, which in the end is all that matters. A coaches job is to help a player discover what works best for them.

PHYSICAL

Why is the physical pillar so important?

Because to execute your skills and maintain concentration for a long period of time you need to have endurance, strength, power, flexibility, agility, speed and energy. To develop those skills and attributes you need to follow effective strength and conditioning, stretching and nutrition programs. Here’s a few simple tips on how you can improve (or help your child improve) physically…

FITNESS

Focus on the engine - legs, gluten and core.
Break your year into blocks and focus on specific outcomes. E.g. Strength, power, endurance, speed maintenance.
Do work that’s going to improve your cricket, not make you look good.

INJURY PREVENTION

Stretch regularly
Cricket specific training
Make warming up a habit before training and playing (dynamic)
Recover properly (stretch, walk/jog, water therapy, right nutrition, water)

NUTRITION

Eat fresh
Hydrate - min 2L a day
Avoid nasties like sugars, complex carbs, bad fats.
If your child needs help getting themselves physically prepared…

MENTAL

The thoughts in your head play a HUGE role in the actions your body takes and the way that you execute your skills.

JOURNALLING

Similar to self-reflection it gets you to stop and actually think about your thoughts, feelings and emotions. Write them down every day and think about what caused them.

POSITIVE SELF TALK

Easier said than done but get into the habit of being aware of when negative self talk is creeping in. Acknowledge it. Put a stop to it and replace it with something positive. Like all things it take practice, the more you do it the more it will become habit.

VISUALISATION

Whatever the mind see’s it will believe. Visualization also creates familiarity, the feeling of having been there before and thing’s we’re familiar with we’re comfortable with. It’s a whole new topic so I won’t go into it but learn how to visualize.

STRENGTH BASED PLANS

Whether you’re batting, bowling or fielding, create plans around your strengths. Walking out with a clear plan will fill you with so much more confidence than having no plan at all. To create strength based plans you need to have an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. This is where self reflection and journalling comes in. Can you see how it’s all staring to tie in?

BREATHING

If all else fails and you still can’t control your negative thoughts, revert to focusing on your breathing. Long and slow in….long and slow out. Focusing on your breathing clears your mind and centres your thoughts. If you would like us to coach your child and teach them a set of mental skills that will help them on and off the field for the rest of their lives…

TACTICAL

If you don’t know when and how to use them, having the skills will only get you so far. Having the ability to read the conditions, the opposition, the situation of the game and being able to develop a plan to best suit that particular scenario is a skill.

SCENARIOS

Every net session we run is a scenario. Whether it be runs, wickets, run rate, singles, boundaries…we give the batsmen and bowlers a target. We get the bowlers to set fields and we have the coaches go away with the batting and bowling group and facilitate them creating plans for that particular scenario. We get comments from players like “I actually found myself in that situation in a game and felt like I’d been there and done it before.”

CONVERSATIONS

I’ll revert back to self-reflection and the example above. We encourage players to tell us, not us telling them. What they plan to do. What they did well or not so well and why that was so. Conversations promote learning.

EXPERIENCE

Often times the quickest way to develop game awareness is though experience. Play as much as you can and watch as much cricket as you can. And when you watch take note of what the captain is doing in the field, the way the batsmen are approaching the game and think about why they’re doing it.

SENIOR PLAYERS

Watch them, follow them, train with them and ask them questions. As I Said above, game awareness develops with experience which senior players have got. Whether a senior player to you is 16 or 35, find someone you respect and learn from them.