GLAMMY

[the other bob wilson]

Interesting chat with the retiring seamers Masters and Napier, during the Essex break.

The were saying that Silverwood has Essex set-up to play attritional cricket, where the batsman grid out the bigger scores, and that their seamers can then chip away at a top of off stump line and make it hard for the opposition batsman.

I would say that that attitude is the direct opposite of the attitude Croft bring to the game, especially with his quotes in the press.

My point is that we don’t really need new coaches, I find the need for a batting coach a bit unwarranted, because there is batting experience already at the club in the shape of Morris and Rudolph that can pass those messages over, and also the fact that you would say younger players need coaching, while senior players need tweaks in their technique. The fact that its our younger players that are doing well points to there being something going right in the coaching.

What we do need in the longer form game is a change in attitude.

Maybe we are seeing pressure from the top that our shorter form games are attractive because that brings in the money, so we have focused all our play on that to the determent of the championship game.

I was speaking to someone involved in St Fagans this season, and he was very much of the old school coaching format where you take a youngster and you teach them technique first and then expand their game as their strength grows, and I remember many a game down there where you would come up against a younger player, and he wouldn’t score but you wouldn’t get him out either. They then had Matthew Maynard come down to take a session and he went in right away and forget all that and just hit it as far as you can, the members were shocked, but maybe that is the way the game is going these days. That you teach a player to slog first and the technique comes afterwards. Maybe Croft then comes from that school of thought, and what we will se is some frustrating seasons while it all comes together.

I agree that it's a bit of a generational thing. What teaching I received on the art of batting started with trying to get my defence right and then the instruction was to try and develop your game (both in general terms and in playing an innings) as you felt more comfortable - it follows therefore that I instinctively balk at the sort of thing we've see from Glamorgan this season.

It's taken me a while to see the other side of the argument, but I can now understand the logic which says batting four hours for fifty when you are trying to save a game keeps pressure on your team in a way that batting the same time and scoring four times as many doesn't - more often than not, the first approach ends up with your side losing as well.

I agree with you to the extent that Glamorgan's poor batting this season can be put down to an attitude thing rather than the way individuals are coached. It seems all batsmen are encouraged to be more positive these days, but I still say that there is a place for the skills which prevailed for a hundred years and more and I get the impression that these are undervalued these days - as in most things, the answer lies between the two extremes and it would appear that Essex appreciate this because they have batsmen who will score at a quick enough rate without taking the sort of risks Glamorgan's do.

The strange thing is that Glamorgan's approach to bowling in the Championship has been attritional with an emphasis on exactly the same things that Essex aim for - indeed, I can remember one of their players saying how hard we made it for their batsman to push things along in the game they played at Cardiff earlier in the season and it's a compliment I've heard repeated by Kent and Sussex players as well.

Essex 192-6 now with ten Doeschate providing Hogan with his fourth wicket. We'll probably lose this game, but we had the better of a draw with the Second Division Champions in May I think it was and now we're pushing them all the way here - strange that we can do this and yet be stuffed by teams like Gloucester (twice), Northants (twice) and Leicester.