Feb 24, 2021
A Call for the Thinking Cricketer — Chapter 1
Another lens towards making Sri Lanka more competitive in International Cricket
This article was originally published in thePapare.com
Prologue:
There’s a lot of behind the scenes movement inside Sri Lanka cricket these days.
The Sri Lankan fan is radiating disapproval on the performances of the national team in numerous creative ways. The spotlight has also fallen, arguably even more than before, on the local administration (Sri Lanka Cricket) , the cricketing structure and what not.
The problems are deep-rooted. We all know this. So the players shouldn’t be dealt the brunt of the criticism — that’s unfair. But their upbringing within the system and all those who are responsible for it should be. Everything from school cricket to club cricket to u19s and A teams (do they even exist anymore?) and the brains of the people in charge have been on a steady decline.
There’s no easy fix here. We’ve listened to prominent past players on how this can be turned around but that’s only us. The powers that be have deaf ears. Some are hopeful that there could be actual change this time around. I’d like to be hopeful too. We shall wait and see.
And as we do wait, this is a look into something that is devoid of all the structural problems and politicking that Sri Lanka cricket currently faces. Something if we take steps to implement can greatly improve our chances and add to the quality of cricket we play in the international game.
Chapter 1 — Cricket at the Grassroots
Day in Day Out
In the late 90s and early 2000s , this is usually how a day at the cricket practice panned out for us kids:
It could be the late afternoon or early morning depending on whether it was a weekday or a weekend. There was the head coach and a few assistant coaches to help him out.
Things kicked off with a couple of laps around the ground, then some warm ups. Most tried to call dibs on who gets to bat first, the rest fell in line to bowl. In the meantime, one of the assistant coaches would pick a few and walk off with them to do fielding drills. I usually jumped on the chance to bowl.
When the batters were ready, we would play. Everyone got the opportunity, around 20 minute sessions of batting. The coaches scrutinized the techniques and did their best to develop your game. Sometimes we end the day’s session with a competitive game on the ground, generally around 6–8 overs a side. And day in day out, this would repeat.
Lost in the Middle
Throughout the year we get to take part in a lot of practice games with schools and other clubs. Sometimes tournaments. The coach picked the team, usually announced at the top of the morning. And we played.
I remember coming on to bowl in many of these games and being a bit clueless. I could obviously remember my action and how to deliver the ball. But I was quite lost in terms of the field I should set.
The chat on top of the mark with the captain didn’t usually help either. We never asked the right questions like — How are we going to get this batsman out? What’s the mode of dismissal we are building towards? Or basically, what is the plan?
Spin the ball, loop it up and get it above the eye line, gather momentum as you hit the crease, brace and pivot, complete the action and follow through ( I bowled leg spin) — all these things were drilled in. But we didn’t know how to make use of these foundations. We didn’t know how to think about the game.
So we set a generic in and out field, tried to cover both sides of the wicket and played. Sometimes the coach shouted from the pavilion dictating terms. We obediently followed. This was the case for everyone.
And every game it was more or less the same.
The Morning After
After these inter- school or club level games, we go back to the routine.
We turned up at practice and repeated the same old.
At times we did talk about some of the batting and bowling etc. The tactical discussions primarily entailed the bowling changes, batting tempo, whether we rotated the strike sufficiently, the running between the wickets and so on. But rarely if at all the fields and the plans employed are broken down in depth.
What’s more? This is a pattern that to a large extent fed off to the club level and other domestic setups as well. We are taught to analyse the game only from one dimension.
And therein lies the point of this whole piece.
It’s 2021 now. But going by what is taking place on the field, it seems nothing has changed or ‘much to be done’, to quote Eddie Vedder, in order to build the thinking cricketer. Those cricket academies and high performance centers have their work cut out.
Like what you read?
The story continues in Chapter 2 — The Call for the Thinking Cricketer, where we dig deep into the resultant shortcomings in the international arena for Sri Lanka cricket.
This narrative consists of 3 Chapters. Find the links below:
