This summer, I have acquired three new cricket coaching books from bookstores in downtown Toronto. Some may be of interest to cricket enthusiasts. Some have certain chapters that provide valuable guidance on management, communications and accountability as on cricket. Advice provided comes at well below the cost of similar topics in academic books in at least a couple of the books. The cricketing advice is similarly practical.

These books are:

“Cricket; Steps to Success” by Ralph Dellor (Human Kinetics, 2010, approx $23 Canadian, plus taxes)

This is one book in a series  called ‘Steps to Success in Sport’..

“Coaching Youth Cricket” by Ian Pont (Human Kinetics, 2010, approx $21 Canadian, plus taxes)

This is one book in the ‘Coaching Youth Sport’ series.

“Cutting Edge Cricket” by Frank Pyke and Ken Davis (Human Kinetics, 2010, in conjunction with Cricket Australia, approx $27 Canadian dollars, plus taxes)

Reviews of each book will follow as individual articles, starting with the Ralph Dellor book “Cricket: Steps to Success.”  I discovered these book’s at ‘The World’s Biggest Bookstore” in downtown Toronto. They may be available in other Canadian bookstores.

Ralph Dellor has been involved in cricket for over 50 years as a player, broadcaster, journalist and coach. His basecamp for cricket has been in England, but he has international experience, including a stint as coach to the Norwegian national cricket team. My first recollection of him is from his radio broadcasting on cricket.  He apparently serves on the Berkshire County Cricket Club committee. I first saw I first saw Berkshire and experienced minor counties cricket when at the University of Reading.

Ian Pont played first-class cricket for Essex and Nottinghamshire. He also had tried baseball in North America, as a pitcher. He has gone on to become a fast-bowling coach, and assisted the Netherlands in preparations for the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup.

Frank Pyke and Ken Davis might not be household names to many followers of the Canadian cricket scene. However, both come with playing experience in grade cricket in Australia, sports administration and sports science skills. Their book includes contributions from almost forty players and coaches, male and female, one of whom professional baseball playing and management skills to the table.

“Cutting Edge Cricket” brings together “the thoughts of some of cricket’s most innovative minds”, according to the Foreword by Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland. A Foreword that ends “Long Live Cricket!” in a book of eleven chapters, the last being some notes on “Cricket in the Future.”

Individual performance skills in cricket depend on personal management – the application of playing skills, and communication skills. The best ‘technical’ or ‘attacking’ batsman in the world might struggle if he, or she, cannot, run between the wickets, failing to pick up the ones, twos and threes. Or,  being run out by a mile due to non-existent skills in calling for a run, or even due to tripping in ruts on the playing area. Failure to achieve on the field, tends, other things being equal, to result in a player not being selected for future games for a particular team. This is the concept of accountability.

Some might ask the extent to which management, communications and accountability apply to certain people who ‘run the game’ at various levels. But, as I know from many years in the international financial world, and beyond, certain standards and requirements sometimes have a certain variability. Sometimes you hit the frightening situation where certain people realistically in high places have little or no idea what they are talking about. This comes in a world where some worship buzzwords, logos and follow gurus of no known substance.

My 2010 Canadian cricket season ended with a visit to “the MCG”, as the flyer or handout termed it. “The MCG” could have done with a bit of heating, among other things, in mid-September for the summer series, or whatever it called itself.  Cold, damp and a cooling breeze. I felt for the local club volunteers as they worked to get the ground playable.  I was near the ground a couple of days later, but decided to look after myself, for once. The threatening clouds might not have broken that day, but I still felt bad from the previous visit to the ground.

Ralph Dellor’s “Cricket: Steps to Success” has eight major steps, or chapters, providing guidance on the basics of batting, bowling, fielding and wicketkeeping. The ninth step deals with “Team Roles”. Having gained individual skills and moved into the world of playing the game with one or more team(s), and keeping skill development moving forward,  each player may have a broader, or a more specific role to play in a team as their career progresses. Dellor concludes with some solid advice to novice, intermediate, expert, and guru: “However, before players can fulfil their roles in the team, those roles have to be defined.”

AIG was, possibly, more famous in sporting circles as the name on the shirts of Manchester United footballers, or soccer players as they tend to be called in North American circles. It gained wider fame due to certain financial issues that were highlighted during 2008.  In “Too Big to Fail”, by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Viking Penguin, 2009) you can read about a major discussion involving U.S. Treasury and U.S. Federal Reserve leaders with their president:

‘The president (Mr. George W. Bush) then posed a question that, in its own way, went directly to the heart of the problem. “An insurance company does all this?”

This one did.’

In “Coaching Youth Cricket”, Ian Pont begins Chapter 3 with

“You can’t run a team or manage a junior side without knowing the rules and regulations of the sport you are coaching and the equipment your players will be using.”

Sage advice, oft neglected by leading gurus, particularly financial and political ones. Sometimes, sadly missed, by religious leaders and ‘leading’ academics in certain fields. By contrast, Ian Pont, proposes that to be a successful coach, you need through self-examination and hard work you need five tools that cannot be bought:

“C  Comprehension ; O  Outlook;  A Affection: C  Character; H  Humour”.

“People learn from making mistakes.” Well, some do so quickly, and make appropriate adjustments. Others? Well, they have outsourced their mistakes and try not to be responsible for that outsourcing decision. Some might be a bit slow to learn from mistakes and one category never make mistakes, but only turn to a single source for advice and counsel.

International Cricket Council (ICC) High Performance Manager, Richard Done, is one person to whom Frank Pyke and Ken Davis turned in “Cutting Edge Cricket”.  He believes “the coach’s role is to plan the program, think creatively, set goals and regularly review the process and the results. He stated:

This requires everyone associated with the preparation of the team being on the same page and players having access to a training environment which provides them with the best possible support and staff facilities.”

The book moves on to underline how the captain and coach need to understand leadership and management. Leadership responsibilities are listed, with guidance on how these might be achieved, and the six C’s that comprise “Key Elements of Cohesive Teams”. These are: communication, collaboration, cooperation, coordination, consultation and connection.  But these are not mere words, listed as some ‘mission statement’, or strategy, but come with underlying guidance.

However, if the game’s off-the-field leaders do not provide the appropriate environment and opportunities for cricket to flourish, then Cricket in the Future might end, in some countries, filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, as it is known in the U.S.A., rather than as Chapter 11 Cricket in the Future, long live cricket!   Frank Pyke and Ken Davis conclude their chapter 11: “significant challenges lie ahead, but none more so than in any other sport in the persuit of excellence for the player, the team, the spectator and the wider community.”  Challenges that need to be properly balanced.

Learning the steps you can control……to the heights, or is it snakes and ladders

Ralph Dellor, in an introduction called ‘Climbing the Steps to Cricket Success”, provides some common sense remarks about batting:

“Not all players are skilled in all disciplines. This means that unlike in some other sports you do not have to master one step before moving on to the next. For example, you do not have to excel at defensive batting (step 5) before moving on to attacking batting (step 6); however, unless you can defend your wicket, you will not be around to play those attacking stokes.”

He provides a background section on cricket, encapsulating some of the history, the layout of the field and the basics on how the game is played. Dellor divides the coaching section of the book into nine major steps. Three major steps on bowling (basic, fast and spin bowling), three on batting (basic, defensive and attacking batting), one on fielding, one on wicketkeeping and concludes with one on team roles.

Detail steps are supported by descriptions, photos, diagrams and drills or exercises, which can allow cricketing skills to advance. The section on Team Roles is slightly different, but outlines the basics of the roles in the game, including captaincy, opening batsmen, middle-order batsmen, and bowlers.
The introductory section on ‘Climbing the Steps to Cricket Success’ concludes:

“Whether you are male or female, right- or left-handed, go out and enjoy your cricket. Cricket: Steps to Success is ready to take you several steps closer to becoming the best player you can be. The objective, whether you are starting out as a cricketer or are already experienced, is to make you a more successful player. The more successful you are, the more you will enjoy the game. Have fun!”

Blending as one team

The Team Roles step mentions how some players may feel they have achieved success ‘when first selected for a side.” But, if they survive a few games in that side, they may “become consumed by the desire for good personal performance in order to remain in the team.”

But overall success and fulfilment really only arrives after certain personal success “they will subscribe to the idea that team performance is of paramount importance. They learn to accept and value the idea that even if they have failed to score runs or take wickets themselves, they can take pleasure in the fact that someone else has ensured the team’s success.”

Indeed, I would suggest, the player who missed the boat with bat, or ball on the day (or the two-, three-, four-, or five-days) of the game may have contributed in the field with a catch or two, run saving skills or contributed to a run out.

Dellor continues “This does not mean that personal performances are not important to the team effort. Success demands that everybody does his job well. When doubts arise about a player’s ability to perform the given task, selection reflects those doubts.”

This passage about “Team Roles” concludes “However, before players can fulfil their roles in the team, those roles have to be defined.” I have added bold character emphasis to the original text.

Develop your skills……then?

Ralph Dellor would, doubtless, be able to come up with many stories on how some who form teams, manage teams, select teams or who have overall executive or committee roles of relevance to the good performance of a team, but he leaves that aside, possibly for a different day, or for someone else to address.

Some may have experiences of those who think, or, indeed, know, they are the sage guru of cricket team selection, management and success) might just be a little off the rails, or are sailing round and round on choppy seas, or, indeed roller skating in a buffalo heard.

But Dellor keeps his ending simple in this book. A simple message, well worth repeating: “However, before players can fulfil their roles in the team, those roles have to be defined.” He deals with things that can be controlled by potential players and their immediate coach, or even those who learn by using the book. It is up to individual players to develop skills, with whatever coaching resources (human and facilities) are available. What happens after a player makes it into a particular team may well be beyond the control of the player and his colleagues.

During my recent years involvement in trying to help the Canadian cricket scene, I was criticized by at least one President regarding selection for the senior men’s national team. There was, in his opinion, nothing wrong with the selection process. A process where my practical research, a simple matter of going to a club game, and being told by someone that they were surprised to have been named in a particular squad as work-commitments meant they were not available.

Strange, but seemingly true, how some folk get picked for certain overseas tours, which can be tricky given different environments, etc, but are ignored back on Canadian soil. There is no special guidance on how to play cricket on cow-fields or buffalo plains in Ralph Dellor’s “Cricket: Steps to Success.”

Someone on ‘the board’ or ‘the committee’, or a range of committees and boards in a town, city, region, nation of group of nations, might have sorted out some of the playing infrastructure, and funding to maintain the grounds and facilities. Or even a program to train umpires and scorers! Best leave some of these things to ‘the experts’. Often, effectively, self-appointed. But people who would recognize ‘the ideal cricketer’ and may have met many of them in their time. Whether certain experts have actually seen the player, or players, perform can be a separate question. Reputation rides ahead in some of the games of snakes and ladders of player selection and treatment which can prevent proper development of the sport in countries such as Canada.

Returning to Ralph Dellor’s conclusions on the fascinations of cricket’s real skills: “The presence of so many facets in the game encourages a wide range of abilities. The ideal cricketer has a sound defence and an array of attacking strokes when batting, can bowl like the wind and spin the ball on glass, and is so good in the field that he (or she) can catch sparrows.” I leave it to you, dear reader, or, dear expert, as to whether such ‘ideal’ cricketers as ten-a-penny, or, as Dellor suggests, ‘rare’.

Sir Garfield Sobers is about the one player who brings those batting, pace and spin bowling, and fielding skills together of people I have seen play. ‘To be outstanding in just one element or competent in at least two measures up well to requirements. It is this rich variety that gives the game its soul.”

Eddie Norfolk

Footnote: “Cricket; Steps to Success” by Ralph Dellor is part of the “Steps to Success Sports Series.” Other books in the series include soccer, rugby, basketball, softball, netball, badminton, ice skating team handball and field hockey (as it is know in North America).

Ralph Dellor has been involved in cricket for over 50 years as a player, broadcaster, journalist and coach, including a stint with the Norwegian national cricket team. I seem to recall him as a radio broadcaster. He apparently serves on the Berkshire County Cricket Club committee. Berkshire was the first minor counties criekt side I saw, due to being at university in Reading, England. A freindly, or exhibtion game, with Oxford University, lead by someone called Imran Khan.