I have regular conversations with parents and players about their cricket development (or lack of it). Some of those conversations are instigated by the parent or the player yet I would say that over 70% are arranged by the coaching staff at Millfield.

This is because we use the conversation as an opportunity to re-calibrate and to educate rather than to have an aggressive or defensive conversation. The latter rarely ends up with a solution or a positive outcome.

Last week I initiated a conversation with a parent about his 14 year old son. The boy is a top kid - is one of the "heartbeats" of his team - yet is someone who is on a bumpy development pathway. I explained to the parent that I love bumpy development pathways. They create opportunities for players to pick up skills far more vital in life than any bowling action and forward defensive technique. They help people to develop skills that most, if not all of the worlds top players possess:

1. Resilience,
2. Coping strategies
3. "bouncebackability".
4. Robust inner confidence

"If I am presented with a player who has risen without bumps along the way into the higher levels of the game; then I see someone who is waiting for a huge fall without necessarily possessing the skills required to bounce back."

Here is the problem: In most cases, parents and players think that a cricketers development has to be linear. It needs to have a consistent rate of upwards movement and that setbacks are to be avoided, not embraced.

The major flash points for parents are:

1. Non-selection
2. Injury
3. Loss of form
4. A peer of their child going past them at that specific period of time

I see the list above as fantastic opportunities to develop key skills in each player.

Whilst it's great to have players from the school representing their National and Regional teams, we also relish picking up the player who misses just out on selection. Inevitably, that player will experience emotions such as embarrassment, hurt, feeling let down, losing a bit of confidence and questioning why you play the game at all.

We have all been there.

**No one has ever played the game without being dropped or batting lower than they thought they should. **

Our job as a coach is to reframe the thinking of the player (and parents if the player is young) and to end up at the point where they think,

"I will show them that they were wrong!"

The best players that I have worked with over the years have all had those experiences along their development years. They have found a way of bouncing back, restoring confidence and overcoming adversity. Their individual 'bumpy road' had prepared them for the challenges of cricket.

International cricket is hard. Your technique, ability, character and fortitude is questioned every day by commentators, opponents, written press, spectators and armchair critics alike. Only the toughest survive and thrive.

Ricky Ponting, Graeme Smith, Michael Vaughan, Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook and Paul Collingwood are six highly successful International captains who I have been lucky enough to work with. All had bumpy development roads. They were all written off at some point, been dropped, all had crisis' of confidence and most of them sustained injuries that took them out of the game for a while.

Those bumpy roads prepared them brilliantly to overcome most hurdles that inevitably land in the road.

So the next time you experience a "bump in the road" as a cricketer, coach or parent then embrace this as an opportunity to develop key character skills. Re-frame your language, your thinking and then your behaviours and reap the rewards.

The more bumps you come back from, the better prepared you are for the significant bumps that inevitably occur when you are operating at your personal "Test Match" level of the game.