A chat with Gatt

Mike Gatting explains why cricket coaching - from Peter Moores to the grassroots - is in rude health.

Gatting hails impact of Coaching the Coaches

As a player Mike Gatting was renowned for the high standards he set on the field. As one of the most prolific batsmen of his day, he made 79 Test appearances for England, including 23 as captain and famously led his country to an Ashes series victory in Australia in 1986/87. Nowadays, Gatting is now tasked with helping to make sure standards are just as high off the field in his role as Managing Director of Cricket Partnerships for the ECB. As part of his work, Gatting attended last week's national Sky Sports Coach of the Year Awards at Lord's, which celebrated the very best in cricket coaching. The ceremony honoured coaches at a local, regional and national level with winners selected from a shortlist of candidates put forward by the 40 County Boards. Having spent the day watching some of the nation's up-and-coming coaches in action, Gatting took time out to chat to skysports.com about the development of coaching in the UK. From grassroots level to the England team he is confident that the quality of coaching is good, but insists there is still work to be done at all levels.

skysports.com: We're here to talk about cricket coaching. Let's start by talking about the most high-profile coach in the country, Peter Moores. What do you make of the job he's been doing for England? Mike Gatting: Peter is actually a pretty low-profile coach; he just gets on with the job that he does. He's a very good worker behind the scenes, he's methodical, he's very clear in where he wants to go and we're heading in a good direction. He's got a plan laid out, which is very good and he works well with the England team. He's also very adept at coming down to the levels below and passing on his thoughts and information to the coaches and the tutors. Kevin Pietersen has been getting plenty of plaudits after his unbeaten start as England captain. What's been the secret of his success? I think Kevin Pietersen has done well but it's all about how the team performs and that has a lot to do with the environment. The environment KP is producing along with the coach is a good one. He's very lucky that Steve Harmison has come back in and performed well and that Andrew Flintoff has been looking good with both bat and ball. When two guys that are so pivotal in the team start performing well it's an awfully good lift for everybody in the team. Without a doubt that's been key to our good performances. How do you see the relationship developing between Moores and Pietersen in the future?
I think it will develop well. When things are going well you must look to improve and keep up the standards you've set. When things start going badly you've got to work together as a team to get it right again, so we'll see. At the moment it's working very well because we're winning and things are looking good. But we've got to go to India and we might see a few problems there because it's a very hard place to tour. India are a very good side with a passionate crowd and it will be different to what some of the guys are used to in the UK. But I'm sure that Peter and Kevin will try to create the right atmosphere, the right work ethic and make sure they do what is needed to play for England. They need to continue to improve and develop. It's good now, but you want to keep improving and moving forwards. Speaking of moving forwards, you have been invited to present awards to the top young coaches in the country. What sort of progress is being made with the standard of cricket coaching in this country? Without a doubt it is much better than it was in my day and the amount of young coaches we have is a credit to the coach education team. We have field-based trainers that give them support and the whole system is very well-run. It's an excellent process and we're seeing the benefits of it both in terms of quality and numbers. What are those benefits? There are about 13,000 coaches out there, all at different levels, and that's been increased in the last year or so. Those 13,000 coaches get to coach about 250,000 players. What it really boils down to is providing quality coaching for a quarter of a million players. You obviously need officials to umpire the games and score the matches, then you need somebody to teach the kids how to play the game. So we need teachers and we need trainers who teach the teachers to teach, so the line goes on. It really is a very good process. What will the benefits will this process have at the very top level? If you get excellence in coaching, where the basics are taught well and you get good back-up, and you put that with the talent that's out there, you are going to produce a lot more good, solid players. If you have a coaches' association that is strong and that teaches well then we should produce a lot of very good players. What about Sky Sports' involvement, how has that helped coaching at grassroots level? The partnership with Sky Sports is magnificent. They've done tremendously well in enabling us to have cheaper courses. Some people may be put off by thinking coaching courses are too expensive, but Sky have made it much easier to come on the courses. That means we don't miss out on as many quality coaches as we might have, had Sky not been a partner in this. There's funding, there are opportunities to meet experienced coaches and they provide equipment. The coaches love that; they love getting tracksuits and shirts, and it makes them feel wanted. Making somebody feel part of an association is a must and it shows that people actually care. These guys are giving their time up for nothing and it's a bit of a 'thank you' for them as well. Is there more work to be done? There's always work to be done. We can always improve and we want to continue the personal development of coaches, as we do with players. As a player we always strived to continually improve and we're always trying to find new processes and best practices to make things easier. We want better courses, new information, new techniques, and we want to keep things fresh. We're trying all the time to move forwards and to continually improve performance.