For parents who have never played
Supporting a
cricketer
Plenty of our parents had never watched a cricket match before their child joined. It turns out that understanding the sport is close to irrelevant to being good at this. What matters is much simpler, and mostly happens in the car.
Nobody warns you
One ball can
end their day
This is the thing to understand before anything else. In cricket, a batter who is out is out — no second at-bat, no next quarter. A child can travel an hour, wait an hour, face one delivery, and be finished.
No other sport a child is likely to play does this. In baseball they get another turn. In soccer they keep running. Cricket can hand a nine-year-old a single moment and then ask them to sit down for two hours with it.
It is also, eventually, the thing cricket teaches best. But the first time it happens to your child, they will need you to already know it was coming.
- Getting out is not failure
- Every batter who has ever played has been out, most of them cheaply, many of them first ball. It is the ordinary outcome of batting, not evidence of anything. Say so early and say it often, before it happens rather than after.
- Let the silence sit
- A child walking back has just had a very public bad moment. They do not need analysis in the first ten minutes. They usually need a drink and somebody sitting nearby not saying anything.
- The day is not over
- They still field, and they may still bowl. One of the quiet gifts of cricket is that a bad start can be redeemed at the other end of the same afternoon.
Where it actually matters
The drive home
Ask any coach where a young player's relationship with a sport is won or lost and they will tell you it is the car. Not the ground, not the training session — the twenty minutes afterwards.
Worth saying
- • "I loved watching you play."
- • "What was the best bit?"
- • "Are you hungry?"
- • Nothing at all, if they are quiet.
Worth avoiding
- • "You should have played straighter."
- • "Why did the coach not bowl you?"
- • A review of the dismissal.
- • Comparisons with another child on the team.
The research on this is not subtle. Children whose parents focus on effort and enjoyment stay in sport; children who are coached from the passenger seat drift out of it, often years before anybody realises why. If your child wants to talk technique, they will raise it. Let them.
At the ground
How to be
useful on a Saturday
You do not need to know a cover drive from a cover point. Most of what helps a youth club run has nothing to do with cricket knowledge at all.
And the sideline is where you will learn the game anyway. Stand near a parent who has done a season and ask what just happened. They will be delighted — it is how they learnt.
Ways to help-
Applaud both sides
Cricket has a strong convention of clapping good play whoever produced it. Children pick this up from adults, and it is one of the better things the sport passes on.
-
Leave the umpire alone
At youth level the umpire is often a volunteer or a coach. Decisions go both ways across a season, and none of them are worth a scene.
-
Learn to score
The single most useful thing a non-playing parent can offer. It takes one afternoon to learn, it makes you follow the game closely, and every club is short of scorers.
-
Offer the spare seats
Away fixtures involve driving. Car-sharing keeps children in the sport whose families cannot make every trip.
Across a season
Progress is not
a straight line
Cricket improvement is lumpy. A child can look transformed for three weeks and then have a month where nothing works, and neither stretch means much on its own.
Scores are a particularly poor measure at this age. A batter can play beautifully for twenty minutes and be out to a good ball; another can edge four boundaries and finish with more runs. Coaches are watching decision-making, technique and temperament — things that do not appear in a scorebook.
If you want a measure that means something, use this one: does your child want to go to training? Everything else follows from that, and nothing else substitutes for it.
Questions parents ask
Getting it right
I know nothing about cricket. Is that a problem? +
No, and in some ways it helps. Parents who played tend to have opinions about technique; parents who did not tend to ask how their child enjoyed it. The second question is the more useful one. If you want the vocabulary, our glossary covers what you will hear.
My child was out first ball and is devastated. What do I say? +
Very little, at first. Sit with them, get them a drink, and let the feeling pass before anyone talks about the ball. Later, when it is genuinely over, the useful line is that every cricketer who has ever lived has had exactly that day, usually more than once.
Should I talk to the coach about selection? +
You can always ask what your child should work on — coaches welcome that and will give you a straight answer. Asking why another child batted higher is a different conversation and rarely a useful one. Not at the ground, and not in front of the players.
How do I know if they are actually enjoying it? +
Watch what happens on a training evening, not a match day. A child who picks up their bag without being asked is enjoying it. One who needs persuading every week is telling you something, and it is worth listening to before it becomes a bigger conversation.
Come and stand on the sideline
You will learn more about cricket in one session than from anything written down, and nobody will mind that you are starting from nothing.