‘Talking Tactically’

with Lachlan Tighe..... 

(a weekly edition, commenced 12/9/2001, of thoughts, observations and commentaries on developments for bowls coaching and competition)

‘ Blacker bowling us a cricket lesson’  

(edition 144  - 2005 of thoughts & observations on lawn bowls)

Months ago Greg Chappell (now the newly appointed cricket coach for India) put me onto Steve Blacker as a source for coaching cricket. I re-read Steve’s manual for his club mates and in preparing my bowls squad saw the value of some insights in his approach 

Coincidentally this past few days four clubs have chatted to me about preparation for the next season in September.

I would like to share Steve’s view on preparation for cricket as it is pertinent to bowls clubs too.

Attitude

His club encouraged a good attitude from the players and it was evident by players who did hard work, regular at training, seeks reasons for sub performance not excuses, could accept criticism, set standards, and worked at being a team member.

Team Selection

The club saw that hard decisions had to be made at times though the players knew the three criteria were game performance, training, balance of team needs. He mentioned that selectors and he as coach would endeavour to let players who were promoted or demoted know pre the announcement of the sides. He said it is not always possible but it’s a standard we should always try to set and maintain.

I must admit that my with approach as a bowls coach, I would set a target for the coach / selectors that we WILL advise the affected players pre the game, not endeavour to, as that reflects an attitude in itself and a standard that can be improved by both me as a coach / selectors.

Unacceptable behaviour

Always a curly one as the punitive measures generally are at a selection table.  Steve noted these as examples that should be unacceptable to the rest of the team mates if they are fair dinkum about team success.  The player who cuts corners, avoids training, always justifies why it is not his fault, whinges about others, talks about he rather than we.

In bowls I have always cringed when I overhear Skips talk about ‘my’ side not ‘our’ side, or people answering the question how did we go today respond by talking about their game, not thinking that the side result is first importance then the rink then your own contribution. Interesting !

Again in bowls at national level, I continue to cringe when I hear of the punitive / standover mentality used towards (all) the players for the misdemeanours of a few.  I hoped that would change as we matured as a sport. The clubs would do well not to follow that approach but to set standards via the culture you set in place..

Team Plans

Love what Steve had in his manual as an example for batting where he divided the game into a number of overs and the expected progress of the score as the overs passed by.

My idea of segmenting the 25 end game of bowls pennant into 5 X 5 end segments to assess progress has a comparison now to his approach in cricket.  With the ‘Elbows’ bowls squad, they are all encouraged to break their event into smaller segments to appraise how they are going against what they set as an objective for a segment.

Learning from the best

Cricket has role models galore to learn from and Steve sights these in the manual for the club member to soak up. 

Pity we do not know if our best in bowls do likewise as no one has ever written and then shared that knowledge if it exists.

So what we have done in Elbows is set a bowls game plan template that is flexible to change for different formats though embraces statements such as …win more ends than opponent, win 3/5 ends in a segment, have two bow deliveries in the head every end.

Measure of Success – team goals

And to wind up,  Steve’s manual refers to tracking his club performances on a player basis so that they compile information on singles, batting partnerships, run outs etc.

Again compared to our game of bowls it could be number of deliveries within a mat length, best level in any one segment, number of ends losing a single or a two or worse multiple shots.

In summary what we explore in Elbows is also done in cricket at local clubs such as Allansford in Victoria due to the professionalism of a coach like Steve.

Time we bowls coaches stood tall and started doing what I hear often in other sporting circles…’athlete focus, coach driven’ Time out sport led the charge.

Lachlan Tighe

ATTITUDE: ALL ABOUT PRACTISING HABITS