VOLUME 1, ISSUE 8 FEBRUARY, 2017 COACHES CORNER NEWSLETTER Pathway Events in Cricket NSW: U18 Male Country Challenge Cowra - Feb 3-5, 2017 U15 Male School Sport Final Squad trial Feb 5, 2017 at BISP U15 Male School Sport Australia Championships March-April 2017 in Brisbane U16 Male State Challenge April 2017 Inside this issue: In this edition of Coaches Corner, we focus on the way T20 cricket has revolutionized power hitting. The main article for this edition, focusses on the Science of the Big Hit. There is also a video link by Julian Wood who has become a bit of an expert in how the cricketer can achieve their maximum power hitting range, through a variety of exercises and drills. He uses the comparison with baseball hitters and transforms this into the cricket swing. It is definitely worth a look!! The second article looks at The people we want to work with? It focusses on the use of a Venn diagram where the author outlines three major aspects: 1 Dream Big 2 Get Sh*t Done 3 Have Fun These are 3 aspects, as a cricket coach, we could use at our clubs and representative teams or with our individual players. Getting the right balance will allow the team or individual to perform at his/her best, as well as create the right environment for success. On page 6, a useful resource for playing spin bowling creating invariable turn and bounce for our batsmen! Enjoy reading and hope it helps your coaching in some way! The Science of the Big Hit Power Hitting Video Power Hitting 2 2-3 Article of the Month Qualities of People I Like Working With! Dates for Calendar 6 4-5 The article this month The Science of the Big Hit looks at power hitting. With the Big Bash just finishing, we have seen some powerful and amazing striking over 90-100 metres. How does this happen? The article, and video link on page 3 looks at the science behind the big hitters! Useful Resource 6
Page 2 COACHES CORNER NEWSLETTER Article of the Month The science of the big hit! There's a lot more to hitting a long ball than clearing your front foot out of the way and having a swipe. All batsmen hit the ball to score runs but some build their games around hitting big and hard. Brendan McCullum belongs to that category, while Jacques Kallis looks to find a balance between aggression and defence. I am not a big hitter, so I watch in awe when someone like McCullum, Lynn or Gayle goes berserk. But there is more to hitting the ball hard and far than just whacking a white round object thrown your way. There are different ways to hit the ball and this is my attempt at break down the method behind the madness. Momentum To play fast bowlers behind the wicket, you can use the pace of the ball to good effect. But if you want to hit them down the ground it's almost like playing against spinners: you'll need to generate some pace of your own. In other words, momentum, which can be achieved in different ways. The back-lift: The higher the back-lift, the harder the impact of bat on ball. That's why we see players like Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag hitting further than the rest without really trying to knock the leather off the ball. To get the bat to come down at the right time, they need to either initiate the downswing early or increase the bat speed; but those are small adjustments to gain the extra yards. Many Australian batsmen, like Ricky Ponting, cock their wrists at the highest point of the back-lift to get the bat higher, and then unwind at the point of impact. That increases the back-lift and the bat speed. Use your feet: Most batsmen prefer this to adjusting their back-lifts. The objective here is to throw the weight of the body behind the shot at the point of impact. It's common to step out of the crease against the spinners - Virat Kohli does it really well - but these days many batsmen successfully do it against fast bowlers as well. Timing Players like Sachin Tendulkar are blessed with this gift. They don't need high back-lifts to send the ball speeding down the ground or careening through the air. The trick is to meet the ball at the right point of the downswing and then transfer the weight from one foot to another at the point of impact. It's as complicated as it sounds and that's why a lot of good batsmen spend their careers searching for this elusive skill. And it's why lessaccomplished batsmen, despite high back-lifts and powerful arms, rarely manage to clear the fence. POWER HITTING VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kirthkyigys
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 8 Page 3 Article: Science of the Big Hit (cont) Maintaining shape Hitting a long ball on a regular basis is as technical as playing a cover drive. While the back-lift and downswing are important, the shape a batsman maintains during and after the shot is equally important. Lynn is a good example: he keeps his head still and maintains a stable base and good shape, during and after the shot. No wonder he's one of the biggest hitters of the ball. The follow-through, a by-product of a good downswing, is just as important. The arms should follow the line of the shot and not fall away. Hitting a long ball on a regular basis is as technical as playing a cover drive. While the back-lift and downswing are important, the shape a batsman maintains during and after the shot is equally important. Lynn is a good example: he keeps his head still and maintains a stable base and good shape. Free your arms You must have room to swing your arms freely. Bowlers will try to eliminate this space by pitching it straight, and batsmen respond by clearing the front leg to create the necessary room - Brad Hodge does it to hit the ball in the midwicket area - or by going deep inside the crease to get under balls that are pitched up. MS Dhoni is really good at getting under the ball and that's why he manages to hit yorkers with ease. If you want to hit in the air, there are some more things to keep in mind. When you step out, you mustn't get close and over the ball but stay slightly away to get under it. While playing a grounded shot, the impact with the ball occurs during the downswing, with the face of the bat tilted slightly towards the ground. When you play a lofted shot, you hit the ball when the bat is facing upwards. In theory the lofted shot is an extension of the one played on the ground, but there's more to it; only a few players, like Matthew Hayden, can hit the quicker bowlers down the ground by simply extending and elevating the straight drive. That's one difference between Hayden and Uthappa. While Hayden hits them with a straight bat, Uthappa hits with a horizontal bat. The straight bat is a safer option because there's more room for error if you misread the bounce. By choosing horizontal strokes, the batsman risks missing or edging the ball if it bounces more or less than he anticipated. We have come a long way from the time when hitting sixes was a synonym for slogging. Hitting sixes on a regular basis is an art only a few have mastered. And those few are worth their weight in gold, especially in the Twenty20 format. Article Chopra ESPN cricinfo.com
Page 4 COACHES CORNER NEWSLETTER Article The Three Qualities of People I Most Enjoy Working With! Jeff Weiner (CEO Linkedin) It all started in a meeting where a talented team was presenting their plan for a potentially high impact initiative. Midway through, they covered the measurable results they expected to achieve in three years. Granted, they were being somewhat conservative, but their objectives were still way off what I would have expected them to be targeting based on the addressable opportunity and the assets we were bringing to the table. Without hesitation, I challenged the team to increase their longterm goal by roughly 20x. Regardless of whether or not they could hit the target (which I think they can), the point was to get them thinking much bigger, without constraints, and to start by asking the question, "What would it take...?" Get Sh*t Done Almost immediately after seeing those words in writing, I realized the message was incomplete. The team leading the discussion that day may have been conservative in their approach to articulating what was possible, but they were also highly capable and credible -- and had a proven track record of delivering results. Demanding excellence is an important value for us. It's something I would never want taken for granted or Dream Big Often times, my favourite exchanges are with people who are naturally predisposed to think at truly massive scale and without limitations. When well reasoned, that kind of vision can be highly inspirational, change the way teams solve for a specific opportunity or challenge, and ultimately, transform the trajectory of a company. During this particular meeting, I ended up writing down two simple words to capture this quality: "Dream big," with the intention of cascading the theme more broadly. crowded out by the singular objective of thinking at scale. Asking people to dream big without delivering on the vision was not only an incomplete sentiment, it could carry the unintended consequence of producing pie-in-the-sky thinking without anything to show for it.
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 8 Page 5 Article: (CONT) If a goal is truly visionary, it's going to be confronted by doubters, sceptics, and those threatened by its realization. As a result, there will always be walls put up on the way to achieving the objective. Some of the most capable people I've worked with know how to go over, around, or straight through those walls by virtue of their resourcefulness and sheer force of will. In other words, they just "get sh*t done." I added those three words to my notes, drew overlapping circles around "Get sh*t done" and "Dream big", and thought about how invaluable it is to work with people at the intersection of the two. I've reached a point in my career where I want to be surrounded by people who not only share a vision, but a genuine commitment to upholding their company's culture and values. They are team players, don't take themselves too seriously, and "know how to have fun." And with that, I added a third circle to the Venn diagram. At the nexus of these three circles are the people I most enjoy working with. I'm extraordinarily grateful to have the opportunity to do that every day. Know How to Have Fun It then occurred to me that I've known a number of people who embodied the ability to dream big and get sh*t done, but who also proved very difficult to work with. Perhaps shielded by the immense value they brought to their respective organizations, they never cultivated the ability to manage compassionately, or even cared to. Rather, they did things their way and expected everyone around them to adapt accordingly. More often than not, that's exactly what people did. While this has clearly proven to work at some now legendary companies, it's not an easily scalable or reproducible model, it's not necessary, and in my opinion, it's not fun (I say in my opinion because there are those who will argue that winning is fun, regardless of the means employed).
Dates for the Calendar: Parent and Coach Information Evenings at State Challenge Carnivals in January 2017 Cricket NSW Male and Female Academy nominations and trials for 2017/18 season February/March 2017 Level II Coaching Course April/May 2017 U16 Male State Challenge Sydney April 2017 THE WEB! Useful Resource: Playing Spin Aid As we know, the Australian side heads off to India to embark on one of the hardest tours for our batsmen. How can we create an environment where we can practice for turn, bounce and invariability to prepare them for the sub-continent? Easy solution take them there for a few weeks and play games on their pitches. However, time does not always allow this. How can we do that in Australia when our players are young? One solution might be to create invariable bounce using a mat. The picture to the right can be placed on the pitch, throwing balls into that area, creating invariable turn and bounce. This will cause the batsmen to have to make better decision and use their crease forward and back to cope with the invariability. Give it a try? Cricket NSW Driver Avenue, Moore Park, NSW, 2021. Phone: 02 8302 6000 Website: http:// www.cricketnsw.com.au/ support/coach-support/ Email: info@cricketnsw.com.au