Gareth Batty: I’ll always help talent even if it could cost me my place

 
Teaching point: Zafar Ansari is among the players Gareth Batty gives guidance to
Gareth Batty1 May 2014

I have always believed that senior players have a duty to pass on information to their younger colleagues to help them improve and make progress as cricketers.

If I impart some knowledge, and that means another player moves on in leaps and bounds and takes my place, that’s the way it should always be.

There are definitely people out there who would have the opposite point of view. They’d think, ‘this young guy’s going to take my place’. But I’ve never been from that sort of school. I’m in the latter part of my career and at this stage, you have an inner confidence and you know where you need to be.

If you’re not picked at the end of that, there’s nothing you can do anyway. I want the club to be successful. I spend quite a lot of time with our youngsters, partly because I’m a bit of a kid myself, and they’re great.

They’re searching for answers and knowledge the whole time and if they didn’t get it from me, they’d go somewhere else to do it because there’s a real desire there to succeed. But the older you get, the more this becomes part of your job. I want to help these players get better more quickly, and to have a longer career at a higher level.

When most people finish, they wish they’d known certain things 10 years ago, as it would have made them better players.

So our job as senior players is to take all the pressure off younger players in the team to allow them to learn their skills and perform. We also need to be an ear for someone to chew on if things aren’t going well, or even if they are.

What kind of advice do you pass on? Most players have the basic skills so mostly, you’ll discuss situations you might encounter in matches. If I talk to a young spinner, such as our own Zafar Ansari, it’s often about the pace at which he should bowl.

The more matches you play, the more pitches you encounter and the more you learn about how different players go about their innings. If a young player has performed well or badly, it’s important to discuss these things after the game.

This was the scenario, this was why it didn’t work out, this is what you could try next time to be more successful.

Spin bowling can be an unusual role at times. I’d compare it to that of a goalkeeper in football. For much of a game, you might have very little to do but then all of a sudden, the sun shines on the final day, the pitch is dry and you’re expected to bowl your team to victory. It can be quite a lot of pressure but as a spinner, these are the moments you have to live for.

I hope to have a few such opportunities this summer but the first job is to recover from the broken left hand I suffered in a recent Second XI fixture. There are certain exercises I can do but it’s mainly a case of waiting to see how it heals.

The frustrating thing is that, because it’s my left hand, I could bowl without much trouble although as I can’t grip a bat at the moment, there’s clearly no way I could play.

Fingers crossed I’m right again soon and ready to challenge for a place in the team.

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