On Friday 19th of August Coverdrive.NL combined forces with CTC de Flamingos, KNCB - Koninklijke Nederlands Cricket Bond and VOC Cricket Rotterdam to provide cricket skills activities for approximately 200 'D' youth hockey players from Hockey Club Rotterdam as a part of HCR’s ‘Get reaDy’ day.
‘Get reaDy’ day
‘Get reaDy’ is an event held every year providing multisport activities for HCR’s hockey players, welcoming them back from the summer holiday and preparing them for the new hockey season.
Sports have more in common than they have differences
The captain of the Netherlands Women’s cricket team, Babette de Leede and Tim de Kok -captain of the VOC Men’s Cricket team- lead the cricket batting skills training and followed this up with a short game of cricket on the main field of the HCR Stadium. Outside the main hockey stadium, a series of fun cricket orientated challenges were provided. This included the Vortex throw and catch challenge and the power-hitting radar gun challenge.
The hockey players demonstrated a great ability to adapt their hockey skills to these cricket activities. This is not really a surprise as the ASM (Athletic Skills Model), a talent development framework model, describes cricket and hockey as complimentary ‘donor’ sports. This means the movement skills (such as hitting and aiming) which are learnt in one sport are directly transferable and usable in the other sport. As the ASM postulates: “Sports have more in common than they have differences”.
The majority of the cricket coaches leading the activities also noticeably had a background in youth hockey. Babette De Leede, Tim De Kok and assistant cricket trainer Stijn Bakker all have played hockey during their youth. Even the Netherlands most prominent female cricketer Stere Kallis currently playing professional cricket in England -and a regular trainer with Coverdrive.NL- previously combined playing high level youth hockey in the winters and cricket in the summers.
The cricket training programs of Coverdrive.NL are fully aligned with the Athletic Skills Model, and we hope to convince other sporting clubs (football & hockey) to include some cricket skills like hitting, catching and throwing into their own youth training programs. We strive for this in order to create versatile creative and healthy athletes.
Made possible by and loved working with
We want to thank ASM, Hockey Club Rotterdam, VOC Cricket and KNCB for working with us to organize all the cricket activities during Get ReaDy Day. And we want to give a special thanks to: CTC de Flamingo's. Thanks for supporting youth cricket in the Netherlands and supporting us during ‘Get reaDy’ to run this day!
Want to know more about CTC de Flamingo's?
Cricket Touring Club de Flamingo's (CTC de Flamingo's) is a cricket company and was founded on June 28, 1921. The Flamingo's organize matches at home and abroad (biennial cricket tour), the largest and very prestigious youth cricket tournament in the Netherlands (Flamingo Junioren Toernooi) and cricket tournaments for the younger youth (FAST U14 and FIT). They also support young talented cricketers who want to further develop their cricket skills abroad.
For more information about cricket or organizing cricket activities in the summer contact Chris Smith - Coverdrive.NL.
