Think there might have been a bit of tiredness and frustration talking last night. Today we managed to beat the rest of Oxfordshire by 8 wickets and were virtually immaculate in the field
Under 10 = 10 year olds by this stage of the summer rather than 9. It isn't a case of unaided captaincy; far from it - there was an awful lot of input on my part into it but what wound me up was those who needed telling every single ball, those who seemed unable to tell there were two different batsmen in the middle...
I think something significant was that today's team included as captain a boy who usually plays an age group up, and every ball he was able to provide the requisite shove so that my only input needed to be... "what position is he supposed to be in?" or "who's coming on next at that end?" - rather than having to be on at every last player to tighten up.
What I was wondering, really, was whether there were any drills/exercises that people had seen or used that targeted the micromanagement and leadership part of the game beyond managed match practice and simple experience!
One of our coaches used to take us out for dinner or something when we have done well..
He would never say it beforehand so that it wasn't like we were playing FOR that... But when he did take us out, we knew we had done particularly well... And it always felt nice.. Not the dinner but the fact that we made our coach proud enough that he sponsored us one.. It was like winning his approval, in a way.
And during the dinner, he used to specifically point out how what someone did was right. It was usually stuff we least notice, like a guy running hard and converting 1 to 2 or a guy chasing hard and CAUSING a mix up and run out chance... Or even like a guy diving around and fielding well causing the batter to hit in another area than the one where he is comfortable hitting. It always made us, the other guys, want to do something similar and we really used to realize why these things were important in that relaxed environ rather than in the hustle bustle of a team meeting, during or before the game...
But it will be a tight rope walk, coz you don't want them to be playing cricket juz so that you will buy them dinner or you will talk about them during dinner... It has to be a nice little bonus and sometimes the way you deal with something like this can cause them to think as if winning your approval is the be all and end all for their cricket..
But on the whole, I felt that approach works best. I was maybe 12 at that time, so obviously one will be a lot smarter then in terms of cricket know how than when we were 10 but still... My two cents.
