Cricket Show 74: Afganistan cricket coach Kabir Khan
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| PitchVision Academy - PitchVision Academy Show 074.mp3 | 24.71 MB |
Afghanistan coach Kabir Khan joins David on the phone to discuss how to coach a side with limited resources to astounding success; a lesson for all club coaches there.
We have a slight change in format in the show too as we see the first of our guest coaches answer your questions: Sam Lavery National Manager of Pro Coach Cricket Academy catches up with us.
Also Gary Palmer drops in with some more first class batting advice.
- How training camps can help teams with limited resources
- How to efficiently get in a lot of coaching in a short time
- How to keep the ball on the ground with a front foot drive
- How to improve your judgement of line and length
- How to bowl a slider (for more on this see The Art of Wrist Spin Bowling)
- Which part of the body to correct during a mixed bowling action
Congratulations to the competition winner who wins a free coaching course on PitchVision Academy. To find out how to enter this week's competition, download the show.
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Comments
I haven't listed to the show yet, but boy am I looking forward to it. This is a great scoop Dave. I guess when you wrote that you must find out how the Afghans did it, you meant it in a big way.
Who better to ask than the coach himself? Thanks Aleks.
Based on what the coach said, he seems like a good coach, he knows what he is doing. He said that most of the preparation/training was focused on the mental/tactical side of the game. If cricket is as they say 90% mental, than it makes sense to spend most of your time training that aspect.
This would seem to imply that the difference between a cricket team like Afghanistan and someone like Papua New Guinea is their mental strength. Although this is a very crude conclusion, the question begs if this mental preparation will be enough to take on the big boys like South Africa and India.
I think that's a bit simplistic but the broad brush stroke is right. There are a lot of things that have gone into their success, 'mental strength' is certainly one of them but you have to have talent and skill in buckets too. I think the big boys will be too much for them, they are so much more experienced at the highest level, but if anyone can pull off a shock it's those guys in a T20 match.
How long until they are in the full ODI rankings and pushing for Test recognition?
Well yes, it was a very crude conclusion and I also don't entirely agree with it. From a practical perspective, I think he got his strategy spot on. I agree with him that within a two week camp, it is very hard to build up the muscle memory of say correct batting technique, the time is too short. Within that time, you are more likely to have success in mentally preparing the boys, working on their confidence, game plans, etc. We can't forget that this is international cricket, you are playing for your country, the highest honour for any player, there is a lot of pressure on the players.
The tendency could be to downplay the skill component, but this is dangerous. These boys chased down almost 500 in one of their recent four day games, you have to be skilled to pull that of.
At the moment, the Afghans have ODI status, Tests are a long way off. To be honest I think that in the T20's, they probably have a slight chance of knocking off one of the big boys. The only way I see this happening is if the opposition really underestimates them as another one of the minnows. Facing Dale Steyn at 90 miles per hour plus will test their mental strength like never before.
Thanks guys that really helped. But no i don't have access to a bowling machine and your right I rarely play on my back foot basically because the pitches we play on are not really batting pitches they have a lot of variations like sharp bounce or it keeps low so we are encouraged to play on our front foot a lot. Another thing is that we only bat on clay pitches during match time we always train on a concrete pitch so we are not used to the variation of the clay pitches. How could we as batsmen adjust to the different pitches.
Thanks guys that really helped. But no i don't have access to a bowling machine and your right I rarely play on my back foot basically because the pitches we play on are not really batting pitches they have a lot of variations like sharp bounce or it keeps low so we are encouraged to play on our front foot a lot. Another thing is that we only bat on clay pitches during match time we always train on a concrete pitch so we are not used to the variation of the clay pitches. How could we as batsmen adjust to the different pitches.
The Afghans are playing today, their first match is against India. Their main bowler wrote a column on cricnfo.
http://blogs.cricinfo.com/btw/archives/2010/04/hamid_hassan_th_1.phpTwo parts I find troubling. The first,
"It will be a great honour to be on the same pitch as the likes of Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh"
I hope that he doesn't give the Indian batsmen too much respect, becomes awestruck and freezes out in the middle, not being able to execute his skills. Dave you wrote an article on this recently.
The second, he talks about this game being shown on TV and everybody back home watching them for the first time. I hope that he isn't putting undue pressure on himself by focusing on things outside of the cricket match.
Go the Afghans.