Iain Brunnschweiler is on tour, coaching England Under 19s in Sri Lanka. This is the second part of the diary, you can read part one here.

Day 7

Day seven brought first International match of the trip, as we took on India U19s at the Premedasa Stadium.

For the duration of this trip, we have had a police escort taking us through Colombo. It seems rather odd to have such a prescence, but it is testament to how important cricket is to this fabulous island. The Sri Lankans are lovely people, are some of the friendliest and smiliest that I have come across, and, boy, do they love cricket! There are so many cricket ground in such a small space, it’s brilliant to see. For most of the coaching staff, the police escort has reminded us of TV episodes of CHiPS (California Highway Patrol) that were on during the 1980s. These guys have similar beige jodhpurs and a cracking white motorbike.

We knew we were in for a tough battle on the pitch, as the Indians fielded a strong side, featuring Sarfaraz Khan (recently having scored runs for RCB in the IPL). It was Sarfaraz who showed his undoubted talent with an excellent 84, playing our spinners with aplomb.

We are lucky enough to have an excellent young spin attack, spear-headed by Hampshire duo of Brad Taylor and Mason Crane. Both lads have already taken first-class wickets for Hampshire, with Taylor having taken a 4-for as a 16 year old against Lancashire, and Crane breaking onto the scene with five wickets against Warwickshire. However even these two classy young spinners were on the receiving end of Sarfaraz and pals, with the Indians posting 254.

I was personally very disappointed with our fielding and bowling performance, mainly because I know we can do so much better. On reflection though, much of our carefully planned prep week was affected by the huge thunderstorms, and this was the first time that the players had entered the field as a unit to bowl in the middle! So they were definitely underprepared.

It reminded me that in order to succeed in such a crazy sport as cricket, you have to be highly adaptable to whatever conditions and challenges you meet.

We ended up losing the game on D/L, so a poor start.

Day 8

We had a training day today, with nets being made available at the Premedasa Stadium. Something that many coaches ask me, is how we keep things fresh and avoid having stale or meaningless practices.

I’ve got two answers: competition and mental cost.

1. Competition

In all of my experience of working from U11’s through to International players, there is one sure fire way to ensure that you get the most out of them is to make it competitive!

This could be setting challenges in the nets, setting up scenarios or phases of a one day match, giving bowlers individual targets of hitting a certain line or length…it could be anything. When you make it competitive and you engage your players, they will love it. We spend a lot of time as a coaching staff discussing exactly these things to enable the players to compete with each other in training, whether it is batting, bowling or fielding.

2. Mental cost

Now this may not be a common phrase to everyone, but it is something that I think about every single time I am involved in setting up practice sessions,

How am I going to create a mental cost for the players?

By this I mean that I want the players to engage their brains when they are practicing, not just hit balls or bowl meaninglessly.

Often just by making things competitive you can create a mental cost, and if you set a field for batters or bowlers in the nets, then they are actively thinking about whether their shots or deliveries were actually successful in the given scenario.

Another way of creating a mental cost which we regularly use, is to have a ‘sin-bin’ zone for batters, or a ‘good ball or goodbye’ policy for bowlers.

• Sin Bin Zone. If a batter gets out in the nets, they have to walk out of the nets, take their pads off, drink some water, re-pad and then re-join the net. They hate doing this, and therefore the price they put on their wicket increases!
• Good ball or Goodbye. A bowler can continue bowling as long as he bowls the delivery that he intends to. Clearly he has to say this out loud to one of the other bowlers or coach at the end of the net. If his outcome doesn’t match his intention, then he gets taken off, and goes to the back of the queue.

There are limitless variations to all of this, but competition and mental cost are the way forward in training!!!

Days 10-11

Back-to-back matches. This is where the boys will make it or break it in the competition. Having performed disappointingly in game one, we reviewed and discussed the main areas we needed to improve upon, and focused on them in practice. We knew we had let ourselves down in the field and with the ball, and wanted to put it right against Sri Lanka.

We certainly did that. From the first couple of overs Lancashire’s Saqib Mahmood and Somerset’s Ben Green hit the deck hard, and we put the squeeze on in the field. Wit the seamers having done a good job, it was our Hampshire spin twins of Brad and Mason, with combined figures of 20 overs, 6-72 that reduced the hosts to 191 all out. A highly chaseable total on a good deck.

Unfortunately what unfolded was not what we were after. Wickets fell all too regularly, and we found ourselves up against it. A bit of a rear-guard from the highly talented Ryan Davies in partnership with skipper Brad Taylor gave us a glimmer of hope, but it was too little too late. Played two, lost two.

With no time to dwell on it, the next day we were back at Premedasa ready to take on the Indian favourites. Despite the losses so far, there was a very positive mood in the camp as we knew we were getting better by the game. If we could match up a batting performance to go with our bowling and fielding we could take down either of these teams.

We lost the toss, and after 30 overs India were 200-2! Blazing hot day and staring down the barrel of a 320-340 chase. Dan Lawrence induced a false shot from Bhui and it was well caught by the skipper. The response was outstanding, as we fielded and bowled brilliantly, taking 8 wickets for 60 runs.

Dan Lawrence got us off to an awesome start, with a run-a-ball 50, ably supported by George Bartlett. But the Indian spinners bowled very well, and once again wickets fell too regularly for our liking. Youngster Max Holden (Middlesex) joined Bartlett at the crease, and the pair of 17 year olds batted with maturity way beyond their years edging us towards victory. These two are definitely on the ‘ones to watch’ list.

But when Bartlett went for 70, young Max was left to try in vain to take us over the line, finishing with 46 and just short of a landmark win.

The devastation in the changing room was obvious.

The thing about youth cricket is, though, that failure is where the learning gets its ignition.

For those who are able to bank the feelings, and experiences of defeat, and use them to drive development, will no doubt come back stronger.