Here is a simple coaching formula:

Admiration + Bags of bravery = More coaching knowledge

I don’t know about you, but I have a pretty good awareness of where my skill sets as a coach starts and finishes. I'm OK with some things and less confident or less experienced in others. I have yet to meet a coach who is a master of all the different disciplines and circumstances that the game of cricket can throw at us.

What I try to do is surround myself with people who can teach me something that I don’t already know or who will challenge me about things that I thought I knew….but clearly didn’t.

My newest coaching recruit into the cricket programme at Millfield School is none other than Alfonso Thomas, the Somerset, Adelaide Strikers, Pune Warriors, Western Province and South African Twenty20 fast bowler.

I'm really excited to work with Alfonso over the coming months and years. It will be an incredible opportunity to listen and watch one of the best bowlers in T20 history pass on his skills, knowledge and experience. When people talk about bowlers who can close a T20 and one day innings they speak of Lasith Malinga.

And Alfonso Thomas.

His skill at delivering yorkers, slower balls, slower ball bouncers and other fast bowling options in extreme pressure situations is legendary, not just in the UK but all round the cricketing world.

The questions that I have for Alfonso are:

1. What made you want to learn to bowl the Yorker so well?
2. What practices, drills and technical adaptations did you incorporate into your training to make you a world leader in delivering that toe crusher?
3. How many slower balls have you got in your armoury?
4. How did you develop them?
5. What determines which slower ball is most useful in specific situations?
6. How do you control your nerves, body, mind and therefore performance when you’re defending only 8 runs in the last over of a T20 game?
7. What do you do when a top batter is taking you to the cleaners?
8. What is your proudest performance under extreme pressure and what can young cricketers learn from that experience.
9. How did you cope with niggles? What allowed you to bowl through the pain barrier during those long county and state seasons?
10. Which captain got the best out of you and why?
11. Tips on looking after the ball in both the shortest and longest format of the game. Has your approach or method changed over the years? How does it adapt between Kookaburra, SG ball and Duke?

Now, I appreciate that not all coaching programmes can access someone like Alfonso. Yet these are the types of questions that I ask top performers in all levels of cricket.

I have done this ever since I was a boy.

Between the ages of 9 and 17 I would bombard the “legends” that I watched at Ventnor Cricket Club as kid. I used to bother Malcolm Marshall with my incessant queries when I was a young professional cricketer and when I was 31; Duncan Fletcher was my target for all out question attack. Effectively, if I saw someone who was better than me (and goodness, I had a few options!) then I wanted to learn from their experience.

So here is my challenge to you.

How many opportunities do you miss each week to learn from other people’s experiences?

Make a list of the people in your immediate life that you look at and think “she does that really well” or “I wish I could do that like them”. Then pull together a list of simple questions like I have above for Alfonso.

Generally, people like talking about themselves and their achievements, not to be big headed but most people find it nice to be asked.

So grab a bag of bravery and ask away!

Become a better and more informed cricket coach or player as a result.