Academy Report

The Academy started back in October when two trial sessions were held on the 5^th and 12^th of October. After these sessions, the group was split up into two, to make numbers more manageable. Each group from then on have been having sessions every second week. Simon Smith, who is the Eastern Academy coach, has visited twice to assist in sessions and view the players in general. The Academy coach is Gordon Allan, who has been aided by Bob Ramsay and Stuart Williamson during various sessions along with Kari Anderson. The academy will be affiliated to Cricket Scotland , East of Scotland Cricket Association and Borders Cricket League.

 The academy is established to pursue the following objectives.

• Talent selection of age appropriate players to become academy players.
• Provide quality coaching to the Academy members.
• Provide generic Support services to both the playing members and the coaching staff.
• The provision of training and playing facilities for its members.
• Act as an integral part of the cricket Scotland performance pathway through strengthening the links and retaining players within the sport.
• To promote the sport of cricket.

The players get video analysis conducted on all aspects of their game, e.g., batting, bowling, fielding and catching. The coaches then highlight the areas of strength and areas of development that are needed so the players know what they have to focus on mainly. They then look to run the sessions that involve drills to help them improve in those skill areas that were specified by the coach. From time to time the academy will bring in specialists to do different sessions on psychology and nutrition which will help them with the mental side of things and not just the playing aspects of the game. They will also have several specialist sessions on batting and bowling. Each of the players also all attends strength and conditioning classes every week.

Gordon Allan, who is the Central Academy Coach, has high expectations for the academy and has a positive attitude towards the whole academy! His aims for the academy is to try and seek out and develop the best young players that we have in the central area to a standard where they can realistically achieve representative call ups, even though this may take a couple of years. His visions on the academy are that the academy will sit side by side with the eastern academy in the programmes that we run and how we develop the level of ability of our players. It is also vital that the academy keeps running, because if it doesn’t, it’s closing off a major pathway for the players from the central area. He is trying to produce opportunities for those with performance potential to access quality sports-specific coaching and support services, and to enable them to develop further towards national standard.

There are 23 players in the Central Academy and they are represented from several clubs in the area. These are, Stirling County , Clackmannan County , Stenhousemuir, Westquarter, Kinross and McLaren. The general standard of the players of the academy at the moment are just below East Academy level, but there are some players who have the potential to and will hopefully break into the Eastern Academy to have a chance to further there cricketing skills even further.

The annual general meeting of the academy will be held once a year, in October.