Team UPF

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Ultimate Pace Foundation Relaunch: Anyone Can Be, With Us

Ultimate Pace Foundation (UPF) is an online cricket coaching platform created and started in 2018 by Ian Pont.

The idea behind our brand was to invite, inspire and challenge fast bowlers to achieve their greatness.

And with Ian being one of the world’s best fast bowling coaches, there was no question that our students would become impressive too.

Ian has worked with two of the finest fast bowlers of all time in South African Dale Steyn and Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar. He has students ranging from IPL T20 star Deepak Chahar and Afghanistan’s superstar white ball bowler Naveen-Ul-Haq to up-and-coming young quicks across the globe. Ian is Head of The National Fast Bowling Academy in the UK.

Combined with the knowledge of Ireland international & T20 World Cup player Catherine Dalton and the technical prowess of Mark Sheppard who is an expert in human movement and the developer of the Power To Perform course, we provide a rounded foundation for both up-and-coming and established bowlers.

Our core belief is that fast bowling is for anyone, not just for the select few.

“But, how can you coach me when you’ve never seen me?”

The motivation behind the information is that, if you are able to identify the common mistakes made in fast bowling, you can use the proven solutions and become your own coach. 

The goal is to turn youinto the best coach you have ever had. 

Give a player a cricket ball, he’ll bowl for a day..

…teach a player to bowl, and he’ll bowl for a lifetime. 

The Ultimate Pace Foundation is about self-education, and once you have the information that our website provides, you can start coaching yourself. Our website was designed to share the most pertinent information about fast bowling easily and effectively. 

Our website guides you through the bowling system on the premise that every person uses the same process, but with the ability to use the information for wherever you are in your journey. 

As long as you understand every fast bowler uses the same movements but simply in their own way, you can easily use your own style – this is at the heart of UPF’s teachings. 

We bring cutting-edge, world-class coaching directly to people’s phones, tablets and laptops. Proven, successful coaching methods used by some of the best fast bowlers playing the game, are now available to everyone. Great information that works is right here, at your fingertips.

And now, UPF is relaunching its brand into 2021.

Why the relaunch?

Re-establishing UPF Cricket as the world’s leading fast bowling brand is important because so far, we have been fast bowling’ best-kept secret.

The relaunch has a new look, an even more simplified access and a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to fast bowling information. 

We listened to the thousands of people who enjoy our content, and have made it even more mobile-friendly. If you want more pace, there’s only one place – but UPF Cricket gives you so much more than that. 

In short, there is nothing better than having a personal fast bowling coach in your pocket.

What does the future look like?

Coaches are now realising UPF Cricket offers a way to teach what has been, previously, a little-known subject. 

We are seeing an uplift in coaches, parents, and educators who want to add an extra set of tools to their understanding of cricket. 

We know of cricket centres who follow our coaching methodology, and are achieving far better results than those that are not. This shows us that our brand is strong and is actually – and actively – making a difference.

Become Your Own Best Coach

When you can make a difference to the standard of bowlers who use our methods, that is what it’s all about. The feedback and loyalty from people is heartening. 

Many bowlers have been desperate to find this type of help and support, and have discovered UPF Cricket. We are here to help players get better, whatever level they play. 

That’s why we have beginners, intermediate, top level, elite, professional and even international players accessing our site. 

Everything you could possibly need to know about how to be a successful fast bowler, you can get from our website. That makes it the finest investment you could ever make in your future.

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Three-Year Anniversary

It’s been three years since we started UPF Cricket online coaching and we are massively proud of the achievement!

Many thousands of people have been helped by the coaching of Ian Pont & Catherine Dalton and the website is a key part of this. By helping coaches, teachers, fast bowlers and development programmes all over the world, UPFcricket.com remains the leading technical & tactical site for fast bowling.

There are now more than 190 videos online, which cover the physical and mental aspects too of being a fast bowler.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this site a wonderful place to be.

 

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FREE Copy Ultimate

You can think of Ultimate Pace Secrets as a fast bowling cricket course in a book. In it you’ll find everything you need to complete the fast bowling drills for increasing speed, drills for improving accuracy, strength and conditioning courses as well as why most coaches don’t (or can’t) coach speed into bowlers, yet often coach it out of them.

Ultimate Pace Secrets is the final word on speed coaching in 82 in-depth pages and is used by both bowlers and coaches across the globe. Easy to understand, it’ll help you build the foundation to be the best bowler, or coach, you can be.

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Skype Mentoring Call

BOOK YOUR SKYPE MENTORING CALL WITH IAN PONT.

Ian Pont

If you’ve ever wanted personalised mentoring here’s your chance. You can now enjoy a 121 mentoring chat with a World-Class coach by booking time to discuss any fast bowling topic you wish.

Some people use it to have their videos assessed, others to find out what they ought to be doing to improve their cricket or simply to discuss any questions they have about fast bowling. So this is a great opportunity to have your very own coach onboard.

And the best part is, it’s really easy to organise.

Below, click on the link for your own 30 minute slot. You can add as many 30 minute slots as you want – and you can add them back to back. You can even bank them for the future. Once you have done this, we will be back in touch with you for a convenient date & time for the Skype mentoring discussion.

Skype Mentoring Call

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Exclusive FaceBook Group

 

If you want to discuss any issues, doubts or just comment on fast bowling, here’s your chance!

We have recently launched a “UPF Swing, Seam & Pace Bowling” FaceBook Group, which is open to all. On this page you will find polls, articles, subjects, answers and interaction with our coaches Ian Pont & Catherine Dalton.

It’s completely free. All you need to do is go to the page and apply to join.

UPF Swing, Seam & Pace Bowling FaceBook Group here: UPF Swing, Seam & Pace Bowling Group – why not join us now?

It’s a great way to pick the brains of our coaches.

Be part of the world’s fastest growing online pace bowling community. See you over there!  UPF Swing, Seam & Pace Bowling Group

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It’s Never About The Technique

It’s Never About The Technique

An interesting fact about cricket coaches – some can and some cannot, coach. Yet, the thought is if you have played at the highest levels you are automatically a superb coach who can teach others the same skills you had.

 
This phenomenon seems particularly superimposed on the most technical of all disciplines – fast bowling. And there’s an oddity to why this seems to happen.
 
The great leg spin coach and sadly missed, Terry Jenner, is widely credited with an astute quote that explains this. He says that ‘C’ stands for coaching when it’s to do with batting, but ‘C’ stands for change when it comes to bowling. This is seemingly how people view fast bowling coaching – change. We don’t want to change a bowler. And there are some extraordinary comments such as ‘non intervention’. ‘leave well alone’, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ and ‘fast bowlers are born, not made’ when it comes to teaching the technique of pace bowling. This is sadly very wrong and explains a great deal.
 
Former players who really know little about this subject will want to ‘keep things simple’ and ‘not change too much’ whilst focusing on ‘bowling in good areas with a decent wrist position’. Yet when it comes to batting coaching, we rarely ONLY look at the outcome. In fact we employ technical coaches (”it’s all about technique, technique, technique” Geoff Boycott famously said) to work with our batsmen. Player’s technique come under fierce scrutiny when they don’t perform as has Alistair Cook’s, who has changed himself not once, not twice but multiple times in his career, as well as change coach.
Coaches will never allow a batsman slog across the line or hit a ball badly without trying to make them ‘better’ even if those batsman have a canny knack of missing the fielders. It just doesn’t look right if they don’t have a certain style or technical expertise. It proves we don’t watch a batsman and only focus on the outcome.
 
However, in fast bowling the exact opposite seems to happen. Bowlers with poor actions, mistakes in their technique and errors that restrict their speed are not corrected because coaches do not look at those things.
 
The root problem is more to do with the educators of coaches because they do not teach how to coach pace and accuracy. Simply put, they do not know themselves. And this is the reason we appoint former test players at international level where possible, just because they used to be able to bowl. T’was ever thus.
 
The thought process is inherently flawed in this line of appointment. Even if you were to listen to the amazing stories a great fast bowler has to tell you, how they did what they did and how they achieved their goals, it doesn’t make YOU a better bowler. You cannot learn from someone else’s experience. It does make them a great after dinner speaker though.
 
To truly learn about fast bowling, you need to work alongside a coach that understands how YOU can bowl fast and straight.
 
Sadly, fast bowling is never about the technique and it’s why we don’t produce as many fast bowlers as we could. We substitute technique for strength and conditioning, fitness and other parts of the essential make up of a pace bowler instead. We bowl less, train more. We do less skills, more fitness. We do more box ticking, less educating. But it does justify the money spent on ‘coaching’. Bowlers come through in spite of it, not because of it.
 
One day, maybe not soon, cricket authorities will have to review this area and come to the same conclusions about pace bowling. If we are truly to have places of excellence and world best practices, all options should be looked at. If we are truly to be great we have to be open to all the possibilities. We may all have long, white beards by the time this happens and meanwhile, the coaches appointed in fast bowling will ever increasingly rely on their own playing experience – rather than the knowledge of how to coach technique.
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Keeping Coaching Simple

It was some 30 years ago I had my first epiphany about fast bowling.

On my MLB pro tryout with Philadelphia Phillies, the pitching coach asked me why I had slowed down my speed when throwing. I answered something akin to “slowing down to bowl a line & length” in cricket terms, which he proceeded to destroy in biomechanics terms, as being completely incorrect. It seems in rotational, ballistic sports, you SPEED UP to become more accurate. My first lesson was taught, learned and the rest is, well… history.

Today, the world’s leading coaches strive to hugely simplify what they say. This includes the overlooked and widely misunderstood technical terminology of fast bowling, so it can be taught – and is the real way to educate a generation. I was never a person that would make this complex, complicated or ambiguous. I would never be a person to ‘stand corrected’ because I had rushed into something that wasn’t true or appropriate, only to tweak my view when challenged or blow with the wind because others have opposing views. After all, gravity is gravity whatever you choose to call it.

So my methodology had to stand the test of time. And more than that, it would have to take what IS a complex and inherently hard to understand series of movements and make them into a coherent coaching system for Fast Bowlers.  I never bought in to ‘generalist’ view of coaching requiring knowledge of multi-layered subjects before you could be effective.  In fact, much like medicine and GP’s vs Specialists, I learned very early on that you have to be specialised in what you do and make it exceptional. Coaching for far too long has been generic and not specific. (See article: What is a Qualified Coach? )

I am simple man. I have a simple brief: to improve the speed & control of everyone I work alongside and with – if that is what they want. Far too many coaches make things immensely challenging to understand. And this can only be because they are unsure how things really work – that or they are deliberately trying to appear ‘clever’ or ‘smart’. But no coach needs to do that.  Instead, we need to be clear, concise and above all be communicating correctly with students, parents and other coaches. No coach needs to try and impress if they are already good enough. There’s no need to seek others’ approval to verify what you do, if the results you get are already superior and working. No coaching should be too hard to understand that it appears as if it’s written from a scientific paper. It should never be so overbearing & onerous that it cannot be written in just a few sentences.

If a 9 year-old doesn’t understand it, it’s probably too full of jargon and gobbledegook. If it can’t be worked out, it has little purpose other than to make people turn away confused. And that is the greatest mistake in coaching.

It’s why when I started, I advertised “Bowl faster or your money back” fast bowling courses. Armed with a speed gun to ‘prove’ the increases, and an orange target on off stump to ‘prove’ the accuracy, it became all about working hands on with bowling actions. School boy & club cricketers got it straight away. Improvements for all the bowlers were instantaneous. The seeds of UPF were born.

My introduction to biomechanics, kinetics and isometrics came from Dr Ken West, a professor of human movement working across 46 different sports (who as a leading optometrist in his own right, helped Anul Kumble disregard his glasses for specialised contact lenses). Ken questioned everything I did as a coach. He educated me in the hugely complicated & technical world of human movement as it applied to fast bowling with practical advice & support. But I followed Ken’s success methodology: Keep It Simple. This is why he worked in so many sports, across all the levels to World-Class standard. He UNDERSTOOD how to adapt & adopt different ideas so they became relevant to the sport he was working in at the time. There would be some human movement non-negotiable issues in that, too. For example, humans can only move in certain way and in that, we are ALL THE SAME. But the style we perform the movement in is individual. Hence, for me, the notion you can coach speed into everyone became obvious if you focus exclusively on structure, which is what we know as TECHNIQUE IN FAST BOWLING.

To create a success formula, you need a starting point. Understanding what constitutes a ‘perfect’ technique and what errors fast bowlers make, gives you the base for coaching speed. This is what has held back successive National Boards, coach educators and those wanting to, but not knowing how to work with speed. It has therefore been dismissed as “un-coachable” giving rise to to the “you are born with it” propaganda pumped out (often inadvertently) from ex-players who themselves had no help in this area. Instead of challenging things, there is safety in hordes of people agreeing with one another – even if what they say isn’t true. It has put fast bowling out on its own as the only sport remaining backwards in the knowledge that great technique takes us forwards.

In my journey then, I had influences from Dr West from sports such as tennis, swimming, martial arts, American football, basketball and even skiing, alongside my own interaction with baseball & javelin. It got me to look for common ground in sports as well as identify similar patterning for fast bowling. The “13 key indicator points” (common mistakes many of the bowlers made) forming the bedrock of The Fast Bowler’s Bible became refined to The 4 Tent Pegs and RSSSA (Range, Speed, Sequence, Speed & Alignment) now seen in Ultimate Pace Secrets. And all the skill drills that go with those positions – to maximise the speed of ANY bowler – were fully developed into what they are today. No jargon and few if any, external props required. Just the purist form of educating speed into bowlers regardless of their size, shape, build, genetics, background or environment. That education underpinned by exceptionally effective static, progression & isolation drills that alter muscle memory. Relevant, repetitive and ballistic rotational moves to replicate the bowling action by highjacking the bowler’s system.

Realising you cannot just shoehorn movements from other sports was a vital part of this – even on a very basic level of understanding. Baseball pitchers for example, do not have a run up. This means their base ‘pushes’ (dips & drives) in a completely different way to fast bowlers who ‘drop’ because they use a run up momentum, which alters the sequential muscle stretch & contraction. Every baseball pitcher starts sideways on the plate to throw. And to gain power, the pitcher has to generate a very large delivery stride so their top half can get up to speed. None of this is the same in fast bowling. Javelin throwers throw upwards meaning their arm mechanics differ to a fast bowler. Their release point is behind them, not in front of them as in fast bowling, so the trunk flexion creates an extension and not a contraction for a longer period of time. Foot patterning/planting is different, too. And of course both baseball & javelin use the extra hinge mechanics of a bend in the elbow. These are simple enough differences to realise that you cannot just copy across to fast bowling from other sports. You have to make a nod to those biomechanics and learn how they APPLY to a fast bowler through adaption, not mimicking. Even then, you need to understand whether they do actually apply in the first place.

I worked out 30 years ago, this journey wouldn’t be about how much I knew. It would be about how much I could get students to understand. The knowledge held by any coach isn’t relevant if those they work with have little idea how to replicate it. And the cardinal sin, according to the great, world-class tutors who mentored me right at the start of my coaching education, is to make coaching all about me instead of the fast bowler.

I would always want to coach others as I wish to be coached myself. For me, that is a simple, repeatable methodology, which isn’t shrouded in any words you need a dictionary to understand the message or a spellchecker.

It’s what sets UPF coaching apart from anything else currently being offered. It’s also why we are able to turn fast bowlers into the best version of themselves they can be. And it’s why we are making a difference in fast bowling coaching today.

Ian Pont

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What is a Qualified Coach?

Reprint of Ian Pont’s Article From: Thursday, 18 March 2010

What IS a Qualified Coach?

Can anyone else see the point of the Level 1 coaching award?

Widely heralded as necessary to ensure parents (in particular) and enthusiastic volunteers (especially) understand a little about the game, the new Level 1 coaching award falls somewhat wide of the mark.
 
Speaking to assessors and attendees, it’s firstly very difficult to fail (to test this theory my cat went on it, sailed through and now has a position as a regional coach). However more importantly, it doesn’t prepare anyone to actually deliver any coaching because technical aspects of what to coach are not covered. Simply put you may as well interchange the word coach for… organiser.
 
Yet once armed with this new award, hundreds and hundreds of ‘qualified’ coaches are out there ‘teaching’ cricket with not much knowledge of what they are doing. It’s hard to see what the difference is? Except of course we now have more qualified coaches than ever and it does require you to have CRB (Criminal Records Bureau *now DBS) checks and get a first aid certificate. On the down side, many volunteers and parents have been put off by having to take this award in the first place just so they can do some coaching at their club. Like me, who came through a club littered with volunteer coaches, helpers and parents on coaching night, now days others find that many clubs really struggle with the numbers wanting to play the game compared to the coaches ‘qualified’ to coach.
 
One local club I know has just 3 ECB coaches for more than 150 youth players. The result is those players are not developing as they should and the resulting standard of cricket is low.
 
I personally would like to see the coaching awards made more difficult to pass, have far less paperwork, understand more about how to deliver skill, be less reliant on just getting kids running about to fill their time and perhaps even specialise in disciplines.
 
It’s always been baffling how, just because a coach is a certain level, they can teach a certain discipline. Wouldn’t it have been far better to have batting, fast bowling, spin bowling, wicket-keeping and fielding coaching awards for coaches Levels 1 to 4? In that way, a coach could be a Level 2 batting coach and Level 3 spin bowling coach for example. Parents seeking a coach could therefore know that coach knows what he/she is doing. I know Level 4 coaches who know absolutely nothing about fast bowling coaching. It’s a fact they admit to. But if you were coached by a Level 4 coach you’d assume you are getting the very best you can, wouldn’t you. It’s just not so.
 
So is the problem with the labeling of coaches or is the problem with the teaching of the skills they need to pass on?
 
It’s both. The levels of coach are far too generic, which means the technical skills they have learned are far too basic for that level they have been given. Strip out the disciplines and make them harder, more intense, better informed and full of great content that a coach can take out and start using right away.
 
It’s called relevancy. Let’s make our coaches more relevant for their environment. It will not only make them better equipped to deliver the correct skills but also ensure parents, administrators and more importantly, players know who is best to work with.
 
In this country we seem to be forever altering and tweaking, changing and messing, fiddling and rejigging. Things are renamed, rehashed, renewed even re-invented. But it isn’t rocket-science. The answer is to integrate best practice and make the learning progressive and cohesive. Cut out the unnecessary paper work. Teach coaches to coach skill, how to, why they should and when they should. Explain fault correcting, intervention and the drills to make the changes.
 
In other words, have coaches teach the right things from the start, because even a little knowledge is great. Better to have some idea of what you should do than have none.
 

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1 COMMENT:

  1. Really interesting concept with the levels per discipline I think that parents quite often do presume a coach to know what hes doingbased on their ECB level of qualification

     

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Podcasts

Podcast 1: What’s the idea behind UPF Cricket? And why is it completely different to any other fast bowling website?

Podcast 2: What do UPF students say? How to avoid ‘chucking’ and what is it?

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Back Injuries – It’s All In the Action

As the epidemic of fast bowlers getting stress fractures of the spine appears to surge, the solution it seems is just as far away as ever. Yet the answer has always been within the grasp of coaches. It’s simply that fast bowling has suffered from a backwards thinking when it comes to understanding how the action works correctly.

The latest casualty is one Kagiso Rabada, World Number One ranked Test Bowler, who at the ripe old age of 23 has suffered a back stress fracture. But it was always likely to happen given the WAY his bowls and the counter-rotation in his back before he bowls, a misalignment of his action throughout and a large lateral flexion (fall away) when he actually bowls the cricket ball. Great bowler. But also a great candidate for a stress fracture.

So why are cases like his and the tens of others we see befalling far lesser bowlers, happening with more regularity?

There’s a great saying “you reap what you sow”. And for more than a decade now the emphasis has been far less on technique and far more on ‘strength, fitness and conditioning’. On the surface of it, if a bowler suffered a stress fracture due to him being ‘fragile’ the theory would be he will be protected due to all that new found training right?

This is where we go wrong.

Fast bowling actions that are riddled with inefficiencies, are a recipe for creating stress pockets. The lower back (pars lumbar) is where the bowler has an issue (around L5) so it makes absolute sense to ensure the body is correctly aligned to avoid issues. No amount of extra training it going to correct the misalignments and no amount of lifting weights or gym work will alter a poor bowling action.

This is all about technique, or the body’s ability to deliver a skill repeatedly in the most efficient way possible. The upside of course for working on a bowler’s action is also one of improved outcomes. If you are consistent and effective at the bowling end, you are likely to be the same at the batsman’s end. The benefits of technical advances are obvious therefore for more wickets and less injuries.

But the coaching of fast bowling technique is extraordinarily limited. Much of it is reduced to ‘pulling down a toilet chain” with the front arm or bowlers hopping over a succession of yellow hurdles. trying to avoid ski poles and getting pulled in different directions by bungee ropes. The understanding of what parts of the body need to move in which direction – and in what sequence, are a complete mystery in fast bowling. In virtually all other rotational, ballistic sports, technique is the most important aspect of the athlete’s work.

If you know what to look for you can almost predict with unerring accuracy, which actions are likely to cause problems. And sure enough, given enough overs, the bowler ends up having to rehab, often multiple times, and each time having a negative impact of both mental state and the body’s ecosystem.

The bottom line is simply this: unless and until technical fast bowling coaches are employed to work on the structure of the action and the linking of the movements between the key positions, we will miss out on two things; the ability to help avoid back injuries and the maximising of speed of our fast bowlers.

Fast bowling is an injurious pursuit but not one beyond the wit of man. Neglecting technique is the most retrograde step for fast bowling in this generation of information at our fingertips and data driven sport. If we do not understand the technical aspect of our sport how is it possible for coach educators to pass on knowledge to coaches?  Instead we will produce a generation of coaches afraid to ‘tinker’ with a bowling action but will be at home finding distracting things to do in fast bowling sessions that have nothing to do with improving the technical delivery. The bottom line is, if no one teaches technique then no one is culpable. This leaves other ‘manageable’ areas of cricket training such as outcomes, fitness, scenarios and nets as the only tools available to a fast bowling coach.

The answer, as the Chinese like to say, is always in front of you. I am just unsure that cricket is really looking.

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The Confusion Of Coaches

Let me be clear. You don’t need pace to be a great seam or swing bowler.

McGrath, Pollock, Anderson, Southee and 100s of others have shown that through dogged battering of the cricket ball into the same area of the pitch, time after time, that eventually you will have success. Hitting your ‘areas’, bowling in ‘the channel’ and ‘hitting the top of off stump’ are the only key phrases  you probably need as a coach to reinforce the fact that pace isn’t necessary to be successful.

Obviously, you have to move the ball in the air or off the pitch, too, but it is the incessant hammering of the same area of the pitch that will reap rewards. This is at least the message we all seek to portray.

At club level, the game is littered with ‘weekend warriors’ who ply their trade using this method. On slow, often soft, grassy pitches, it is a medium pacers’ whet dream to just land the ball on the seam and watch it dart about. It is hard to get the ball away. Pace here isn’t necessary, nor is it seen in abundance. 

However, this is the reservoir from which our next generation emerge. So the genuine quicks, those who have a passion for pace and a desire to rip through a batting line up, will often quickly realise they are in a minority. Coaches will tell them to slow down, bowl a line and length… and the prospect of producing pace bowlers ebbs away.

What’s wrong though, is that if you COULD hit your areas at 5-8 mph faster, you would definitely take that as a bowler. I have yet to meet a bowler who wouldn’t want an ‘extra yard’ of pace, meaning that speed does play a very big part of bowling development.

The problem stems from not understanding how to work with a bowler’s action to develop that speed, make it more efficient, less injury prone and ultimately a better machine. After all it is the PROCESS of fast bowling that creates the OUTCOME we seek. And the better your processes, the more accurate and faster you become. The confusion of coaches is only looking at the outcome therefore and not how that is achieved. That confusion is furthered by the fact they don’t now how to coach speed. And this comes from not being taught it in the first place as a coaches. So national boards don’t teach speed, the coaches don’t teach speed, and thus fast bowlers don’t maximise their speed. It’s a medium pacers mentality that’s great on ‘bowling friendly’ tracks, but falls apart in places where pitches are known to be batting friendly as can be seen by some of the poor track records of bowlers who go there.

Speed however, remains relevant in ALL situations and at all times. Particularly when the pitch offers the batsman an easy ride from seam. 95 mph deliveries unsettle the world’s best. Striving for pace is clearly highly desirable.

Bowlers can have actions riddled with inefficiencies yet they have learned to bowl with them, rather than improve them. Does this make physics and biomechanics irrelevant? No, of course not. It simply means they have worked out over time, to be different from the Saturday club bowlers who also have such inefficient actions. In spite of the action, not because of it, is usually how bowlers are successful.

I often ask attendees at my speed workshops “why don’t you see club cricketers with an action like Brett Lee?” To which most reply “because if you had that action, you wouldn’t be playing club cricket”. You gotta love an open mind that has been asked the right question.

So this is the nub of it. Bowlers have to focus on swing, seam, line, length etc because they do not spend much time working on their actions in the first place – actions, that if having a solid, repeatable and efficient machine are anything to go by, give you the consistency in the first place.

The brutal truth is, you HAVE to be accurate anyway as a bowler regardless of your speed. The slower you bowl, the less margin for error there is. You can get away with things at higher speeds that you cannot a lower speeds – fact. So I would like to see an encouragement for people to step up their speed rather than continually slow it down, which seems to be the populist view.

There is a coach education issue, a coaches’ mentality issue, and a bowler issue that simply gets perpetuated over and over. Comfort is often sought in statistics that ‘prove’ people are right, and things which are not understood are dismissed as crackpot, irrelevant or simply left field. But if you seek world class best practice, you look at all the possibilities and instead of thinking “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” you instead think “what can we do better to improve on what we have”.  Most mindsets are sadly stuck in the comfort of the first thought – until they HAVE to change.

Speed, for speed’s sake, is not what I advocate. It has to be accompanied with Accuracy. That’s what ABSAT coaching means and is all about and why UPF exists. 

But what I do believe is that you don’t slow anything down to be better. You speed it up to be more effective. It isn’t a ‘lack’ of anything – speed or control – we seek, but rather an increase in all our parts, that will make for far better cricketers.

Averageness starts by being complacent, and you only get progress when you challenge. With Dale Steyn at world number one for more than a decade, and no real fast bowling contender to his throne for that time other than Shoaib, Johnson & Lee… you have to question what in the world coaches are striving for. 

With the retirement of Shoaib Akthar, Mitchell Johnson and  Brett Lee, the world has far less to be excited about in pace terms. Steyn remained out on front, almost in a league of his own, able to uproot the batsman, but he is now coming to his own end of career. Rabada has recently burst through but here we are not talking about a 150 kph bowler. And the pacers going around do not have the blistering speed of the recent retirees.Ultimately, a lack of pace doesn’t make you a bad man, but the point is you don’t have to sacrifice speed for anything. Not even for your outcomes. So next time you watch the current crop of bowlers, just add 8 kph to their TV speeds and imagine how much more effective they would be.