England's Woes

Everyone has an opinion on the wretched winter England cricket experienced. But the issue is now how is it retrieved?

There are many things the ECB has done wrong in the PR laden disaster that has befallen them during the past 5 months, culminating in defeat to one of my former teams, The Netherlands, in the T20 World Cup. Many of the wounds are self-inflicted and the rest are as a result of some exceptionally poor decision making.

The reality is, players take the field and not the coaches. The truth is, the coaching staff set the agenda and the players respond to it. So we have a virtuous circle - or in England's case, a vicious circle - that seamlessly interlinks success on the field with a happy camp.

So here are my '5 things to ensure' that English cricket gets its mojo back before it's too late:

1. Lose the cringeworthy 'team culture' message being spouted by everyone in an ECB tie, tracksuit or part of the payroll. 

2. Select the best available players to represent England, embrace the fact they are individuals and blend them into a winning outfit.

3. Stop speaking to fans and the media as if 'Team England" is a large corporate machine and we have stakeholders and shareholders.

4. Be honest when it goes wrong and be forthright about what you are going to do - and then do it.

5. Appoint the appropriate coaches and staff who can do the job they are appointed for, who can step up to the plate and who are willing to take responsibility.

We have lost sight of what's important in the melee of back room staff, reports, reviews, research and sheer numbers of those inputting the 'right culture' into what basically is a simple premise - enjoy your cricket, play without fear and express yourself.

Very soon we will know the successor for Andy Flower. That person will once again be in charge of all three formats of the game. They should have experience of how to develop a winning team. So it cannot be someone currently involved in my view. And it should also be someone who isn't looking for a job in cricket - a serial applicator for each and every coaching role that comes up.

My choice? Justin Langer. If he wanted it.

What's clear is that batting and bowling staff have failed miserably. It's been as if they are deers caught in headlights. They should go. Select the best coaches who can actually coach and make a difference. Do not choose people who are 'popular' just because they are 'good blokes'.

Give Langer a full brief. If he wants to bring back KP, then that is what happens.

Fill the England squad with pride. Appoint those unafraid to ruffle feathers. And above all, bring in an environment where people can be successful and rewarded for performances - not have selections that make no sense.

Grey men appointing grey ECB staff, is not where we can succeed. Cricket is an entertainment business and England must entertain. Ditch the culture. Embrace winning. Employ fighters. Lose the psycho babble and marketing speak. Restore the pride. Take responsibility. Straight talking.

It's a small window of opportunity. I doubt it will be taken. A good summer will again paper over cracks. But we really need a good summer. 

Maverick To Mainstream

The latest news is that pace is back on the agenda for cricket after Mitchell Johnson's brilliant summer, and I for one, am smiling! Today, I am the Director of Mavericks Cricket Institute but when I first began a coaching revolution back in 1995, I was widely viewed as a maverick with crackpot ideas. My ideas have remained unaccepted by mainstream coaching for almost 20 years. However, in a batch of recent studies, evidence has emerged that there might actually be ways to change a bowling action that can increase speed. My first course 20 years ago, offered money back to the students if they didn't bowl faster by the end of it. All 20 attendees increased their control and speed - some by as much as 16%. Using a new coaching methodology, I found success with teaching speed into bowlers rather than out of them. But no one was interested at that time. The main problem came as former players, commentators and current coaches didn't believe one could teach speed. Most thought fast bowlers are born and you have what you have, and so it cannot be coached. Also at that time, the English Cricket Board (ECB) didn't even exist. Then it was the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) and the National Cricket Association (NCA) running the game. All the coaching was based on the MCC coaching manual dating back almost 50 years. I, for one, simply couldn't believe that whilst other sports improved how players kicked, punched, threw, ran, cycled etc., cricket couldn't teach improvements in speed. That's what got me focused on looking into how we could do it. Drawing on my own background as a fast bowler, baseball pitcher and javelin thrower, I looked into what would be classified as 'best practice' for producing power safely. This led to identifying several common positions that could be adapted and adopted for fast bowling. And what was even more remarkable was that several of the world's quickest bowlers already shared those common traits. I discovered by speaking with baseball and javelin coaches that they had already researched into the best way to throw in their sports. We had nothing in cricket for fast bowlers, but when we looked further we found that some quicks already did those things. My first book, "The Fast Bowler's Bible" was written in 2003 and came out in 2005. In it, I started to lay out much of this work from thousands of case studies and notes of students. And what I found was interesting - I found myself saying pretty much the same things to each bowler I worked with. After a while, I could tell whether they would lose pace or control, what parts of the body were working properly or not and exactly where they needed to make slight tweaks to improve. That formed the basis for the book. Not satisfied with my own thought process, I also sought the input and coaching of top javelin coaches like Tertius Liebenburg and Jeff Gorski, and became influenced by baseball pitching coaches Al Widmar at Toronto Blue Jays and Bob Tiefenauer at Philadelphia Phillies. I also worked alongside Dr Kenneth West who had coached with 47 different sports in maximising performance. This set me off on a mission. I looked at physics, biomechanics, physiology, and motor movement and how many of these functioned for power generation sports. I looked at learning preferences and read books on a wide variety of aspects of skill acquisition. As a non-expert, I had to try to interpret and actually understand what I was discovering. But the challenge came from scientific papers. It is extremely hard for the lay person to understand scientific research. It is not written in a user-friendly way. It is also ambiguous most of the time too, so it can be easy to misinterpret and draw conclusions that simply are not there. Research is additionally limited as it only measures certain aspects of what is being looked at, so unless you are looking at the right things in the first place it might take you a while! My coaching style was continually evolving and I also designed a series of protocols that I could use at workshops and academies which I was running. Some other coaches also started to use these methods as the success rates with them, was proving extremely high. In 2005, I took up a position as bowling coach in 2005 for my native Essex and was appointed ECB National Skills Set Coach at Loughborough, working alongside Ottis Gibson, who went on to become England bowling coach. But to my dismay, I was unable to implement any of my own coaching methods. The bowling work being done by the ECB at that time was geared exclusively to injury prevention. The ECB-based coaches and others were focusing on 'prehab' and avoiding injury in fast bowlers. They got sidetracked completely on this in my opinion rather than how we can develop a safe way to coach fast bowling in the first place that has a strong efficacy for pace. That's because scientific research had highlighted how stress fractures were likely to happen. It had led to a restriction on fast bowling, which in my view, was causing many fast bowlers to actually lose pace or have their actions changed to the detriment of pace, but all in the name of safety. It meant that no thought was put into coaching speed. The irony appears to be that after all that effort, we seem to hear of more back injuries than ever! My second fast bowling book titled "Ultimate Pace Secrets", was released in 2012. This contained drills, coaching points and more importantly, the positions a fast bowler should strive for to be the best version of themselves. One simply had to accept and understand that everyone bowls differently. But we all have the same skeleton, so here I was talking about creating the right environment to maximise speed based on a process. Baseball and javelin have coaching processes, as do other sports like Golf. There are processes in how to throw a ball or javelin and hit a golf ball if you have any coaching. Clearly if you don't have coaching in those sports, or very little, you can still be effective. But we accept those sports have processes for maximising performance. Fast bowling is obviously no different. In more recent times, scientific research, whilst tentative, is starting to seek whether there is a commonality between bowlers and whether a protocol can be established for teaching pace. It is being suggested that a straight front leg may be an indicator for fast bowlers, as well as delaying the bowling arm, something I already coach to my wards. Both a straight front leg and delayed bowling arm are things I would always wish any bowler to master. There are very many other indicators that go with this like hip rotation, chest drive, alignment and many more mentioned in the books. I think that research into this area will ultimately lead the ECB to work with very similar principles I have been using for two decades. They might call it something different, but it will ostensibly be on the frame work of 'The Four Tent Pegs' and ABSAT, which are two of the main methodologies of my success with pace. To be fair, I don't blame the ECB for being so stuck for answers for so long, if they are waiting for science to tell them where to go next. My work is based on results in the real world, good old trial and error and an understanding of what works first hand. I am not restricted by research into existing methods. My role is to create new ones. You cannot make a bowling model from measuring what you have now, which is already flawed. As the current Head Coach of the Ultimate Pace Foundation in Bangalore, I have worked with Dale Steyn and Shoaib Akhtar. I am very open to helping any cricket board develop their coach education. The secret isn't knowing this stuff, it's how you pass it on to others - one can only do that if one has discovered the drills for coaching in the first place. You have to be able to coach people so they can understand why they should make changes and how they do that with their existing style of bowling. This is about enhancing a bowler's natural ability. My work is not a secret and it would be wonderful to finally realise that it is accepted as the way we should be teaching our youngsters if we truly want a legion of pace bowlers like Mitchell Johnson. And that, more than anything else, really makes me smile!

Don't Let Success Get In The Way Of Improvement

If I hear one more person say "if it ain't broke don't fix it" I will explode.

I have been listening to commentators rabbiting on about bowlers 'messing around' with their bowling actions and the legendary Wasim Akram then added: "I never changed my action when I was playing." Then of course we have the cursory nodding at each other in agreement.

Let me straighten this incorrect thinking.

Working on your bowling action is NOT 'messing around'. The comments about not tweaking parts of your action to make them better, usually comes from people who have no idea how a bowling action works. Bowlers can make a simple few tweaks to improve what they do. So why wouldn't you want to do that?

It seems odd to take this view that "I am bowling well so don't touch it". If we think about getting fit... is it desirable to be fitter, stronger and have better cardiovascular capabilities? YES

Is it desirable to eat better foods to fuel our body better and help combat diseases plus ensure energy levels are higher? YES

Is it desirable to work on variations and perfect yorkers/slower balls so we can get better results in matches? YES

Is it desirable to have new experiences and understand how to cope with tougher games thus understanding the mental aspect of the game better? YES

So can anyone explain why on Earth you wouldn't improve technique, that can have you bowling better, faster, more consistently and with less chance of injury?

What most people fail to realise is that technique is a desirable thing to work on because it helps you to deliver your natural skills better. A racing car with a better engine, brakes, steering and control allows the talented driver to exploit their skills better. No one ever settles on the car that won the previous year in F1. No one in F1 says "we won with that car in 2009, if it ain't broke don't fix it."

That would be madness. But I am not advocating that EVERY bowler should be changing things. Clearly there are some exceptional cricketers who are at the very top of the tree. However as Sir Garfield Sobers says: "What ever the level of cricket you play you want to be better." I fully agree with him.

I am not talking about wholesale changes here. I am talking about working consistently on a technique so you get better... like a batsman would do in the nets to make themselves less susceptible to certain deliveries.

The issue has arisen due to bowling coaches not understanding bowling actions, so therefore say don't touch it. International team coaches often will repeat the mantra about not helping on an action because X, Y, Z player is doing OK. And they will often cite the situation of James Anderson, who changed his action, then got injured and went back to his 'old' action and was successful. One badly implemented change doesn't mean changes are wrong. Like eating the wrong foods... you can say "I changed my diet as I was told". Except the diet changed to was wrong.

This doesn't mean that changes are wrong - just HOW and WHAT you change. If coaches don't know what to do then learn the right changes/tweaks to make for that style of individual bowler. 

In Javelin, golf and baseball, three other power generation sports (relative to fast bowling) technique is key to control, power, injury prevention and consistency.... and of course, winning. There will always be a bowler who does things 'his own way' and for that we celebrate the individuality of how that player has been brought up.

But you have to wonder why we don't know anything about fast bowling.

It starts with the comments I heard today watching TV. And ends with educating those in the truth about technique and the rich benefits it can bring to maximise a player's own natural ability. I suspect the thoughts will not change anytime soon though.