Neil Pickup
Cricket Web Moderator
Evening all,
One of the best things about working at the particular stage of education as I do is the opportunity to have a real, lasting impact on a child's life - making a real difference, to speak in cliché, whether academic or otherwise. From time to time the scenarios come along when you're in the right place at the right time to set something in motion that could be really special.
I have the feeling that I'm at one of those junctures now. Next term, I'm going to be working one-to-one with a boy who I think - biomechanically, at least, has the potential to be a seriously good fast bowler. He is, at nine years old, probably 5' plus and last year broke both the U10 and U11 school records for the 100m sprint (13.2). He has also played only a very little amount of cricket, so hopefully has very few bad habits that will hinder the process.
My thoughts at the moment are to start with coil/load-up/gather, really looking for balanced power positions in the delivery stride leading into a strong and direct follow through, before working back into building a run-up... but I must confess not to having tried a full-on "action build" with a bowler before. I've done it with 'keepers, when I go from technique in the crouch first and extend from there, but with a bowler, typically, you're tweaking an established action.
Does anyone else have any experience of this kind of work (no Atul Sharma jokes, please), or any ideas for drills other than walk-throughs and similar to keep things varied?
One of the best things about working at the particular stage of education as I do is the opportunity to have a real, lasting impact on a child's life - making a real difference, to speak in cliché, whether academic or otherwise. From time to time the scenarios come along when you're in the right place at the right time to set something in motion that could be really special.
I have the feeling that I'm at one of those junctures now. Next term, I'm going to be working one-to-one with a boy who I think - biomechanically, at least, has the potential to be a seriously good fast bowler. He is, at nine years old, probably 5' plus and last year broke both the U10 and U11 school records for the 100m sprint (13.2). He has also played only a very little amount of cricket, so hopefully has very few bad habits that will hinder the process.
My thoughts at the moment are to start with coil/load-up/gather, really looking for balanced power positions in the delivery stride leading into a strong and direct follow through, before working back into building a run-up... but I must confess not to having tried a full-on "action build" with a bowler before. I've done it with 'keepers, when I go from technique in the crouch first and extend from there, but with a bowler, typically, you're tweaking an established action.
Does anyone else have any experience of this kind of work (no Atul Sharma jokes, please), or any ideas for drills other than walk-throughs and similar to keep things varied?