Glenn Pocknall colors outside the margins
He coaches in unique conditions, so he tries to find unique ways to improve players...
This article is brought to you by FRDM, A Taste of Africa
For many people, Glenn Pocknall is Devon Conway’s coach, but he was Tom Blundell and Jimmy Neesham’s coach before he became a coach to Devon (and Finn Allen). His goal, his duty, is to help players go beyond where he reached or where he might have dreamed to end up.
Glenn Pocknall would prefer it if his players played video games for 20 minutes each day. It may sound odd to some, but that is just the kind of thing you can expect from the Wellington Firebirds head coach.
Why? Because it’s Glenn. And Glenn is always looking an edge when it comes to training, so he does things a little differently sometimes. For instance, if you walked into the Wellington Firebirds’ training center on an average day, you are much less likely to see a clean batting area, instead the place is often littered with everything from screwed up pieces of paper to little bits of knitting, and even old and worn rugs.
The idea is that because AstroTurf has no character, these things will make the ball behave in unexpected ways, uneven bounce, more spin - it becomes unpredictable. That’s Mr. Pocknall for you, he will do anything to prepare them for the worst case scenario. I suppose if you were in Glenn Pocknall’s shoes you would try to do the same things.
“We play so much cricket indoors, on AstroTurf, that sometimes playing outside can be a shock to the system. So I have to be innovative to help them prepare for the change to the external world,” he says.
You see, each year, Glenn and his team spend close to half a year working indoors, five months from April to September. With only seven months of access to external training facilities, a time which they also try to focus on competition, coaches need to think outside the box during the winter time. And this is probably why Glenn is the perfect coach for the Firebirds. Thinking outside the box is what got him his coaching job to begin with.
"I have always had to do things differently because I did not play at a high level," he says. "I always had to have a good selling point, one that was different from that of other coaches who had played at a high level. A former player could go in with his history and experience as a player, and that would be their selling point. They would make it clear that they would impart their experience onto the players. I had to find something different, and maybe better.”
Pocknall always had to go above and beyond. When he was starting he always pointed out that he did not just understand cricket as well as a former pro, but he that had more to offer, he had deeper knowledge and understanding of other things, things like analysis, which was still a mystery to most. His stint with Sussex had opened his eyes to a whole new world. It is there that he developed an appreciation and an in-depth understanding of analysis
"Sussex was light years ahead of New Zealand in terms of analysis at the time," he says.
Anyway, the highest he ever got was club cricket in New Zealand, and anyone who knows the state of New Zealand will tell you that club cricket is not something that anyone can use as a reference. A lot of New Zealand players playing at for top sides like Wellington Firebirds, Canterbury, Otago are juggling day jobs. Club cricket in New Zealand isn’t anything to really talk much about. So, he doesn’t have playing history to back him up as a coach.
"The highest level I ever played was club cricket, and here that's not high," he shares. "I was a failed player, I guess it's the best way to describe it. I wanted to be someone like Devon, someone like Kane Williamson, someone like Ross Taylor, but it did not happen.”
So, it’s no surprise that Mike Hesson inspires him so much. Hesson’s achievements as a coach are the wind beneath his wings. And who knows where he might end up? He is already a coach for one of the top New Zealand franchises that is the home of players that include Finn Allen, Tom Blundell, Devon Conway, Jimmy Neesham, Rachin Ravindra and Hamish Bennet. He has also had a look in into the Black Caps system, in 2020 he led the New Zealand A side when they played the West Indies and has also led the New Zealand XI. He is halfway there to the levels he aspires to.
"I have looked up to Mike Hesson. He did not play at a high level, but he has coached at the highest levels. I get so much inspiration from his story," Glenn confesses.
Naturally, Glenn would have loved to have a better career as a cricketer, and maybe it might have helped smoothen his path into coaching - it took his some 10 years and a few winters coaching overseas before people could take him seriously. But he is also grateful for his lack of playing experience, because he thinks it might be the reason why he is able to think so expansively.
“Not having played gives me the freedom to explore a lot of ideas because I don't have a set way of thinking about things must be done or how we did things. I am open to exploration,” Pocknall admits.
And this exploration and expansive thinking is not limited to littering the batting areas of the indoor center. No. He tries a lot of things.
In 2020, during the New Zealand winter, Glenn walked in while a number of batters were just setting up to do their training for the day. Among them was one Devon Conway, who has been under Glenn’s tutelage from the time he broke into the Wellington Firebirds’ first team. Pocknall told his batters that anyone who got dismissed during their batting session would be dismissed, literally, from the training. They would have to go home immediately.
It took a handful of balls, about three or so balls for Devon Conway to get dismissed and he had to go. he had to leave the warmth of the training center and return to the cold outside as he made his way home. In a sense, that day was a wasted day for Devon Conway as he had to spend the rest of the day lounging at home.
"If you don’t try to push them out of their comfort zones, the players really become stale, they get really bored. So we try to mix things up to challenge their minds," Glenn smiles.
The next day Devon came back and batted for hours without getting dismissed, proving that the technique he had been working on was mastered.
“The desired thing that I wanted from him was focus, determination, like it's a game,” says Glenn Pocknall, who asserts that players cannot just work on a skill or technique for an indefinite period and then hope that it works on matchday. He tries to simulate match situations earlier. “I was trying to replicate, as close as I could, the anxieties, the pressures and the things that can go on in your mind when you have something to lose, trying to bring them to the surface earlier.”
And he is adding another element to that drill, noise. He is bringing in noise as a distraction. Maybe get someone to yell abuse at a player while they are trying to focus on their batting or bowling. Maybe add loud music close to the player as they are trying to concentrate and have it play throughout their session. It's hard to shut that noise out because music has a way of getting in your head. Songs do that, they just get in your head, don’t they?
And Glenn hopes that he train his guys to acknowledge external noises without responding to them.
"I was talking to a rugby mental skills coach I know had someone just follow a rugby player around yelling abuse at them. And apparently it had a very good effect, it helped the player learn to deal with that noise without reacting to it. He learnt to acknowledge it and then shut it out."
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When he is not thinking of ways to challenge his players, Glenn is consistently outsourcing help from other sports and from experts in other fields. He has brought in a baseball coach, a throwing coach to come in and helping with throwing, specifically. Why? Because baseball has specialist coaches for that, coaches that teach players how to throw faster and more efficiently. Glenn feels that that could be the difference between a runout or an extra run.
He has also brought in a goalkeeping coach to help with diving. He wanted to improve his team’s diving techniques, especially the players who field in static fielding positions - short cover, gully, short mid-wicket.
“I want to find the best person that's going to help the team or an individual. And the fact that I am failed player helps because I do not overestimate my knowledge,” says Glenn, before adding that sometimes former players feel the pressure to act as if they know everything. There is that expectation.
A little while ago Glenn and his coaching team found themselves with an interesting problem on their hands, a problem which a former player might have tried to solve differently, because ‘they have experience in the field.’ They had this player, a very fast guy. He was one of their fastest sprinters over a 20-meter distance, but in match he looked really slow, especially on the boundary.
“It was strange. We couldn't figure this problem out whatsoever.”
So they brought in an optometrist who figured out the problem after carrying out traffic light test. A simple enough test: when the light turned red the player had to hit the red button and it recorded his reaction time. It turned out that this player had the slowest reaction time in the squad. What that meant was that he simply reacted slowly after the batsman hit the ball, his speed was okay.
“So we got the optometrist to work with him for six months to improve his reaction time in the studio. The work that they did together improved his reaction time massively,” he smiles.
When the stunned team of coaches asked how that was possible, considering the player was a batter - a top order batter. By all appearances, his batting seemed unaffected by the slow reactions, they were told that his slow reactions did not affect his batting because while batting, because he picked cues from the bowler before deliveries. He unconsciously got himself in a position early just by reading cues.
This is consistent with a lot of research that says batters don’t necessarily watch the ball, because if they did their reactions would just be too slow. Instead, they pick out critical visual information from the bowler’s body - the torso, arms… It is a skill batters develop through experience. For instance, expert players can predict where the ball is going to land by looking at a picture of a bowler in action, just about to release the ball.
And when he is not finding unique ways to give his players an extra edge over the competition, Glenn Pocknall is trying the create the right environment for his guys to thrive.
“I want to see players improve and I also want to see players happy. As much as it is a career, cricket also takes a huge chunk in these players' lives, so I want them to be happy while they're doing it. A lot of these guys sacrifice a lot to be able to play cricket. Many of them are juggling day jobs, 9 to 5s, family and a cricketing career. So, I would like them to be happy while they do what they do. If I can get 90% of players happy and learning, then I am happy.”
So, does he want his players to play video games for 20 minutes each day for enjoyment? For mental relaxation? No.
“Researchers have found that playing video games for 20 minutes helps with hand-eye coordination. But if they play them for too long, then it becomes harmful to them, it overloads the mind. I want them to improve their hand-eye coordination,” says Glenn Pocknall.
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