Since only the best can promisingly turn out the best, as CAP believes, CAP also has onboard, Greg Chappell and Cameron Trudell, the renowned coaches from Australia, as the chief mentors of CAP. Irfan Pathan is known for his all-around abilities and is remembered for the hat-trick that he took against Pakistan in 2006 at Karachi while Yusuf’s exploits primarily came with the bat.
Cricket Academy of Pathans is an institute born out of a simple thought of ‘giving back and is all set to revolutionize the standards of coaching and development of cricket in India. After their notable contribution over the years to Indian cricket, the Pathan brothers now intend to eradicate the one major hurdle in the path of churning out talented cricketers from India: lack of proper coaching. Since only the best can promisingly turn out the best, CAP also has onboard, Greg Chappell and Cameron Trudell, the renowned coaches from Australia, as the chief mentors of CAP.
Realizing the need of the hour, that is, to strengthen the ‘backbone’ of cricket: coaching, CAP aims to tackle this problem on two levels: ‘Coaching the Coaches’ and ‘Coaching the Kids’. While the academy will train the interested coaches in the skills, these coaches will in turn train the aspiring kids. Both Mr. Chappell and Mr. Tradell have curated the CAP curriculum and the focus will also be on the nutrition and the physical development of the kids, hence providing a wholesome training experience.
Armed with a strong curriculum and some of the best from the cricket world, the Pathan brothers promise to polish the future of Indian Cricket with their groundbreaking initiative!
Irfan Pathan born on 27 October 1984 made his debut for India in the 2003/04 Border-Gavaskar Trophy and has been a core member of the Indian national team.
Beginning his career as a fast-medium swing and seam bowler, Pathan broke into the national team soon after turning 19. He was named by the ICC as the 2004 Emerging Player of the Year. He was instrumental in India’s One-day international and Test series wins in Pakistan in 2004. In late 2004 he took 18 wickets in two Test matches against Bangladesh
Irfan improved his batting skills and tried to become a complete bowling all-rounder. He opened the batting on occasions in ODIs and scored 93 in a Test match (10 Dec 2005, versus Sri Lanka in Delhi). He scored above 80 thrice, in space of four Test innings against Sri Lanka and Pakistan. He rose to No. 2 in the ICC’s ODI rankings for all-rounders and was also in the top five in the Test rankings.
In early 2006, he became the only bowler to take a Test hat-trick in the first over of the match against Pakistan at Karachi.
Irfan was a part of the Indian team in September 2007 for the inaugural World Twenty20 Cup, where he took three wickets and was a man of the match as India beat Pakistan in the historic finals.
He started his Indian Premier League career for the Kings XI Punjab and was picked as an all-rounder in the 2008 auction for USD 925,000. Pathan played the dual role of being their strike bowler with his swing and seam movement that he purchased off the wicket in the initial overs. He also came back towards the end of the innings to bowl those Yorkers and the slower ones with efficiency. He was at the peak of his performance and career during his stay with the KXIP and was the leading wicket-taker for them with 47 wickets in 42 games during the first three seasons.
Irfan was then bought in by the Delhi Daredevils for $ 1.8million. He ensured that his tenure of three years with the Delhi Daredevils was fruitful enough, by adding a few more variations to his bowling arsenal and taking 29 wickets. He also played a few cameos and scored 468 runs for the DD. He was, on a few occasions, pushed higher up the order by the team management on number three position. He also finished some batting lower down the order, playing apt for his tag of ‘all-rounder.’
The Sun Risers Hyderabad mentored by Indian batting legend VVS Laxman, recognized his vitality for the balance of the squad and availed Irfan Pathan’s services for INR 2,40,00,000.
In the 8 seasons, the India all-rounder has played 98 matches in the IPL and has taken 80 wickets at an economy of 7.75 which is pretty decent as per the T20 standards. At the same time, he has scored 1126 runs with the willow with a strike rate of 121. Over the years Irfan has built for himself, the reputation of being an overall package for the team and fits in various roles with the bat and the ball. His experience enables him to handle extreme pressure situations with the utmost composure, which takes his stake a notch higher, as an asset to the team.
Chappell-Tradell Philosophy
The developed cricket countries have lost the natural environments that were a big part of their development structure in bygone eras. In these environments, young cricketers learned from watching good players and then emulating them in pick-up matches with family and friends. Usually, any instruction that was received was rudimentary while interference from adults was minimal. In these unstructured settings, players developed a natural style while learning to compete against older players during which they learned critical coping and survival skills. Typical Academies do not produce the creative thinkers that become the next champions.
The games that young people anywhere makeup and play are dynamic and foster creativity, joy, flexibility in technical execution, tactical understanding, and decision-making which are precisely what is often missing in batting at the highest levels. In the games of cricket that youngsters typically play, they are all engaged in designing and modifying the games to suit the space available, the equipment and time they have, and in adapting technique and tactics to the demands of the game as the sort of learning outcomes we need at the highest levels of cricket. Invariably, when an adult gets involved with kids playing cricket they break up the game and kill its energy by imposing technical drills on correct batting, bowling, or fielding technique. This reduces a dynamic, engaging learning environment to a flat and lifeless set of drills that will do little to improve batting in games and is invariably de-motivating.
We would argue that the growth in structured training in the preparation of batsmen has not only failed to take batting forward but has actually seen a decline in batting. Highly structured environments and an excessive focus on teaching players to perform ‘correct’ techniques dehumanize cricket. The environments that attempt to reduce batting to the mastery of technique and to break it up into a range of distinct components reflect a misunderstanding of how complex it is and the need for creativity and the ability to identify and respond to challenges in matches. Batting cannot be reduced to technique honed in the nets because it is always shaped by a range of factors that vary from one situation to the next. This includes the physical conditions such as the nature of the pitch, weather, state of the ball, and the condition of the fielders. It also includes the strategy of the team, the tactics needed to achieve it, the stage of the match, and the relevant scores that suggest the risk that needs to be taken.
In response to this problem, we 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 and interference from adults. In this approach, the coach’s work involves setting up conditions for learning through engagement with the physical learning environment that always involve some degree of awareness and decision-making. Instead of always telling players what they have to do s/he helps them learn and solve the problems that arise in playing practice games.
There are a couple of significant challenges to the status quo of coaching involved with this approach. One is the shift from the idea of the coach as having all the knowledge that he hands down to the players as passive receivers to one of the coaches facilitating and guiding players in constructing their own knowledge as active learners. This can be a particular problem with outsiders’ perceptions of a good coach as someone who is clearly in charge, telling players what to do and yelling at them when they don’t do what they are told. The other big challenge is the shift from a focus on what the coach does (behavior) to what and how the players learn and how the coach can help them learn instead of determining what they learn. We can hear those that believe that batting is all about technique asking how these ‘free-range’ cricketers will become technically adept but we would remind them that for the first 100 years of Test cricket that is how the very best were bred.
Game Sense For Cricket
In his wonderful book, ‘The Art of Cricket’ published nearly 60 years ago Bradman said that, ‘I would prefer to tell a young player what to do than how to do it. We would take this a little further to suggest we would also help them learn when and why and this is the focus of Game Sense. Game Sense is focused on improving gameplay by locating learning in contexts that, to different degrees, replicate game conditions so that improvements in practice sessions lead to improvements in the match. This does not mean just playing cricket instead of training/practicing. It means designing and managing modified games and activities aimed at particular learning outcomes that suit the skills, attitudes, and motivations of the players and the preferred learning outcomes – whether for children learning to play or for batsmen playing at the highest levels. The practice games or activities present problems for players to solve through discussion with the coach and with each other in small teams and sometimes as a whole team and reflection on what they tried and why it worked or why it didn’t. These games need to be managed by the coach to get the right level of challenge to engage the players and to maximize learning.
As well as the coach designing good practice games and being able to manage them in Game Sense they ask questions to get players thinking and working together to solve problems. This can be a problem for some coaches initially used to tell them what to do. The questions asked are not aimed at getting yes or no answers. They are aimed at getting them to think and work with teammates to come up with solutions for the problems that come up whether tactical, technical (or both) in nature. This does not neglect technique but, instead, develops it by having players learn and improve the execution of technique in a context that is something like the real match and which develops decision-making, the flexibility of execution, awareness, and the ability to adapt to the range of challenges that always face batsmen.
The greatest batsmen have developed their great talent over long periods of time by playing and learning in creative, informal learning environments from young ages without an excessive focus on biomechanics or the perfecting of ideal technique. The modern obsession with the ‘perfect technique is creating a homogenized breed of players far less able to adapt to challenging conditions, with less flair and less creativity.
Times change and we cannot go back to the past but we suggest cricket coach education can recapture some of the nature of the environments in which the greatest batsmen developed by drawing on the Game Sense approach. For youngsters learning to play the game, the motivation that Game Sense promotes and the fun it generates while developing an understanding of the game that includes, not only knowing how to perform a skill or technique but also when and why would give them a good start in cricket. It would also make playing cricket more attractive and more engaging for young cricketers.
Batting technique is important and we are not suggesting abandoning it but that where possible it should involve some awareness, decision-making, and opportunities for being creative and experimenting. It should provide excitement stimulates the imagination and the deep engagement of players in the practice activities and games. There should also be some opportunity to reflect and discuss techniques and tactics and how they are interrelated. Here Game Sense thinking has a lot to offer for coaching all levels from introducing young children to the game to preparing elite level batsmen for the challenges of international cricket – In all its forms. It offers a way of recapturing the environments of the past in which our greatest batsmen developed to ensure that our future batsmen have the same exciting flair, creativity, and skill while making practice engaging, exciting, and enjoyable enough to attract, sustain and excite young players of all ages.
Technology
The ‘Cricket Academy of the Pathans’ is powered by PitchVision’s a UK based state of the art cricket coaching technology, which will enable the Pathan Brothers and their team of cricket coaches to track the overall progress of their patrons on a day to day basis and these cricketers would get personal and direct guidance from the brothers themselves. This innovative technology will aid coaches and provide comprehensive data of every ball played on its unique digital platform www.pitchvision.com/CAP along with a mobile phone app which will allow the students and parents to communicate with the brothers and also get access to coaching materials via videos TV channels.
- Established in 2008, PitchVision is a cricket technology company
- PitchVison have mastered the art of ball-tracking to make Television style cricket analysis available for cricketers of all level
- Using portable systems that can be deployed indoor and outdoor
- Automatically generates Videos and Statistical analysis to the extent of – Line, Length, Bounce, Deviation, Pace
- Players performance outcomes uploaded to PitchVision Interactive – Proprietary Cloud platform
- Helping accelerate and enhance player’s ability to understand and improve their game
- Installations across 14 countries with marquee clients like – Cricket South Africa, MCC – Lords Cricket Club, ICC Global Academy, UAE