Coach Trip

I'm up at Penn's main Mount Road ground most weeks, and most times the club coaches are there improving the skills of our younger players. I'm always impressed with the patience and structured techniques the coaches employ to help our youth section play better cricket. I'm also pretty jealous as I've never had a day's cricket coaching in my life, which is pretty obvious to all who've seen me play.

I think it's natural to wonder 'What if I'd been coached properly? Would I have been a massively better cricketer than the poor effort I turned out to be?'

Regular blog readers will be familiar with my recent batting record having not yet scored a single run (see last post for details). I was fortunate in my last match to have one of the club coaches (Kevin Drew) with us on the sidelines before I went in to bat. I asked him to throw a few balls down to get my eye in.

Kev clearly saw some terrible things as I attempted to gently knock the ball back to him. He regularly winced as my bat came down and he kept repeating various technical terms that meant nothing to me. 'Straight bat', 'head still', 'front foot forward', 'high elbow' were all fairly alien terms to someone who's usual approach is 'hit the ball (with the bat if you can)'.

However, in fairness to Kev, I followed his advice and suddenly found that my bat was connecting with the ball on a reasonably regular basis. As the next wicket fell, I strode out to the middle in relative confidence. Could this be the innings where I got my first runs of the season?

I got back to thank Kev for his help a few minutes later after gloving a ball that was heading towards my teeth straight to short square leg. It was not the longest innings I'd ever had, but those three runs felt like a long cool drink after a desert trek.