Looking After Our Youngsters

Peter Roebuck (SMH 15/11/10) has hit a nail whose head I have been hammering for some time and one whose ramifications we are finally experiencing at Test level in Australia.

Twenty years ago, cricket officials at the grassroots level, influenced heavily by a new breed of centralised think tank men who allowed their ideas to be mandated by those boffins in white coats, sought a new deal for everybody in the realm of junior cricket. The theory went that we had to reduce competitiveness at all levels of cricket up to and including U/16's and protect the bodies of these young men. Restrictions were applied which prevented batsmen batting beyond 20 or 25 until everybody else had a go and then they could "have a bash" at the end of the innings. Bowlers were restricted to four or six over spells and limited to eight or ten overs of a Saturday morning. Pressure was then exerted on senior associations and restrictions - mostly on bowlers - was applied their also. Backs, in particular, would be looked after.

A few of us, hardliners all who grew their own cricket through constant play and hard work, cried bollocks and shook our head.

The first signs of malpractice came with young blades who couldn't bat past 25 without tiring and thinking their job done. "Starters" we called them and grey heads like me still do. Fine young players destined for first grade in a local club near you, one or two with the magic touch that might take them beyond but every Saturday a lazy shot or often an over aggressive shot for the situation and they came back to the boundary smiling and applauded by enthusiastic fellow pimple squeezers mistakenly thinking their job done. The adage "better to make a duck than be out after a start" lost on them. But these are batsmen and batsmen rarely work hard.

It's the young bowlers this policy has betrayed. Conditioned in mind and particularly in body to bowling two short spells during their afternoon playing among the men, rather than protect bodies - backs in particular - it more often than not wrecks them. A young man, wanting to impress his grey beard skipper and earn promotion the following week, only has six or eight overs to make his mark. As a result, he bowls flat out from the off. I have sat at the boundary's edge so often in the last fifteen years and seen these fellows busting a gut and even more important body parts trying to maximise the impact they can have in a short allotment. They regularly bowl too short and too wide and many pull up holding a calf or a back if a fastman or wrists and hands if a spinner and yet, these restrictions are meant to prevent that. Roebuck's mention of England's Broad playing club cricket in Australia as a kid is instructive because it matches the reality which was misunderstood.

Young bowlers need to learn how to bowl long spells - how to pace themselves through a day's play. Bowlers are, after all, the draft horses of the game and yet we have tried to make them into thoroughbreds. In the U/16 in the Sutherland Shire in the early 1970's, the best bowlers, the ones I feared as an opening batsman, could bowl all day. You just couldn't see them off. They learned their trade bowling long spells in juniors and no one - repeat no one - ever broke down.

Similarly, batsmen only left the crease when they were out. They learnt the value of their wicket and they learnt how to build an innings. Anyone remember that? Until Twenty20, you still had to build an innings in the shorter forms of the game ... admittedly only if you batted in the first four. I saw a lot of Andrew Hilditch in the U/16's and even more of John Dyson who used to open the innings for their team at 8:00am and would invariably walk off with us at 11:00am stumps. They would bat and bat and bat and when they left juniors, they would go on to do the same in grade, state and even Test cricket. Like bowlers, batsmen must also be grown, nurtured by the care of wise gardeners who will allow them to test knowledge gained from experience of doing, then listening, then doing again.

The final folly was the introduction of feel good, everybody's happy, lets pander to their increasing demands and tantrums half cricket or less. The production of plastic stumps and bats went into overdrive and everyone had an equal turn and received an equal pat on the back. Winning wasn't important, nor was competing. I'll admit that I'm not sure if this has been a bad thing but you can bet your life it produced New Age cricketers like Michael Clarke. My suspicion is we have lost the grunt end of the game but I'll leave that lie. We have certainly stopped trying to identify talent in the U'10's because this sort of cricket doesn't bread batsmen, just cross back sloggers who are big for their age group. These kids should be plucked to a higher age group to play a more serious form of the game. The same with all the tall kids who tend to be the ones who can bowl straight.

Development of real cricketers the old fashioned way takes time - certainly longer than seven or eight scoring shots or four frantic overs. Youngsters need time to understand that they should listen and not just act on their own ego driven impulses. Besides, if this careful, pampered approach was working, Siddle and others wouldn't have sore backs and Johnson might put more balls in the wicket zone rather than the picket zone.

English lessons? Maybe. I have a feeling they won't be the only English lessons our Test team endure this summer.