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Widely considered to be the greatest one day batsman ever, Michael Bevan seemed to have two or three shots to every delivery. If he had stuck with the recognised wisdom he would not have been half as effective.
Nowadays he is not alone. Twenty20 is breeding batsmen and bowlers who are doing things that the authors of the MCC coaching book would baulk at.
So is it time to throw out the copy book and just play with natural flair and freedom?
Greg Chappell, in his book on coaching, argues that many coaches and players are very focussed on the technical details of playing: Positions of feet, elbows and wrists. This causes paralysis by analysis as the brain does not work in that way.
He prefers letting players learn for themselves: Tell bowlers to run up and bowl at targets, batters to hit the ball into certain areas and let them work out the best way to do it.
This teaches players to develop their own techniques and also to play with great freedom. Modern coaching is often accused of 'over-coaching' players in this way.
On the other hand do we really want to disregard years of best practices so quickly?
The reason the coaching books and courses were created was to pass on information of what worked to the next generation. For example, the commonly coached grip is the perfect way to have your hands in position to play every shot. Changing the grip changes almost every other aspect of batting.
As Bob Woolmer said the higher level you play, the more technically perfect you have to become because the better the technique is of everyone else.
What is essential?
What I feel it boils down to is this simple question: What are the essential elements to batting, bowling and fielding?
In the old days there was one way: the copybook way. Every movement and position had to be exactly as in the pictures. Anything else was just plain wrong.
Over the years we have slowly come to learn that different people can do the same thing in different ways. There are many batting stances, backlifts, bowling actions, grips and fielding methods. Some techniques previously deemed incorrect have been used with success at the highest level.
Not everything works for everyone, but some things remain in the essential category. It's just a lot less than we used to think it was.
Greg Chappell looked at great players and found despite massive differences in technique all the players did just 4 things the same: unweighted, coiled, used levers and had timing. If you have all those then you are perfect, even if you are not perfect in the technical sense.
Knowing this gives you freedom to work on your cricket skills without the fear of failing because you have a bad technique.
You can work out your own best method without interfering with the real basics.
Great coaches are better at doing this than average coaches, who default back to the copybook or the cliché when they don't know what else to say. It's well meaning but ill informed.
So you don't have to be a gifted technician to make it even to the highest level. You can even do some stuff 'wrong'. However if you are going to make it, you do need to understand why something works, not just what is supposed to work.
That's the real sign of mastery of your art and if you can do that, the sky is the limit.
Image credit: anandham
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