Who’s the next Don Bradman, Shane Warne or Mark Wood? Sky Sports’ Saturday Coaching Clinic

Who are the next potential superstars of the game?

You’ve got to start somewhere, and Michael Atherton, Rob Key and Ian Ward took to Twitter on day three of the second #raisethebat Test to identify some of the promising young cricketers up and down the country in a Saturday Coaching Clinic.

Click on the video to watch some of the clips sent in by budding young cricketers, including a Don Bradman lookalike, a Mark Wood-esque bowling action and a young legspinner hopeful of becoming the next Shane Warne.

With some of the future stars to send in clips as young as three years’ old, former England opener Atherton was keen to stress the coaching shouldn’t bee too technical at such a young age.

“I’ve got a boy who is 18 now so he is way out of my range in terms of coaching but from three onwards, the only thing I did with him was volume,” said Atherton.

“I didn’t give any technical advice, I didn’t say ‘pick it up like this’ or ‘use your front elbow’, ‘use your front foot’ – I just threw balls for people to hit and if you get volume into young boys or girls, I think that is the biggest thing at a young age.

“Just the practice and the feeling, the instinct of hitting a ball time and time and time again. Don’t worry about technique, that will come eventually. Just get that volume into young cricketers early on. Don’t over-complicate matters.”

?? SATURDAY COACHING CLINIC ??

Harry Holloway… aged 3⃣!! ???

Shot Harry! @Athersmike @robkey612

? Watch live on SS Cricket ? https://t.co/BoiUReJjwM
? Live #ENGvWI blog ? https://t.co/qjffIbjuX9 pic.twitter.com/HcCy7MgoMg

Former Surrey and England Women’s cricketer Ebony Rainford-Brent also joined in on the discussion, adding: “It reminds you, especially when it comes to the girls game and the community game, how far it has grown.

“I look at my era and there were fewer opportunities through club set-ups, but now you look at things like the Chance to Shine programme – now in its 50th year – as well AllStars Cricket and Dynamos, which have brought in young girls from five years old, all the way up to 11.

“And more clubs now have mixed environments. It’s brilliant to see all of the progression that’s happening.”

Ebony is now involved in a project of her own, the ACE Programme, in her role as director of women’s cricket at Surrey, with the aim of targeting the African-Caribbean community and breaking down some of the inner-London barriers. It has proved a great success.

“I played on concrete for the first year of my life and had idea about this form of Test cricket,” added Ebony. “We need to make sure young kids who are interested can go from those informal cricketing environments into some sore of a community club.

“That’s what we’ve been working on; make there’s a system to identify and pluck out the talent and then we’ve got an academy set up to gather that.

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