This session was designed with the "Pundit Inventory" experiment in mind. I undertook the experiment whilst watching England bat in the 3rd Test match vs West Indies at Lord's.

Our young player, "badger", is a cracking lad. Loves cricket, and is incredibly knowledgeable about the history and nuances for someone of just 14 years of age. He is going to be a cracking little player.

One of the development areas that "badger" identified from the 2017 season was his capacity to make good decisions in match play. This manifested itself in the form of taking the ball too early on front foot drive and then in his calling and decision making when running between the wickets.

In short, "Badger" was a little mentally cluttered as the ball was being released and this impacted on his decision making.

Session Plan

Batting against Merlyn Bowling Machine set on Off-spin with some variation in length and line.

Round 1: 

I let Badger face a round of 20 balls and mentally logged the number of deliveries where he made an error in judgement.

There were four errors in total:

• two hard sweeps against balls that were too full
• two forward defence shots played to deliveries missing the stumps by 20 inches.

Badger and I had a discussion regarding his pre-delivery routine ahead of being ready to face the incoming ball.

Badger agreed that when he played at his best that he would feel as if he has nothing going on in his head at all or had one "swing-thought" which most of the time was "watch the ball".

I asked him how regularly he felt that he achieved that ideal performance state during the course of the season?

"About 10% of the time Garas in truth!"

Wow! Imagine that, only being emotionally and mentally "ready" to bat for 10% of your season.

No wonder decision making is a challenge.

What did we do?

Round 2:

I told Badger he was only allowed to get into his stance when he felt that his mind was either clear or had one swing thought in his head.

I told him that it didn't matter how long it took him to get into that "headspace", if he only faced another three balls in the session but they were all at times when he was ready then that would be deemed as a successful outcome.

I didn't set a field for Badger but in my own head I wanted to measure his intent to score for potential pressure hikes in future rounds in the session.

What happened in the next round?

I videoed the next round and then we did some timings on a few measurable things.

• Badger faced 20 balls in the next round.
• The round took 8 minutes to complete.
• The longest gap between deliveries was 56 seconds.
• The shortest gap was 21 seconds.
• Badger did not make one decision making error in the round.
• He left balls perfectly, chose the right balls to sweep, came down the pitch once and drove cleanly into the mid on region, back foot drive the ball when it was short of a length and defended well of the front foot.
• He would have scored five runs against a conventional offside field if they were in place.

Progress.

So we ran the same scenario again.

Round 3:

• 20 balls.
• 7 mins 33 seconds
• Longest: 51 seconds
• Shortest: 19 seconds
• Decision making errors: zero
• Potential run scoring: five, again I didn't tell him the score at this stage.

My next intervention was to ask if five from 20 balls was an appropriate scoring rate on this surface against this bowler?

Badger felt that he should be scoring at least 13 runs from 20 balls.

So I said, "that's great but let's take smaller chunks and aim for 10". I then set my field on the whiteboard.

Round 4:

• 20 balls
• 6 mins 45 seconds
• Longest: 40
• Shortest: 11
• Decision Making Errors: eight
• Runs scored vs field: five

I asked Badger what he felt had changed?

"I rushed myself, rarely felt as clear in my head as I did last round. The need to score made me more cluttered in my thinking. I had 2 or 3 options in my head each delivery before it was bowled. I wasn't ready!"

In effect, Badger was telling me that I had taken him to round 4 too quickly! And he was right.

Developing your decision making ability is a skill, exactly the same as developing a good cut shot.

It takes time, we need to layer up the difficulty at appropriate times with a little bit more challenge each time.

The player "tells" you when he/she is ready and I had not been patient enough with the drill or Badger.

Over time, the cut shot (and in this case, decision making) becomes more efficient, more automated and more natural. I had moved it on too quickly.

So, we will continue to use the first 3 rounds of the decision making drill as a way for Badger to practice the process of being "ready" to face each ball in order to be more available to make good decisions to each delivery.

When that process is embedded, we shall increase the challenge by adding runs and consequence to each round. And if needs be, take a step back to then more forward rapidly at a later juncture.

As I said last week, decision making is the most numerous thing that pundits talk about in commentary.

It really is a differentiator between those who are great and those who are good. So shouldn't we be practising that process more regularly within our sessions?

Decision making is a skill. It can be trained. But we need to remember to layer up the progressions when the player "tells" you that the time is right. Don't do it like I did!