New focus for former Redbacks coach: Jamie Siddons launches new cricket school Easter Monday
Former Redbacks coach Jamie Siddons is turning his attention to a new generation of young stars, wanting to teach kids to play with aggression and ‘that bat flow all the great players have’.
SA News
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SOUTH Australia’s outgoing head cricket coach, Jamie Siddons, is turning his attention to a new group of cricketers – the state’s budding young juniors.
After coaching the likes of Travis Head and Alex Carey for the past five years, Siddons who parted ways with SACA last month with a year remaining on his contract, is now offering private coaching to juniors, focusing on players aged 14 and under.
“Having spent a lot of time with the international players and studying how I believe the best players bat, I wanted to find a way to fast-track that into the younger kids,” Siddons said.
“I think the current methodology with coaching is really too old-school, too structured.
“I want them to explore hitting the ball and hitting it hard before they have to worry about getting out because if they can learn this attacking game – to hit fours and sixes – when they are young, they are going to keep it with them for ever.
“I have worked with elite cricketers for a long time and I know it is really hard to make those changes – you can change them mentally, and help them play some more shots, but you just can’t give them that bat flow all the great players have.
“It is really hard, especially after 15 or 16, to change kids and to give them that freedom I am speaking about, the flow of the bat.”
Siddons, a mid-order batsman, played 82 Sheffield Shield matches for the Redbacks between 1991 and 2000, including as captain when SA last won the shield in 1995-96.
He worked as an assistant coach for the Australian men’s team and head coach of Bangladesh before taking up the top job at SACA in 2015.
The father of two sons – Toby is 9 and Jonah, 7 – has been a volunteer coach at his eldest son’s U10 community cricket for the past two years.
“Outside working with the likes of Head and Carey, for me helping kids is the most satisfying thing, I love it more than anything,” he said.
Siddons says his own late father, Jim, was the most influential of all his coaches.
“He’d say, ‘play your shot and if it is your day, you’ll make runs, so have the courage to play your shots, to play aggressively’ – it’s an aggressive mindset I want to give the kids,” he said.
“My number one aim is to have the parents involved and for them to understand what I am telling the kids, to make them the hero coach of the kids, not me.”
Siddons will offer one-one-one coaching, in line with COVID-19 restrictions, as well as online individual and group sessions via social media platform Zoom which start Easter Monday and focus on different shots.
For more information, go to www.jamiesiddonscoaching.com