Small Club Cricket Captaincy - How To?

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Reading your blog Dave, to bat first on a wet pitch with a weak batting lineup seems like very strange advice. I would love to hear the reasoning behind that. I'd have thought the best (only?) chance of winning was sticking them in and hope they collapse on the dodgy track.
 
Hi Dave
Read through some of your blog again recently


Some thoughts from me:

A mistake I made last year was I didn't show a desire to win. I showed a desire to let everyone play and this put some players off a lot and they didn't really care how they did playing. If they have no desire to win, they do not care whether they win or lose. You want them to feel like they've let the team and themselves down when they do badly and strive to improve

I also found that it was very hard to bat as the captain. It puts you off a lot and very hard to relax. Especially as the lowest team in the club you are spending a lot of time organizing etc and it gets on your mind. I found it best to stick yourself down the order, even if its like 8/9. Also delegating as much as possible is key - I would never score/umpire until after I've batted as the captain as its just more concentration and mental drain.

And agree with SLA. If it is already wet you want to consider bowling. If you only have one new ball per game then always want to bowl first. There is only one time I would ever consider batting first - sunny clear day, on a batting track with some confidence in the batting. Rain later on makes little difference - its harder to bowl, but harder to get the ball away and the ball slows up in the outfield.
 
TonyM said:
Dave, as regards Ben, or any other batter, but particularly juniors who are used to T20, try to reduce the 'task'. If he is walking out at 40 odd for 8, as was the case last week, its easy to get overwhelmed. Try to set smaller targets, and perhaps tie this in with running a mini league for the under 15s in the squad, could simply be runs or balls faced in the short term, but I would prefer something more team oriented so perhaps looking at partnerships they have been a part of? This is why I like 'singles' practice in nets, learn to rotate the strike and batting suddenly becomes a team game.

As for the batting order, if they are all much of a muchness and (as seems the case) everyone will get a bat as you are struggling to complete your overs I think you are on the right lines - split up the juniors with the seniors available and perhaps rank the juniors based on how many overs they bowl (less overs = higher up the order) but try to rotate this around when the opportunity arises or perhaps once one or two do show some improvement. As an aside, how are the under 15s in your squad doing, batting wise, in age group cricket, do they bat with more freedom against their peers?
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First U15's is this coming Thursday, I can't make it on Thursday nights for the next 3 as I teach an evening class. So I'm not going to be able to watch and get a sense of how he does?

Generally Ben's been put down the order in last years U15's, but the older lads have moved on now and he's probably going to be a key player in the squad - with the likelihood of batting at No.5. Shame is, some of the other older supporting players that should have been in this team seem to have disappeared and it looks as though from No.7 down, it's kids being brought in from the U13's. If Ben goes in with a different attitude this year he could have some impact and grow in confidence, the opening match is a team he batted well against last season - so this could be a significant point in his batting?

I like the idea of creating a partnership league amongst the U15's - I may try that.
 
SLA said:
Reading your blog Dave, to bat first on a wet pitch with a weak batting lineup seems like very strange advice. I would love to hear the reasoning behind that. I'd have thought the best (only?) chance of winning was sticking them in and hope they collapse on the dodgy track.
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Retrospectively it was daft, I don't know if they based the idea on the fact that the last time we played them they were very weak? The captain though was explaining to someone else that the players that were playing today had been 4th XI players the season before last and last year were moved up to the 2nds, played there a year, didn't do that well and had now moved back to the 4ths because the 4ths had been poor last year.

Looking now at the league rules if we'd have abandoned the game we'd have gained 6 points each, but that kind of goes against the idea that I wait all week to have a game of cricket and to abandon it because it's a bit wet and we might get beat is just dumb and bad sportsmanship? The blokes on the other team commended me at the end of the game for not abandoning the game because of the weather, there was a point where we were within our rights to stop the game because there was a little light rain. I could have brought everyone off for a short period of time. If we'd have done that, the game would have gone on longer and would have had to be stopped, because shortly after we finished, having lost, it poured down.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Retrospectively it was daft, I don't know if they based the idea on the fact that the last time we played them they were very weak? The captain though was explaining to someone else that the players that were playing today had been 4th XI players the season before last and last year were moved up to the 2nds, played there a year, didn't do that well and had now moved back to the 4ths because the 4ths had been poor last year.

Looking now at the league rules if we'd have abandoned the game we'd have gained 6 points each, but that kind of goes against the idea that I wait all week to have a game of cricket and to abandon it because it's a bit wet and we might get beat is just dumb and bad sportsmanship? The blokes on the other team commended me at the end of the game for not abandoning the game because of the weather, there was a point where we were within our rights to stop the game because there was a little light rain. I could have brought everyone off for a short period of time. If we'd have done that, the game would have gone on longer and would have had to be stopped, because shortly after we finished, having lost, it poured down.
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We were virtually the only team in the county to play last weekend. Everyone kept moaning at me telling me to call it off because it was supposedly forecast to rain all afternoon, but it was sunny enough for us to get a full game in.

As it happens we lost, but its far better to play and lose than not play at all.

I imagine all the skippers that called the games off for rain last weekend must have been pretty embarrassed when it was sunny all afternoon. I know if a team I played for called off games on a whim just because of the "forecast of rain" I'd find another club that didn't mess me around.
 
SLA said:
We were virtually the only team in the county to play last weekend. Everyone kept moaning at me telling me to call it off because it was supposedly forecast to rain all afternoon, but it was sunny enough for us to get a full game in.

As it happens we lost, but its far better to play and lose than not play at all.

I imagine all the skippers that called the games off for rain last weekend must have been pretty embarrassed when it was sunny all afternoon. I know if a team I played for called off games on a whim just because of the "forecast of rain" I'd find another club that didn't mess me around.
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Yeah that would p*** me off as well. Last year there were a couple of games and one in particular that was affected by very light showers, by the time we got back to the pavilion, the rain had stopped and it was okay again, we'd play another 15-20 minutes and it'd rain again, some of our blokes were doing their nut wanting to call the game off and I was there thinking shut up, just get on with it, all week I've waited for this...

Better weather this week and a better game - just typing up the blog at the moment.
 
Forgot I'd started this. Well it's a few months now since the season finished and somehow we managed to stay in this current league, despite being thrashed in almost every single game. I had to write a captains report and the modified version is here http://www.mpafirsteleven.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/review-of-my-first-year-as-captain.html overall I quite enjoyed it, so much so I'm sticking my hand up for another go in January at the AGM. Whether anyone else will go for it I don't know? I don't really know how people view the 4th XI and whether there are factions within the club that would rather see anyone do it rather than me? I'll have to see how it pans out.
 
Best of luck. Being a captain whether of the best side or one that gets flogged each week is a great honor. You are playing the sport your love, for hopefully the club you love and you are leading a team through the season - its an awesome feeling.

Most of your younger players, if they return, will be better off after a season playing 4th XI and wont be as nervous next season. I don't know if it helps but my team train twice a week, one day we are in the nets, the next we are actually out on the field practicing catching etc.

Although we are still struggling the improvement of our fielding has helped us over the course of the season to date. Maybe thats something you could do (if you don't already). Even if you only train once a week half way through the session pull your players out of the nets and start work on your fielding. After all it would help your sides all round performances.

The other thing you could do is switch things up - have one of your training sessions where the bowlers are the ones with the pads on in the nets, the batsmen are just providing throw-downs etc. Batsmen know how to bat, bowlers know how to bowl they don't need to work on it non-stop at every training session. By mixing things up a little bit your bowlers will get better at batting, even if only slightly, that way in a match situation if you need 10 runs to win and are into the tail your bowlers may feel confident enough (and be skilled enough) to get you home.

While at the same time, because the batsmen have been doing throw downs their arms would be stronger so in the field if there is a chance, or to put the opposition under pressure the throwing and stuff would be better.

Just some ideas really, it's what I have done so far and each week that passes by you can see the improvements.
 
young_cricket said:
Best of luck. Being a captain whether of the best side or one that gets flogged each week is a great honor. You are playing the sport your love, for hopefully the club you love and you are leading a team through the season - its an awesome feeling.

Most of your younger players, if they return, will be better off after a season playing 4th XI and wont be as nervous next season. I don't know if it helps but my team train twice a week, one day we are in the nets, the next we are actually out on the field practicing catching etc.

Although we are still struggling the improvement of our fielding has helped us over the course of the season to date. Maybe thats something you could do (if you don't already). Even if you only train once a week half way through the session pull your players out of the nets and start work on your fielding. After all it would help your sides all round performances.

The other thing you could do is switch things up - have one of your training sessions where the bowlers are the ones with the pads on in the nets, the batsmen are just providing throw-downs etc. Batsmen know how to bat, bowlers know how to bowl they don't need to work on it non-stop at every training session. By mixing things up a little bit your bowlers will get better at batting, even if only slightly, that way in a match situation if you need 10 runs to win and are into the tail your bowlers may feel confident enough (and be skilled enough) to get you home.

While at the same time, because the batsmen have been doing throw downs their arms would be stronger so in the field if there is a chance, or to put the opposition under pressure the throwing and stuff would be better.

Just some ideas really, it's what I have done so far and each week that passes by you can see the improvements.
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Cheers for this, yeah we do some of this already. I think our main problem is the other teams put out teams with 7 adults and 4 youth players generally, I'm sure their younger players were all of the stronger players in the 15-16 age bracket looking to ease them into adult cricket. Whereas we struggled to get a full team out each week, hence I was having to play with 6 young-uns , some as young as 12! Having said that, I don't know if I said it in the blog, but I've put my hand up to do it again next year because I did enjoy it and I'm hoping the same lads all a year older will be more successful.
 
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