He gets forward nicely, striking the ball under his eyes. It’s just out of reach of the fielder at cover, and they run 2.
He’d been looking good during throw-downs - balanced, quick hands, controlled, playing late - and so I’m pleased that he, my son, has carried that poise with him out into the middle.
We sit watching. He’s reading things early, getting into good positions quickly. A full ball drifting down leg gets clipped off his toes and whizzes to the boundary for 4. “Nice shot,” says the dad next to me to no one in particular, and then turns to me: “Boy’s showing some good signs early.” The next ball is shorter, a better line, and he gets in behind it, weight forward, on his toes, and defends; freeze the frame and you could draw a straight line from the top of his head to where the ball hit the bat. Textbook stuff. Nice.
The sun’s shining. It’s warm, not hot. My son’s playing nicely in the first game of the season. What a great way to spend a Saturday morning.
It doesn’t take long before I recognise the plan the bowling team have switched to. They start bowling shorter, each ball, each bowler, slowly but surely landing the ball a little bit further away from him. It the classic plan to someone who’s looking good getting forward - force them back, make them change how they’re playing, disrupt their flow. At first, he keeps pushing forward, but it’s hard to play that way against short stuff and so, as sure as an English middle order collapse, he starts to go back. He loses a bit of the balance he had. He starts to lose his style. He starts to miss more than he hits. And then the sucker punch - a full delivery; he instinctively goes back but it’s the wrong shot, he’s all off balance, and the ball smashes into the wickets.
“I should have gone forward to that ball,” he says to me as he comes off. He’s right. It’s good to hear he’s reflected immediately - this time last year I needed to prompt him once he’d got to me.
“Yeah, I agree,” I say, “but I can understand why you didn’t. Did you recognise the plan they had to you?”
He hadn’t, and so we talked it through: the pushing back, the slow manipulation of his instinctive reaction, the sucker punch that got him out. He’s interested in the details of the plan — what it looks like; he wants to be able to recognise it next time.
“How can I not get out next time?” We talk about different things a batter can do in response to that plan. He wants to be able to think his way through the problem when he recognises it again.
Getting out in cricket is a form of feedback, and it’s harsh. I’m really proud of how he handles it. Equally, I know it has something to do with the way I’ve responded to him getting out as he’s grown - in supporting him to reflect on those moments he has come to see these harsh pieces of feedback as learning opportunities.
In the workshop Guy Claxton and I ran yesterday on dispositions, Guy spoke a little bit about responding to feedback. “There are two paths a learner can take,” he said. “They can respond emotionally or cognitively.”
Only one of those paths reliably helps us grow and improve. One of the points we were trying to make yesterday was that teachers have more power than they realise in setting up the conditions for students to respond cognitively. This is important, because when they do they’re stretching their Thinking muscle, a key disposition that helps us both stay curious and sharpen our ideas about how to engage with the world.
When I played cricket I hated getting out. I would stew for ages afterwards, all emotion; no questioning, no thinking. No one ever tried to snap me out of it. I never really got better; I remained a batter who looked good in the nets but not out there in the middle, where it mattered.
Cricket has so many metaphors for learning!
You bowled us all out yesterday with a plan that has us teachers moving forward so our learners can hit it for 6! It was great to be inspired again. Thank you! Go the Black Caps and let's hope our plan is better than India's!
Love this one bevan (just shared it on twitter). I assume you have seen the beautiful episode of 'Bluey' about the cricket game?