During the Easter weekend (Saturday 15 April/Sunday 16 April), Zurich Crickets CC hosted an ICC Level 1 Coaching Course.
John Cook, Hampshire County Cricket Club Development Manager, who has been associated with Zurich Crickets CC and Cricket Switzerland since 2010, was the course tutor. He commented that having had the chance to recently return to the city and suburbs of Zurich after a two-year hiatus due to the unfortunate events of a global pandemic the game and state of cricket couldn’t be healthier! The upward trajectory and growth of cricket in Switzerland has been rewarded with membership to ICC events and competitions, offering an ever-brighter future to support a pathway of development for the nation. The country’s admission has also coincided with the ICC achieving a landmark, creating their own globally accredited coaching qualifications, and Cricket Switzerland has taken the initiative and become a very early adopter of the ICC’s Level 1 qualification.
This qualification takes place over two days, offering an environment to meet like-minded people supporting their players to engage and enjoy the benefits of structured coaching sessions. The course offers plenty of opportunity to practice coaching skills in a safe, inclusive, reflective and enjoyable environment with support from a team of accredited coach educators.
The course raises awareness of the associated technical, tactical, physical and mental demands of the game coupled with an appreciation and exploration in relation to the role of a coach. The course very much mirrors the opportunities that attendees will ultimately have the honour and privilege of creating for their players, post-attendance. As a result, candidates prepared sessions which covered many aspects of fielding, batting and bowling, whether spin or pace, while the final day was given over to practical assessments. Here participants were given a 20-minute allocated session to be delivered with the remainder of their group acting as participants.
All eight candidates, after a debrief, were informed that they had passed their assessments. Congratulations to Ankush Lal (Zurich Lions), Chamith Deemantha (Zug CC), Pradeep Vijayadas (Winterthur CC), Balajee Chandrasekaran (Wettingen CC), and from Zurich Crickets CC: Chris Coulson, Nilesh Chorvada, Abdullah Zahir, Noorkhan Ahmedi and Lavan Santhirasekeram. In addition, Russell Lowman from BDJCC was attending to successfully complete his ECB Core Coaching.
The inclusive nature of this course provides time to explore a grounding in coaching via an initial and comprehensive online model (the ICC Foundation Course) which is self-paced, and the face-to-face modules (the ICC L1 online materials in EdApp) are applicable for people aged 13 and over and all abilities are encouraged to attend.
For more information about coaching development in Switzerland, please contact Michael Hall.
John Cook and Patrick Henderson
