Take All The Help You Can Find

I regularly visit the excellent cricket coaching website PitchVision Academy http://www.pitchvision.com/academy . They provide some fantastic coaching tips and have regular contributions from high quality coaches from around the world, as well as getting international cricketers to offer online coaching masterclasses. Occasionally I make a comment on their coaching forum, which prompted a phone call out of the blue asking them to interview me for their podcast this week. Of course I was delighted to be asked and said yes, giving a stuttering interview about my work with Hertfordshire's East Area cricket programme.

What this was intended to do, as with all the interviews, podcasts and postings on PitchVision, is to give coaches and players an insight into how they can improve and develop their abilities in any and every department of the game. Over the years, I have attended coaching seminars and courses with numerous former first class and international cricketers. I have coached with some superb coaches with wonderful experience of coaching first class cricketers, experienced coaches from club cricket and those coaching playground cricket for just one year and every level in between. And I always look out for how they coach, what they say, what drills they have, all as a way to improve my own coaching techniques. Every coach does it and we all pass around bits and pieces of information amongst the coaching fraternity.

Why are we like this when we might be competing for work? It all comes down to a common desire to improve and develop the cricketers that we coach. If we find a different way of doing something that might help to improve a cricketer we are coaching, we are usually open to trying it.

Any player out there should do likewise, taking every opportunity to watch, listen and learn from not just the coaches but other players. If there's a chance to watch or attend a masterclass, do so. If the club's all-time leading wicket taker wants to offer some advice, then listen. He must have done something right, even if he is a cussed old basket.