A pre-season letter to a young batter

Peter Procopis | August 11, 2023

 

Season’s greetings young willow wielder,

I imagine you’ve begun some early preparations for Season 2023/24. You may have had a couple of hits with your mates; Club training is now morphing from fitness to nets; and you may even have had your first fielding session- usually quite a shock for those phalanges and their soft tissue surrounds.

No doubt there are a few things that will occur over the next month as the countdown continues. In no particular order you can expect to experience the following:

1. There’ll be a bunch of new players at the Club’s pre-season sessions. This will typically excite coaching staff and selectors who are, of course, vulnerable to the all-too-human bias towards the new and novel over the old and familiar. This will be compounded if the newcomers demonstrate ball machine prowess and net mastery. Of course, as sure as night follows day, some will turn out to be performers in the middle; others will not.

2. You will spend much of your training time in the nets facing no-balls from the seam-up crew, some of which will be minor infractions measurable on a 30cm ruler; others monstrous violations for which you’ll need a large 1m teacher ruler and more. The spinners for their part will have what seems like eighteen fieldsmen manning their imaginary fields. You’ll have that pre-net chat about their crazy field anyway because it’s a visible demonstration to any selectors or influencers present that you are a serious cricketer. To counter the bowlers’ indiscretions, you will paper over any potential dismissals due to the vagaries of predicting how far a ball would have carried or the line a fieldsman might be on.

3. You will do minimal if any running between the wickets. The bits and pieces you do will likely lack the most important element you’ll need out in the middle: judgement of a run.

4. When you make timing errors, you will likely be early rather than late. That’s because you’re a human being and until you get out in the middle in a real match on a real pitch with real fieldsmen and real bowlers, you will naturally retain that bit of extra anxiety about your game. Hence the pushing at the ball a bit too much at times.

5. On the flip side, you will have the odd session when, in the modern parlance, you’ll ‘smoke’em’. Conditions will conspire to make you feel like a combination of Viv (look him up), Kohli, Ponting and Lara. Enjoy that feeling; ponder for a while why it occurred; reach a conclusion and store that info away; then, move on. Because after all, it’s the nets…. that’s all.

6. You will do a lot of continuous batting. You know that rapid fire ball-after-ball caper so very different to real batting. There will be a ton off sweat; some aching wrists and forearms; and the odd shocker of a ‘net’ when you fail to overcome a rough start and a couple of flashes of anger lead to a pretty ordinary 20 odd minutes- much more easily done when participating in those pinball-like affairs.

Notwithstanding all that, you’ll lap it up because you love the game…all of it.

Now comes the duty part. I feel a duty towards you: a duty to give you a few training ideas to complement the usual stuff. If you’re going to put so much effort into the game, it makes sense to prepare more specifically for that first set of real batting challenges.

I challenge you to consider and act upon these three suggestions prior to Day One of Season 23/24:

1. Get out in the middle. Use whatever influence you have at your Club to get some batting time in the middle of a ground. Regardless of whether you’re successful in that quest, conduct your own sessions with your pals or private Coach somewhere in the middle. It may be at a junior cricket ground on a synthetic pitch, or it may simply be on some short grass on an Oval. Use cones, stakes with pool noodles around them (thank you Ian Renshaw for that idea), witches’ hats…whatever…to set fields. There is nothing like the fulsome feedback on your stroke-play that comes from this sort of practise. You may even like to set up some type of competitive game that not only involves runs but also some running between the wickets judgements.

2. Do a few ‘real time’ training sessions. Even if your first few matches are T20s, you can still expect to only receive a delivery once every 15-25 seconds against spinners and one once every 30-40 seconds against seam-up flingers. And, of course, that’s if you unrealistically stay on strike for every ball. Even in a T20, sometimes 2-3 minutes will pass between deliveries for you. Practice your routine; practice cycling through your phases of concentration. Yes, you’ll need to either add time to your training session or reduce the balls faced. But the benefits far outweigh any costs there. Rapid-fire net sessions are unhelpful when it comes to this aspect of batting. So, do your own.

3. Set aside a small amount of time in each of your sessions to rehearse your responses to chaotic events. During an innings all manner of frustrations and disruptions occur. So, plan for them. Here are a few common events that have the potential to change the chemicals in your brain and affect everything from your breathing to your coordination, and consequently your batting :

A) two dot balls in a T20;

B) copping one in the abdomen or on the helmet;

C) first ball after drinks;

D) first ball of a new bowler;

E) first ball of a spinner;

F) the ball after you hit a Big Dog maximum and the boys go wild;

G) the ball after you’ve run three quick 2s in succession;

H) a very nervous team mate looks like he could call a fatal run at any moment of his first ten minutes at the crease; and

I) your former team mate gives you an absolute gobful about your batting technique.

These events can be disruptive. They will happen regardless of your actions, so accept that and devise simple, practical responses that re-centre your focus onto the next ball.

I submit these thoughts to you in the hope that you may take a few deep breaths, pause for a few moments and reflect on what it is you will really need in the helter-skelter chaos of the impending real matches in which opposition players and events frequently conspire to create problems for you to solve and examinations for you to pass. Have the confidence to prepare purposefully and particularly rather than just generally.