He's raised a Test opener, now Matt Renshaw's dad wants to help fellow coaches the world over

Ian Renshaw has written a new book with Stephen Rollnick that aims to get coaches thinking differently about how they get the best out of their players

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

Ian Renshaw’s credentials as a cricket coach speak for themself.

As well as having a PhD in cricket, he’s worked with both the Australia and New Zealand academy setups, as well as with England Lions, over the course of his career.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, he’s also produced a Test batter in the form of his son, Australia opener Matt Renshaw.

Now, Ian has put 40 years of work, including two decades coaching and advising his son, into a new book, Dynamic Coaching: Playbook for Cricket Coaches, in a bid to help coaches the world over to make the most of their passion for bringing out the best in players.

The book has been produced with Cardiff University professor Stephen Rollnick, a world leader in motivational interviewing who has worked with Glamorgan in recent years.

Ian’s own journey in both cricket and education is fascinating too.

He began his career at mining team Teversal, where he replaced future Nottinghamshire captain and England Test opener Tim Robinson after he went professional with their county.

After studying at Leeds Carnegie and Loughborough, he then taught in Middlesbrough, where Matt was born, before moving into higher education, first at Teesside University and then Sheffield Hallam University.

While living there, Ian played at Sheffield Collegiate with Matt Root, father of Joe, before emigrating with his family, first to New Zealand and then Queensland.

But before that, he had even received coaching advice the day after his son was born from Ralph Middlebrook, a legendary coach in Yorkshire cricket circles.

^{Matt Renshaw's game was developed as youngster thanks to challenges set by his father Ian (Getty Images)}

“Ralph said ‘do me a favour, Ian – bowl at him from day one!’” he recalls.

“He mimicked the bowling action and said ‘he’s got to link that to batting,’ and he was absolutely right from a theoretical point of view because you need to be able to pick length.

“So Matt started playing right from being very little in Middlesbrough and then Sheffield, where he’d be playing on the outfield at that time.

“We were fortunate to go to New Zealand because there’s a lot of artificial pitches there.

“As well as playing little games on our driveway, trying to get him to hit it across the street or pull it into the wall of the house, wherever possible I’ve always taken him into the middle and played on a real pitch.

“I’d use pop-up goals as fielders, put cones down and just set him challenges designed with different rules and constraints, depending on what he needed at that time.

“He started to develop his technique by me asking him what to do, not how to do it.”

As well as this very personal case study, other real-life examples from well-known players Ian and Stephen have worked with appear throughout the book.

“There’s a lot of evidence out there that your childhood games and the environments that you play in shape the way that you play later on in life,” says Ian.

“There’s lots of famous stories of it, so I’m a strong believer in a game-centred approach, linked in with constraints coaching, which is what became my area of expertise.

“We just developed that idea and worked with Stephen to build some principles around how we have conversations with players to put them at the centre of the process because it’s their game and they own it.”

^{Stephen Rollnick assisted Ian with the book (Getty Images)}

Throughout the writing process, Ian was challenged by Stephen to simplify the work in order to provide the best possible advice for his readers, with the theory behind his ideas being kept for the end; a structure welcomed by coaches who have read the book and started putting its advice into practice.

“A lot of coaching is in the nets, particularly in the northern hemisphere, but they suck you in to coaching technique and nothing else because you can’t see where the ball goes,” says Ian, when asked what he believes coaches will get out of the book.

“It’s all quite artificial, rather than where the mental and physical sides interact in the game.

“In the book, we try to give examples of how we can play games within the nets and try to make it more realistic and representative of the real game.

“Actors rehearse for a part and cricketers are rehearsing to play a game.”

Stephen also hopes cricket coaches can learn from other sports and areas of life through the book.

“What we’re trying to achieve here is improve the breadth and depth of coaching,” he adds.

“In football, it’s completely normal practice to turn up and find they’re manipulating constraints, whereas in cricket it’s not.

“Cricket is rich with tradition, which we’re not suggesting is bypassed, but what we’re saying to coaches is widen your repertoire because the opportunity is out there for the taking.

Dynamic Coaching: Playbook for Cricket Coaches is available to buy on Amazon here