This is a guest article from Head Coach of Twenty20 Cricket Company; Darren Talbot

1. Make sure that there is a suitably qualified coach with each group

Without a fully qualified coach it is unfair to expect a lesser or even unqualified coach to deliver a meaningful session, it just won’t happen. 

Even experienced cricketers are unable to deliver a proper session for your juniors as there is a massive difference between coaching and being a qualified coach.

Getting volunteers is difficult, especially in a recession, but identifying keen parents to take a coaching course as early as possible is important. 

If you can’t, give serious consideration to buying in coaches.  The money will be well spent as if they are even half decent, you will get a much better session than with an unqualified coach.  The better the sessions, the fewer children you lose and the more you can attract.

A group of more than 16 children of a similar age is too many.  Each coach should ideally have no more than 16 in their groups.  If you are fortunate enough to have more in each age group then you need to start thinking about splitting them in half by ability.  This may mean two groups of 10, for example, but that is better than one group of 20.

If you only have one coach for the group, the best way to handle this is to keep the group together for instructions on the next exercise then break them out into two groups with n assistant coach looking after one group.  If you have two helpers, try to get your helper to deliver the session so that the coach can move between the groups to oversee what is happening and offer advice where required.

One of the biggest problems clubs seem to have is making sure that each group has enough equipment.  Each group should have access to the same equipment week in, week out and should contain:

• 4 sets of stumps
• 4 bats (plastic for younger groups)
• 3-6 batting tees
• 25-50 Space markers
• Large selection of balls – tennis balls, hard tennis coaching balls (e.g. Gunn & Moore First ball), incrediballs, windballs, cricket balls
• Tennis Racquet
• Fielding bat
• First Aid kit

That should be sufficient kit to see you through every coaching session.

Unless you have a small and very talented or older (U13 and above) group, nets are a waste of time.  There is very little you can do in a net that you can’t do better outside of a net.

The only justifications for having a net session for younger groups would be to give batters experience batting against a hardball but unless you have bowlers who are going to deliver the ball in a meaningful fashion, i.e. straight and hittable, this is pointless.  You would be much better spent arranging 1-2-1 sessions against a bowling machine for each batter, even if it’s only 15 minutes each.

If you are going to do net sessions for your older, better groups, make them focused:  set up scenarios for the batters and bowlers so they are working in the net to a goal rather than just bowling as fast as they can or trying to hit every ball out of the net!

Much better is to use game play to teach the skills they are going to need.   There is a game for every skill making it fun for all participants and a combination of competition and repetition is great for learning.  Our cricket coaching plans have over 20 games for you to use to keep sessions fun and keep the children active and engaged.

5.  Have a plan for each week in advance of the season

All of the above are essential but if you don’t have a plan of what you are going to do it will be wasted.

One of the biggest challenges of running a cricket club is working with volunteers and as such their time is limited.  Many volunteer coaches barely manage to get down on time every week let alone spend 30-60 minutes each week planning what they are going to deliver.

On top of this what long term planning goes in to ensure that what the under 8 coach is teaching is relevant to what they are going to need to coach when the group is under 11?  Planning should be a long term thing not just week by week.

We have created game based 12 week coaching plans for Under 8 to Under 13 groups so that every relevant skill is covered and repeated, where necessary to encourage learning.

The plans are available on PitchVision Academy either as a complete package or split into age groups. They are then yours to keep and re-use year after year.