Our Coaching Philosophy
Timing over talent. Broad skills before specialisation. Rest that makes the learning stick.
Why we coach the way we do.
I’ve spent twenty-five years around this game — the Middlesex pathway as a boy, MCC fixtures, five years coaching at the Indoor School at Lord’s — and everything I believe about coaching children comes down to one uncomfortable truth: the things that make a brilliant seven-year-old and the things that make a cricketer are not the same things. We coach for the second, patiently, while celebrating the first.
That idea sits underneath every decision we make — who moves up and when, why every session covers every discipline, why we start at five and not three, why our terms end while the children still want more. None of it is accidental, and none of it is a secret. You deserve the reasoning, not just the results.
And if you’ve landed here first, the shape of a Saturday is simple: teams of four or five, a dedicated coach for each — ratios of 1:4 or better — a briefing to start, a match in the middle, a debrief to end, and every child known by name. Independent, alongside your club and your school, never in competition. That’s the what; the front page covers it in full. This page is the why.
Cricket is a long game, and so is growing up. Everything on this page follows from those ten words.
Jason Moore — Founder & Head Coach · ECB Advanced Coach (Level 3)
Timing, not talent.
When a child moves between groups at Cricket Tikes, it isn’t a judgement on talent — it’s a judgement on timing. Getting that timing right is one of the most important things we do, and it’s why we look at far more than the cover drive.
Can they cope physically — with faster balls, heavier equipment, longer sessions? Can they listen, process a two-step instruction, and self-correct without being told? How do they respond when they get out, when it’s not their turn, when a session doesn’t go their way? Do they actually want to improve — not because they’re told to, but because something inside them has switched on? And above all: is it safe and responsible to put this child in that environment right now?
Six things, before any child moves up — the whole picture we call developmental readiness:
Physical capability. Can their body handle what’s coming next — nets, pads, harder balls, longer concentration?
Cognitive readiness. Can they process multi-step instructions, make decisions under pressure, and remember what they’ve been working on?
Emotional maturity. How do they handle coaching feedback, getting out, waiting, losing?
Coachability. Are they open to being challenged? Do they want to get better?
Safety. Is it responsible to put this child in a hardball environment today?
Potential. What trajectory are they on — not where are they now, but where are they heading?
This is why children in the same age band can be in different groups — why a brilliant 7-year-old might stay in Group 3 while a less flashy one moves to Group 4. Watch closely and you’ll see it isn’t a ranking. It’s a promise: nobody gets rushed, and nobody gets left waiting once they’re ready.
Broad now. Far later.
Parents sometimes ask why their 7-year-old isn’t focusing exclusively on batting. Or why we still run a full carousel — batting, bowling, fielding, captaincy, game awareness — when their child has “obviously” found their discipline.
The honest answer: because the evidence overwhelmingly shows that broad, multi-skill development in childhood produces better, more resilient adult cricketers than early specialisation.
Adam Zampa didn’t start bowling leg spin until he was about 15. Kevin Pietersen was bowling off spin and batting at number 9 as a youngster. Steve Smith was picked for Australia as a lower-order leg spinner — his unorthodox batting technique, which a specialisation-focused system would have “corrected,” is exactly what makes him exceptional. Rehan Ahmed was selected as a spinner but is increasingly looking like a genuine batting talent. And Donald Bradman famously developed his technique with a cricket stump and a golf ball against a water tank.
The greatest players in the game’s history weren’t streamed at six. They were allowed to develop broadly, to play, to discover what they were good at over time — not have it decided for them before they’d finished primary school.
This is what ECB Long Term Athletic Development principles are built on. And it’s why every Tikes session deliberately covers all disciplines through game-based learning. Not because it’s easier. Not because we haven’t noticed your child’s cover drive. Because narrowing too early closes doors that should stay open — and the children who develop the broadest foundations almost always go furthest.
Why we start at five.
We’re sometimes asked why we don’t take younger children. There’s no shortage of programmes offering cricket for 2, 3, and 4-year-olds, and we understand the appeal — you see your child pick up a bat in the garden and want to nurture it.
Here’s why.
Before the age of 5, most children haven’t developed the bilateral coordination, sustained selective attention, fine motor control, or working memory capacity to process cricket-specific instruction. They can hold a bat. They can hit a ball off a tee. They can have a wonderful time doing it. But what’s happening isn’t coaching — it’s play dressed up as development, and there’s an important difference.
That’s not a criticism of play. Play is essential. But parents paying for structured cricket coaching are entitled to expect that their child is actually learning cricket — building technique, understanding simple game concepts, responding to coaching cues. Below 5, the developmental science says that’s not reliably happening, no matter how good the coach or how engaging the session.
When a child arrives at 5, they’re usually ready. They can listen for short periods, follow a simple instruction, take turns, and begin to connect what the coach is showing them with what their body does. That’s when real coaching begins — and that’s when we want them.
Rest is part of the training.
Here’s the principle behind our calendar, and it surprises people: your child’s brain consolidates new motor skills during rest. The gaps are when technique genuinely sticks. It’s the same thinking behind professional periodisation — blocks of intensity, then genuine recovery — applied honestly at every age.
So we run 8–10 week terms, three times a year, with a full fortnight at half-term, every time. Parents sometimes tell us the terms feel short. We take that as a compliment — it means the children want more. We’ve experimented with longer over the years, and the pattern is always the same: energy dips, quality dips, sessions start going through the motions. We’d rather every session matters. More isn’t better — better is better.
And practically, our terms align with school calendars — no clashes with half-terms or holidays, no juggling childcare around an awkward coaching schedule. For families at schools like Merchant Taylors’, St Helen’s, or anywhere else in the area, the rhythm just works.
It’s also why we don’t currently run holiday camps. A camp that meets our standards — our ratios, full safeguarding, genuine developmental value — is a different proposition from filling a week with cricket-themed childcare. Almost all our coaches have full-time jobs; they give their evenings and weekends because they care about the programme, and we won’t replace them in August with whoever’s available. And there’s a deeper problem: if the breaks are when skills consolidate, filling them with more cricket would be saying one thing and doing another.
When parents push, the only cricket we recommend in the holidays is Lord’s, where Jason coached for five years — for the experience as much as the cricket. Beyond that, we’d actively encourage other sports: swimming, athletics, football, whatever catches their eye. The same science that shapes our coaching says multi-sport children develop better coordination, fewer overuse injuries, and broader athletic foundations. A week of tennis in the summer isn’t time away from cricket — it’s building the athlete who’ll be a better cricketer in September.
If we run camps in future, they’ll meet the same standard as everything else. Until then, we’d rather do less, properly.
The long game, at home.
We’ve built a library of coaching videos on our YouTube channel — progressive drills organised by level, from absolute beginners through to Academy-standard technique work. They’re designed for families to use between sessions, reinforcing what we cover in class.
Practice at Home with Coach Jason
12 progressive coaching videos covering batting, bowling, and fielding fundamentals. Plus in-depth conversations with Mark Ramprakash MBE, Adam Hollioake (former England ODI Captain), Alan Coleman (Middlesex CCC), Rory Coutts, and Peter Such (former England off-spinner).
Visit our YouTube channel →The elite conversations are worth watching for any parent who wants to understand what the game demands at the highest level — and why the foundations we build matter so much.
Every innings starts at the boundary.
The garden, the park, the back wall with a tennis ball — that’s where the love of cricket starts. We’ll take it from there.
Best from the boundary.
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