Coaching Youth Cricket features explanations, photos, and illustrations depicting the various drills and skills of cricket, including fielding, bowling, and batting. Also included are chapters devoted to helping coaches communicate with players, understanding rules and equipment, keeping practices fun and motivating, ensuring safety, and teaching cricket skills. Written by renowned cricket expert Ian Pont, Coaching Youth Cricket will enable coaches at all levels to fulfill their responsibility to nurture and develop young cricketers and help them foster a lifelong passion for the game.
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 You, a Youth Cricket Coach?
2 Communicating as a Coach
3 Understanding Rules and Equipment
4 Providing for Players’ Safety
5 Making Practices Fun and Practical
6 Teaching and Shaping Skills.
7 Coaching Fielding
8 Coaching Bowling
9 Coaching Batting
10 Coaching on Match Day
11 Developing Season and Practice Plans
Appendix A: Related Checklists and Forms
Appendix B: Cricket Terms
Appendix C: 15 Game-Based Drills
Ian Pont has been appointed Bowling Coach to the Bangladesh National Team. He played first-class cricket for Nottinghamshire and Essex from 1981 to 1988. Pont has been the specialist bowling coach for many professional cricket teams, including Kent, Northamptonshire, Essex, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. He has also been a coach involved at the international level with England (2003) and Netherlands (2005-2007). He holds a level 3 UKCC head coach qualification and is currently an ECB national skills set coach and Northamptonshire bowling coach. Ian is also head coach of the International Cricket Camp in Potchefstroom, South Africa, which takes place each December and features world-class coaches such as Gary Kirsten, Graeme Pollock and Jimmy Cook. This camp is now regarded as the very best of its kind for developing technical and mental skills for fast bowling and batting.