Thank You India: What English Cricketers Learned from the Indian Experience
I'm writing this week's article from a coach travelling from Jalandhar to Delhi. The green countryside is rushing past and there are lots of Millfield cricketers chatting about the wonderful experiences that they have picked up to date on our Indian cricket adventure.
We have played 8 games so far in our 2 squads. We have 4 wins, 1 tie and 3 losses to our name. That's a fantastic effort considering the completely alien conditions that all the players have encountered: Heat, dust, spinning pitches, lots of spinners, doosras, excellent players and lots of travel have provided the challenge to our 29 players. They are doing brilliantly.
The biggest learning outcomes for me have been:
Independence
This has come up from our player management group in each of the U15s review meetings: Indian players just "get on with it". They all move covers, put the stumps out, Mark the pitch, set up their fielding drills, go off and work on their own in the nets to master their game whilst the usual mode of the English young player is to wait for a coach to tell them what to do.
The role modelling of our hosts is beginning to rub off on our behaviours. There are now less mumblings of "where are the balls", "what shall we do now Garas?" and "can you come and throw for me please?". There are more examples of self reliance and industry from the U15's. It is great to see and experience.
"Jumping Jack" when playing back to spin
The wickets have turned big. Really big! It will be no surprise to you that we have played against 80% spin since landing last week. The spin has generally been slow off of the pitch. It has been noticeable that the local batters have honed their skills of exploding back into the crease to maximise the distance between ball bounce and contact. Some of the local examples of this in the first few games were fantastic and have left a real impression on the U15 group.
Yesterdays T20 game against Harbhajan Singh's Academy was won when the Millfield captain jumped back and hammered the leg spinner past Square-leg to the fence:
"The ball is hard, the ground is hard. That will never change. Accept it and get on with it!"
This was the message that was delivered to the U15s after performance which lacked resilience on Match day 3. We had niggles and those niggles and bruises disrupted the teams flow. We performed lamely as a result. We chatted about the heroic performance of Michael Clarke in the 1st Test after the death of Philip Hughes. Clarke made himself selectable, then had to retire on 60 no to receive injections into his back, had a night in hospital so he could bat the next day and score a ton for his "little brother".
This is what makes our game so incredible: The legends of the game make these type of choices.
The next day, the boys turned up with a newly found approach. This was epitomised by one of our players choosing to keep wicket even though his finger is quite badly injured. It was his choice, he led from the front and his team mates were inspired by the choice he made yesterday morning.
I don't force anyone to make those choices, yet in the challenging environment that is India, it's those type of decisions that are required if you want to fly back to the UK as an enhanced cricketer and person.
On behalf of Millfield School, I thank you India.
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Comments
While being appreciate of the fantastic ideas and experience that Mark shares through PitchVision this feels a horribly misjudged article.Missing is the fact that Michael Clarke tore his hamstring as a likely consequence of making himself ‘selectable’.
A 33 year old man can absolutely make those decisions, but to use this as an example to 14 year old children to my mind fails any duty of care test.The ‘boys’ here are children. They are not ‘boys’ in the infantile way adult sportsmen are far too often described as. For a child with a quite badly injured finger to even be allowed to play on, let alone celebrated for doing so, is astonishing.
Andrew, I welcome your view yet the player was not forced to play. It was a choice that was made by him with support and advice from his family who accompanied him on the tour and the physiotherapist who works with the boys on a daily basis. As with all good decisions, it was one that was made by the player with support from a huge network of people.
The player ended up performing well behind the stumps and scored 34not out to win the final game of the tour. He went home with huge confidence and a wonderful experience. This was confirmed by his parents email into myself last night who stated that the tour was 'the greatest learning experience that he had ever experienced'.
I would never pass comment on someone else's practice or duty of care unless I knew the case intimately. I hope that the duty of care listed above goes someway towards demonstrating how I and the organisation that I represent operate.
Mark,
Thank you for adding this additional information.
Including a physiotherapist and the boys family as part of the decision-making process makes a real difference to the story.
I am sure the last thing you would want is coaches allowing children to play that are "quite badly injured" without professional advice - most importantly - and parental approval.
Happy Christmas to you and your family.
Andrew