The Twelfth Man 2019

06 07 The first entry point would be the Emerging Players’ Pro- gramme, an initial six month programme starting at the beginning of October until the beginning of March. This protects both the club and the individual. The player might think ‘this is not for me’ or the club might feel they won’t make it at this stage. After that, they can progress to a summer Scholarship running from the beginning of April until the end of September. In and amongst that, they’re all then fighting for an Academy spot. From there it’s senior Academy, junior professional and staff contracts. Originally, Yorkshire schools is where we found the players, but now we do it through the county age-group structure that goes from clubs and schools into districts and regional sides and into county age-group sides. There’s lots of volunteers, lots of cricket played and lots of really good stuff with quality coaches going on right around the county. People aren’t shy in telling us when there’s a good player emerging. So, ultimately, there’s a pathway right through from schools to first-class cricket with Yorkshire. The trick is to cast our net as wide as we can, creating opportunities to practice and play games so we can make an informed decision about who we think might go forward. There is an element of guesswork; somebody can be outstanding at 16, but they haven’t got any better by the time they’re 19 and you get late developers too, so that’s why we’ve got teams from under 10s through to the 19s, plus our Academy league side on a Saturday and then second XI cricket. “ All we’re trying to do is to provide as much opportunity as we can, and it’s down to them to put their name in lights. All the lads we identify, at the different levels mentioned, get exactly the same opportunities in the winter pro- gramme. We don’t differentiate between any of the lev- els. They all get one-to-ones, group coaching, strength and conditioning programmes, lifestyle support with Matthew Wood from the PCA, a bi-annual overseas trip that we started last year and a trip to the national per- formance centre at Loughborough for two days. It’s a very strong programme. In the Academy we start back in November. Some of the cricket starts then, but it is mainly a big block of fit- ness. The cricket is taken care of in the one-to-ones where everybody is entitled to an hour per week. We allocate a slot that they request, fitting around school work and travelling time from November until April when the season starts. That’s as well as group sessions on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. A lot of the stuff we do in the winter helps them to de- velop techniques we know will be robust and stand up under pressure. For instance, if somebody isn’t great off the back foot, it might be because they haven’t faced any quick bowling before they were 17 and are about to be exposed to that. So we spend time trying to deal with that before it actually happens. It’s about trying to prepare them for what’s going to come – and not just with the cricket but when the contracts come - stuff like the media day, trying to mirror what professionals do and making sure nothing is a surprise. We talk a lot about the values and traditions, but I think it’s some- thing they’re well aware of anyway. They work hard to be involved, but they have to work even harder to stay in because there’s others pushing behind them. Obviously, Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow are the real superstar products of this system, so it has got a real tradition of producing quality cricket- ers. We’re the custodians of that. We give a lot, but we expect a lot in terms of commitment and professional- ism. We speak to lads who have progressed onto the Academy this time about leadership and the example set by those who have moved up from the Academy. We’re challenging those in the full Academy to be role models for the younger group in the EPP. We’re expecting lads like George Hill or Dom Leech, who have been selected for England’s Young Lions squad, to set the standard. Rather than just us coaches driving that, we want a self-policing organisation. In terms of success, it was a fantastic performance by that group of under 17s last year to win their title and a decent sum- mer of cricket in the leagues. But the main thing was that we pushed two or three to the second team and they did really well. Hopefully they can push on even more and, as far as their development goes, start to push the first- team lads. We say, you’ve got to be better than leg- ends like Tim Bresnan, Adam Lyth, better than Tom Kohler-Cadmore, better than Jonny Bairstow or Joe Root, otherwise they play. While winning a competition was brilliant, it’s still about development and trying to find the one or two gems that are going to play and give our members so much pleasure. Photo courtesy of John Heald Photography