Word: cricketer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...There's a better way, says Chappell, who applied it inadvertently to his younger son 15 years ago. Pestered by Jonathan for cricket lessons, Chappell conducted them on the family tennis court, where the boy's goal was to score 100 and the father's was to get him there as fast as possible. At first, Chappell would toss a ball toward the 8-year-old and encourage him simply to "see it and hit it." As Jonathan improved, Chappell suggested targets at which to direct his strokes. "Within months he was playing shots - including forcing shots off the back...
...risks of overcoaching apply to older players, too, Chappell argues. In 1988, Ian Frazer was 22 when he became one of the first inductees into the Adelaide-based Cricket Academy, where the aim was to prepare the country's most promising talent for international competition. Frazer says he began his one-year stint "as someone who loved the game . . . Twenty months later I loathed it." What happened? The key to developing cricketers, Frazer says, is to give them "the right exposure at the right time." He'd reached a stage where he needed advice about touring and "self-management." What...
...Elite players? During a five-year term, which ended last year, as South Australia's state manager of cricket, Chappell was alarmed to see what practice involved for them. If they weren't perfunctorily engaged in the nets they were doing reductional drills - targeting one segment of a movement. Many of today's cricketers, Chappell suspects, don't know how it feels to be immersed in practice. But is he seriously suggesting they should be playing at the beach? "Absolutely. They should be doing a lot more game-scenario training, something that challenges them in ways the nets...
Scientists "have captured the sport," Chappell says. Though he acknowledges their theorizing has its benefits, he believes it's being misused. Of biomechanics expert John Harmer, a coach at Cricket Australia's Centre of Excellence in Brisbane, Chappell says: "I've heard John (give lectures) and he's brilliant. Everything makes sense. But coaches think, 'Wasn't that great!' and they go away and try to teach it to kids, who don't understand it" and shouldn't be thinking about it anyway...
...cricket establishment there's respect for Chappell but a feeling he's overstating the issues. His thesis isn't bulletproof. Backyard cricket is less common than it was but it's hardly disappeared. As for coaches bewildering kids with instruction, junior coaching ranks are still filled mostly by players' dads, whose main concern each Saturday is that everyone have a turn. Some boys are quitting cricket because they're not very good at it, but Australian boys have been doing that for more than 150 years. And it has to be expected that some gifted players will fall away later...