ECB Coaches Association links Coaching Insight 2019 | Page 36

34 What is ‘player-centred’? This restraint is a fabulous challenge. At a time when half the cricketing universe surely wants to crowd in to Surrey CCC to unpick the brilliant secrets of what feels like a return to the absolute, shouldn’t we be ditching some of the new-fangled ‘generosity’ and get back to drilling in timeless, simple truths? A good question, I think. Surrey were superb in last year’s County Championship and they are openly trumpeting intensive rehearsal of (and I think trust in) the basics. Meaning playing straight; being conscious of the value of your wicket; having a “sound technique”. Sound technique, now there is a question! I appreciate that our friends from the county champions may well argue with some of this interpretation – particularly the third of those alluring sound bites – but it seems to me a fairish translation of what many cricket people are thinking. But does the stunning success of Surrey at county level and beyond have ramifications for coaches and coach development broadly? Quite possibly. And does it follow then, that a return to basics undermines arguments for contemporary methods – which might understandably be viewed