Developing coaching skills are potentially an invaluable contribution to young people’s broad personal development as well as their cricketing capabilities. After all, coaching skills are widely recognised as one of the key components of core leadership competences.
More mercenary, wherever a young person may go on to study, there will be opportunities to get paid coaching work which offers a better hourly rate and impacts less on social life than most other student jobs.
We also have a vested interest in developing the coaching pool at our venues. Most of those who deliver coaching or provide coaching support were supported through coaching programmes for that reason.
We encourage all our older junior cricketers to consider getting involved in a coaching programme. This starts at approaching 16 with the ECB Support Coach qualification and progresses to the full ECB Level 1 and, at 18, to ECB Level 2 qualifications. They are also UK Sport accredited which allows holders to use transferable skills in other sports.
We have delivered the Coach Support scheme ourselves locally and will look to do so again once current restrictions are lifted. That way we are able to absorb the other costs of delivery. However, the subsequent qualifications require increasing levels of commitment and costs of up to £300 each and, while we are prepared to support people through them, we will want to see evidence of that commitment though involvement in supporting our own coaching programmes.