Steve Jones is PitchVision Coach of the Month.

Steve is the coach at Harrow School, a role he has thrived in for 15 years. But he certainly didn’t start there.

After playing cricket in South Africa in the 70s and 80s, Steve began coaching in Boland as player-coach of the B side. Soon after he went to Namibia to help rebuild cricket. He moved to Border in South Africa in 1992 and while coaching there, gained experience coaching with South Africa Under 19s and South Africa A.

With a huge amount of coaching skill developed, Steve moved to Harrow in 2003.

While Steve happily admits his coaching days are drawing to a close, he is still a vibrant and forward looking coach to the cricketers at Harrow. He also admitted he thought he knew it all going into the role, but Twenty20 quickly opened his eyes to the changing game!

With players demanding T20 skills to be a success, Steve adapted. He began to focus less on technical perfection and more on effective play, especially with batting. He started to coach players on individual strengths and weaknesses.

Through this change, Steve stayed true to his core principles: Coaching is about mentoring and helping individuals find their own way. He gave the example of some players wanting to learn through drilling while others gravitated towards game play based learning.

He also talked about the importance of reflection. Using video technology and app-based digital note-taking, Steve guides his players towards regular self-review that can be seen by coaches both in the school and in the county setup at Middlesex.

Both experienced and progressive, Steve Jones is a worthy winner of Coach of the Month.