coloured ball decision making

Another Sunday morning session with young Freddie (11). Today we adopted a coloured ball session - three reds / one yellow. The purpose being a) play each ball on it's merit v the red balls and b) adopt a pre-meditated option v the yellow ball.

It doesn't matter what the option is. It could be to ensure a held balance at contact point (example below), or a more proactive approach ie. lofted drive over the infield.

The purpose is many fold, but mostly to ensure the player is making conscious decisions when training and not just going through the motions. I like rhythm training in season, where batters seek control and ball striking confidence between games. In the off season we have the time and no performance distractions impacting confidence. Off season we can (and should) look deeper.

The yellow ball option helps players think clearly and recognise what they do well and what they do less well. If we seek the lofted drive the attention is more acutely drawn to which ball we can achieve the outcome and which we can't. The player also learns that there are now some red balls that offer the same opportunity as the yellow. Of course, we can do this on bowling machines too (and I do), but the random delivery means the ball is often not in the right place to execute the stroke (unlike the bowling machine) and the batter has to learn about plan B - there has to be a plan B sometimes.

The player has to learn about risk and reward. I find the coloured balls training a positive environment in which to do this. There is no failure, just learning opportunities.

Options we spent time on this morning:

- held position at ball contact (a key ongoing focus)
- targeting the gap between extra cover and mid off
- manipulating any line/length into the leg side
- hitting over the top
- finding deep mid wicket (early crease positioning to create a leg side delivery - very good one to learn about plan B)

All the while, this was balanced out by maintaining a ball on merit approach to the red balls - core strength reinforcements. What I find interesting is players learn to recognise that a) some red balls provide yellow ball options and b) yellow balls have to become red if the ball is in the wrong place or the player cannot create the chosen option.

What we do have is a conscious learning experience which supports the players unconscious game state over an extended period of time. The player will learn a) what their core strengths are, b) the element of risk and reward and c) what their best innovative options are. There will be more and please feel free to comment...

Coloured ball training is an additional piece of training content we will add to Runmaka at some point in the future. This combined with the bench gap-finding exercise will bring even more conscious awareness to training, whether coach guided or through self-learning.