Why we coach the way we do — and why the evidence says it works.
Every child who walks through our door has something. Sometimes it’s obvious — how well they move, how fluidly they change direction, a natural batting trigger you wouldn’t expect from a five-year-old. Sometimes it’s quieter — the child who tidies up the cones without being asked, who offers a hand to the one who’s fallen over, who listens just a little harder than the others. A wry smile during a team game. A competitive fire that only shows when it matters. Lovely ingredients.
Our job is to spot it and develop it. Not with pressure. Not by labelling a six-year-old as a “batsman” or a “bowler.” But with proper coaching, grounded in how children actually learn — game-based learning where they make decisions, face consequences, fail safely, and build skills that stick under pressure, not just in a controlled drill.
We know every child by name. We know what they’re working on, what motivates them, and what they find hard. Parents often tell us it feels like private coaching in a team setting. That’s deliberate. Children are split into teams of four or five, each with a dedicated coach — giving us ratios of 1:4 or better. They follow cricketing nations from around the world, whichever tournament is current — Test cricket, World Cup, the Hundred, IPL, county cricket. It keeps things fresh, broadens their horizons, and means every child gets coached, not just supervised.
Sessions begin with a briefing and end with a debrief. The children expect it. They’re learning to prepare, reflect, and take responsibility for their own improvement — habits that will serve them long after they leave us. They earn rewards as a team — we constantly reinforce the value of being a good team mate, because you need them and you can’t win by yourself. We’re not just teaching them cricket. We’re preparing them for what’s to come.
Everything we do follows the Spirit of Cricket: fair play, respect, resilience, teamwork. But joyfully, not preachy. Children build confidence here that spills into school and life. They learn to fail well and try again. They captain their team, shake hands with the opposition, and carry themselves with quiet pride.
We’re independent — no franchise, no allegiances, no conflicts of interest. We sit alongside your child’s club, their school, and any pathway they’re on. A consistent thread through their development.
If they leave each session a bit more confident, a bit more skilled, and still loving cricket — we’ve done our job.
When we assess whether a child is ready to move up, we’re not just looking at how well they play a cover drive. We’re looking at the whole child.
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?
We consider six things before any child moves up:
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. It’s why a brilliant 7-year-old might stay in Group 3 while a less flashy one moves to Group 4. It’s not a judgement on talent — it’s a judgement on timing. And getting the timing right is one of the most important things we do.
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.
Cricket is a long game, and so is growing up.
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 — parents see their child pick up a bat in the garden and want to nurture it.
But we won’t take their money for 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.
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.
Parents sometimes tell us our terms feel short. We take that as a compliment — it means they want more. But the length is deliberate, and the reason is simple: it’s how children actually learn.
The science of skill development shows that intensive coaching with proper breaks produces better, longer-lasting learning than year-round grinding. Your child’s brain consolidates new motor skills during rest — the gaps between terms are when techniques genuinely stick. It’s the same principle behind professional cricket periodisation: pre-season intensity, competitive season, proper off-season. We apply it at every age.
Shorter terms also keep everyone sharp — coaches and children alike. We’ve experimented with longer terms over the years and the evidence is clear: by the end, energy dips, quality dips, and sessions start going through the motions. We’d rather every session matters than run extra weeks for the sake of it. The same goes for half-term breaks — we take a full fortnight, every time, for exactly the same reasons.
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.
We run 8–10 week terms, three times a year. Not because we can’t run more. Because more isn’t better — better is better.
We get asked a lot. And it’s something we’ve considered seriously over the years, particularly in the early days of Cricket Tikes.
The short answer is: we don’t currently run them. The longer answer is worth hearing.
Running a camp that meets our standards — proper coach ratios, full safeguarding, genuine developmental value — is a different proposition entirely from running one that simply fills a week of childcare with cricket-themed activities. Almost all our coaches have full-time jobs. They give up their evenings and weekends because they care about the programme. They can’t down tools for a week in August, and we wouldn’t ask them to. Replacing them with whoever’s available in the summer holidays means diluting the very thing parents trust us for.
There’s also a philosophical problem. If our entire coaching model is built around intensive blocks with proper rest — if we tell parents that breaks between terms are when skills consolidate — then filling those breaks with more cricket contradicts the principle. We’d be saying one thing and doing another.
When parents push, the only place we recommend for cricket is Lord’s Cricket Ground, where Jason coached for five years. Not just for the cricket, but for the experience. Beyond that, we’d actively encourage children to try other sports over the holidays — multi-sport camps, swimming, athletics, whatever catches their eye. It’s not a throwaway suggestion. The same developmental science that underpins our coaching says children who play multiple sports develop better coordination, fewer overuse injuries, and broader athletic foundations. A week of tennis or football in the summer isn’t time away from cricket — it’s building the athlete who’ll be a better cricketer in September.
If we do run camps in future, they’ll meet the same standard as everything else we do. Until then, we’d rather do less, properly.
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.
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.
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.
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