Academy Blog

Welcome to the first Academy Blog from Kent Cricket’s new website. As pre-season gets ever closer us players are in full swing with the intensity of every training session at its highest so far. The Club gives the players a fantastic opportunity to show their ability against the best in the county and therefore everyone will be on top of their game to impress the professionals and coaches.

This week’s training session involved all members of the Academy on Sunday morning where we started off as usual with a hard, high intensity fielding drill. This part of all of our games is absolutely crucial as the sport moves to new heights and especially as when we get outside the surface won’t be as kind as indoor so it’s very important technique is spot on. Catching, throwing and diving were all involved and every player was putting in the effort to make it a productive start. Swiftly we moved on to the real important stuff which was skill-based work. The group was split, due to age, and it was seam bowling versus batting. Bowlers were attempting to keep run scoring to a minimum so hitting strong, solid areas consistently while batsmen were trying to win the battle by being assertive and knock the bowlers out of their comfort zone. The practical session was a good challenge with all players doing very well.

After the practical session, the players were upstairs talking about the charity project they had undertaken over the winter for Demelza. The players have collectively raised a significant figure to be announced in the coming weeks and I’m sure this will be beneficial to Demelza. A special thank you must go to Matt Greenwood who was a leader in the project and was a source of innovation whilst being a fantastic communicator, all the team know it wouldn’t have gone as swiftly without him. However the session was a great insight for the team on evaluating performance. We asked questions about ourselves and how we measure performance on an individual basis – getting across the point that being honest with oneself is very important in sport. This was followed by one of Tristan’s creative techniques to allow the team to be honest with each other with the aim of strengthening the group as a whole, which all of the players found particularly helpful.

All that is left to be said is that all the players will be on a half-term break, following a toughening winter, with the summer and season to look forward to. It’s vital now that the team goes away confident on technique as time is of the essence and players will be up against others from all over the country, so keep up the good work!

Many thanks,

Ben Kemp