How to become a cricket coach

Read advice from the likes of Liam Plunkett and Jack Brooks

“Cricket coach, Miss!” might not be a common response to your school’s career advisor, but the opportunities to develop your coaching abilities in the game are now more plentiful than ever.

Perhaps you’ve dreamed of making it all the way to the top of the game, coaching your country, or maybe your kid’s team just needs a parent to help them out in winter nets.

Getting started can be a daunting process, so with LP Cricket, here’s everything you need to know about making your way as a cricket coach.

What qualifications do you need to become a cricket coach? Can I coach without a qualification?

This very much depends on where you want to start out, and your experience levels within the game.

A coaching qualification is ideal, especially when it comes to working with kids, but it’s very much at the discretion of the deployer and where you want to be coaching. Of course, before funding any courses it’s probably sensible to try and get some experience within and alongside other coaches who’ll be more than happy to talk you through, and importantly show you, what you can expect.

There will be many club cricketers out there coaching that don’t have a qualification. Through their experience they will have the knowledge and technical ability to pass this on to others. 

If you are serious about becoming a cricket coach you would complete a coaching course to learn HOW to coach. LP Cricket Coaching Courses will give you the tools to enable you to pass on information whether this be Technical, Tactical, Physical or Mental. 

The art of good coaching is being able to recognise a player's needs and support the development of individuals. There are various methods you can use to create learning environments and build professional relationships with players. Understanding the methods you have available to you plays a huge part in getting player buy-in to enable you to pass on this information in the correct way. 

How far can you go in cricket coaching?

The answer is, as far as you want to take it. 

The message from LP Cricket is to simply ‘get coaching’. It’s not about working through our qualifications as fast as you can. Go and learn the art of coaching, explore as many opportunities as you can to coach and put all the skills learnt into practice. 

There will be players and coaches in your club where you can hoover up knowledge and experience in the coaching process - the WHO, WHY, WHAT and HOW to develop players young and old.

Play your part, encourage all that the game is for them and, above all, make a difference.

Equipment and costs

Gavin Young at Owzat Cricket in Derbyshire suggests a basic equipment bag for new coaches would include bats, various soft and hard balls, cones, batting 'T's and wickets. He says: “You would build up more specialist equipment over time.”

You’d be looking at a minimum £300 to build up your own basic equipment bag. So for someone starting out, it would be worth enquiring what your club has available and what you can borrow while you are figuring out how far you want to take the coaching qualifications.

The benefits of taking a coaching qualification

Dominic Gerencser is first team coach at Grimsargh Cricket Club in Lancashire and hadn’t seen the value of taking badges. He’d played at a high level and the club hadn’t been in a position to afford to pay a coach when he was in the juniors.

He was offered the chance to do a level 2 course and in line with becoming a senior member of the club, he took it upon himself to take on the challenge.

“I missed out on coaching, and because I didn’t have proper coaching as a kid, I didn’t really understand what it could teach me,” he says.

“But that’s all changed. The course wasn’t so much about technique tactics, it helped me to understand how people learn and how to help them learn, breaking down sessions to make it adaptable to the players around me.

“Because I’d played to a good standard, there was nothing wrong with what I was trying to coach, but the course has helped me grasp how to coach people. The aim is to help players improve, and we have a lot of new players to the game so being able to adapt to different levels in a social cricket team is vital - and going through the course has really helped me.”

Qualification progress and progression

The ECB offers a pathway of course from Support Coach, Foundation Coach through to specialisms in the game. Because these courses are face-to-face they are on set dates throughout the season and subject to numbers. The ECB website has information and costs for all the steps you can take.

In contrast, LP Cricket has an online Development Coach Course which starts to introduce the underpinning principles of Batting, Bowling, Fielding and Wicketkeeping (BBFW). It also dives into the coaching methods available for each skill.

Then there’s an Interactive Coach Course which provides an alternative to the Development Coach Course where learners attend virtual classrooms, exploring the coaching process in more detail. This course looks at BBFW videos, tactical scenarios and completes a workbook. Learners then submit their work and complete a 1:1 professional discussion with a mentor. This course is endorsed by 1st4Sport Qualifications.

On top of all that, there are female specific versions of all courses to provide a comfortable learning environment where all feel confident to attend.

LP Cricket have designed a pathway they are proud of that provides various alternative ways of becoming a cricket coach.

Coaching girls’ cricket vs coaching boys’ cricket/Coaching women’s cricket vs coaching men’s cricket

Girls’ and women’s cricket is on the rise and is only going to get bigger and more popular. Driven in part by The Hundred and underpinned by access and specific, dedicated coaching at clubs across the country. If football has the Wildcats program, cricket is very much in the same space with All Stars Cricket which is a commitment from the ECB to make the game a gender-balanced sport.

Safeguarding: If you are getting involved in kids’ cricket, the club will want to run a DBS check, but what does that mean?

As part of any clubs safeguarding policy around working with children and minors, DBS check will be required. The Gov.uk website describes the DBS (or Disclosure and Barring Service) as a check on the criminal record of someone applying for a role. You can request a more detailed check for certain roles, for example in healthcare or childcare.

The club you are planning to coach with will be able to apply for a DBS check for you and know which level is required, but it will typically look at spent and unspent convictions and cautions.

Having an ECB DBS check or DBS check through your deploying agent is a prerequisite before anyone starts coaching. This could also be completed by the individual.

If you want to coach at a cricket club, the club would require an up-to-date DBS. A basic first aid course would be desirable too.

COACHES SHOULD NOT COACH ON THEIR OWN UNTIL THEY REACH 18 YEARS OF AGE

How does LP Cricket compare to coaching levels?

It doesn’t really. The ECB programme is all face-to-face and starts with the Support Coach course, you can access this from 16 years of age. 

LP Cricket’s coaching pathway is made up of courses that are a mix of online, virtual and face-to-face. These alternatives remove some barriers to becoming a cricket coach and the pathway starts with the online Rookie Coach Course, which can be accessed from 12 years of age to enable and engage young people

It’s quite common for youngsters to be supporting coaches in ‘club life’ and there is a comprehensive list of the benefits to young people and their clubs on the LP Cricket website. Getting young people involved in ‘club life’ early will help to make coach development in clubs sustainable for years to come.

Want to be a pro? What is it like coaching as a pro vs going it alone?

Surrey’s bowling consultant Jack Brooks says: “Coaching the pros is incredibly rewarding. You have immediate outcomes and you are affecting someone's career.

“You can be with first year pros who are eyes wide open and soaking up everything, then with an old pro who might take awhile to warm up to you, they’ve got their ways and their methods and it can take some time. At Surrey, there’s people around me who I can lean on, and I’ve got my specialisms but it’s a different pressure to going it alone. In many ways when I’m on my own at a lower level it is straight up coaching whereas with the pros there’s a lot of player and relationship management.

“I’m a level 3 coach now. I did my level 1 and 2 as a teen in club cricket. It’s what you did back then. Level 3 is tough. There’s coursework involved! I wanted my badges for when I finished playing so I could decide what to do.

“The biggest difference between coaching men and women for me is the communication style. I’m pretty relaxed as a person but I’ve found it takes a little more time to build a relationship as a coach in the women’s game.”

How much do cricket coaches get paid in the UK?

Financial reward is very much dependent on the level you want to reach, but for many in the game it is a full-time job with appropriate salary.

Click here to read more about LP Cricket and the services it offers