Coaches should let players think for themselves
ESPNcricinfo staff
02-Apr-2013
In the Hindu, Greg Chappell writes that players tend to develop a natural style while learning to compete against older players and pick up coping and survival skills in unstructured environments, where excessive coaching inputs are absent. Taking India as an example, he writes that the country will be better served if they provide spaces for young kids to be able to meet other like-minded individuals to explore their own talents without too much interference from adults.
In the developed countries, the structured environments with highly intrusive coaching methods that have replaced those creative learning environments, have reduced batting to an exercise in trying to perfect the imperfectible. This has meant that batting skills have deteriorated to the point where modern players really struggle to survive, let alone make runs, when the pitch is other than a flat road where the odds are overwhelmingly in the batsman's favour. If I had my way, I would change the education of coaches from training them to be the font of all wisdom to becoming managers of a creative learning environment in which young cricketers learn the game with minimal invasion from adults.