Seeing players recognised the biggest thrill

It was another incredible milestone last week when five of the fifteen BLACKCAPS squad selected to take on the Aussies in the Chappell Hadlee series next month were Firebirds from last season. Proud that we could execute the Cricket Wellington boards strategy of having more players play for New Zealand and having 33% of the national squad play for the Firebirds last season it has well and truly hit that mark as they take on one of the best teams in the world. Over my ten years with the team this has not always been the case and takes a lot of intentional planning, quality resourcing and a culture of improvement and winning. A few years ago, the Wellington Firebirds team embarked on a sharp vision of how we wanted to play and be seen in white ball cricket. We set lofty goals of what we wanted to achieve that had been out of reach for past teams. What this resulted in was an incredible few seasons of outstanding achievements both for individuals and for the team. In the space of just a few seasons the team achieved:

·      Firebirds highest ever t20 total – 230-4

·      Highest ListA or ODI total ever for any team in NZ – 427-8

·      Highest score at the Basin Reserve in white ball cricket – 427-8

·      Back-to-back t20 titles and a Ford Trophy title

·      Largest ListA winning margin ever for the Firebirds – 193runs

·      Largest T20 winning margin ever for the Firebirds – 80runs

·      Made the top three in the Ford Trophy two seasons in a row

On the back of this five players made their white ball debuts for the BLACKCAPS in the space of 18months between 2020 and 2022 – Devon Conway, Finn Allen, Rachin Ravindra, Ben Sears, and Michael Bracewell.

The philosophy of how we wanted to play was based on always taking positive options first, with a high-risk-high-reward approach which paid huge dividends evidenced from the above.

When batting we had a focus of staying in the green which meant always having a high balls-per-boundary ratio and striving to never face two dot balls in a row in t20. We went about structuring our batting line up as such that we had players that could score “boundaries” placed right throughout the innings.

The other key batting metric we continually spoke about was strike rate. Taking away the pressure of scoring runs, we measured players only on their strike rate. For each batter in the order, we had a figure of what strike rate number was acceptable and world class based on that batting position. This put the batters in a frame of mind of getting runs quick and if they felt they were getting bogged down a positive option had to be taken to get the strike rate high. This was understood by players which meant if they got out taking a positive approach then the team accepted and understood this given the philosophy we had created. We selected and recruited batters for their attacking ability who we felt could do this.

From a bowling perspective it was also about staying in the green and taking wickets initially was the focus as we knew we were the only team that had adopted this batting approach. Statistically taking wickets had been proven to slow scoring rates from the research we had done on the competition in the past. We saw that when opposition teams lost a wicket or two, they “consolidated” so we saw this as a terrific opportunity to then dry up any runs, bowl dots at them, and squeeze in the field by coming in tighter preventing singles. The approach opposition teams took had a detrimental effect as the added pressure of losing a wicket become even worse as the slowed down scoring rate meant they had to start to force it at some stage again bringing in wicket taking opportunities. Having a skilled captain, like we did in Michael Bracewell and Hamish Bennett, was an influential part in managing these variances of the bowling innings of knowing when to attack, pull back, or be happy with dot balls.

Most of our approach came about from extensive research into what teams did when they won in these formats. In t20 it was 83% (over a 3year period) of teams that hit a higher boundary percentage in a match went on to win the match, so we had two ways of going about that. One was by hitting boundaries and one was by preventing boundaries. If you can do both then you will achieve comfortable wins but if you only do one, you still give yourself a chance. We put more emphasis on scoring boundaries and restricting boundaries was something we only did if we really needed to at the back end of the innings.

In all this success the biggest challenge we had was getting the players mindset right. Rather than being judged by runs which traditionally is how players are assessed we switched it to a strike rate. Training become an important part by practicing and experimenting ways in which batters can score straight away and what areas they could hit as opposed to getting in and facing balls in the process. Bowlers were only judged on strike rate too whereas in the past average and RPO metrics were used. If we were taking wickets quicker than our opposition then the flow on effect was that we had a lower average and RPO anyway.

Once the players started to see both the individual and team success from this approach their mindset was easier to manage so the coaches gave the players the confidence and backing in their own ability they needed.

This may seem like its all swing and no smarts however we simplified it even more by making sure batters were playing strong shots and in the first six overs scoring 4s, next eight overs scoring 4s by being aggressively smart hitting pockets, and last six overs hitting 6s as well as 4s. The role of who we had coming in at each phase above became an important strategy to determine overall batting effectiveness.

The last piece we changed players thinking on was the toss. Traditionally people would be of the mindset that if you win the toss bat first get runs on the board. This had worked in the past historically and may work at other levels as “scoreboard pressure” may exist however we did not believe in it. We had found at times when we batted first, we had been too restrictive/tentative in not knowing what a good score was. We knew we had some destructive batters but did not want to use them all up in the first half of the innings and have nothing left. So, we started winning the toss and fielding first. This resulted in a real change of fortunes especially at our home ground the Basin Reserve. People were saying if opposition scored X the team batting second cannot chase it. Which was right as that had been the case for the previous 5 years. However, we changed this statistic by managing the chase better and winning games chasing big targets. It was good to lead the way in this change around the toss and are now seeing other teams follow suit in this method over the last few seasons.

The most pleasing aspect out of all of this was seeing the progression of players. Changing the way white ball cricket was played in New Zealand and achieving some incredible milestones as a team was great but to see players rewarded for this both individually and collectively was the real icing on the cake.