Smash your ECB Level 2 Certificate in Coaching Children’s Cricket

This week I passed the ECB Level 2 Certificate in Coaching Children’s Cricket, so thought it would be helpful to share my experiences.

Firstly, it’s a lot more involved than I expected, based on the Coach Support Worker (CSW) course I passed in 2017 (formerly Level 1 course). The CSW course is a:

• 1 day course, plus
• An online safe-guarding exam.

Level 2 is a:

• 3 day course, typically on Saturdays or Sundays. The course I attended ran over 2 longer Saturdays, due to the snow. The first Saturday included a First-Aid Course too, so a long 12 hour day!
• 6 hours Applied Coaching Supported Practice, outside of the course.
• A Multiple-Choice Assessment (approximately 60 questions)
• Final assessment day, which is either on the course if you’ve completed all the other tasks at the time of this date or at a later stage if you haven’t. My assessment was the latter and run at our club (Burley Cricket Club), as I hadn’t completed the 6 hours.

You also require a First Aid Certificate, to be issued with a Level 2 certificate.

The “3 day” course was brilliantly run by Hampshire Cricket Board. It involved a mixture of:

• Classroom teaching.
• Planning and running numerous coaching sessions, either individually or as a group.
• Learning the various approaches to coaching and the STEP framework.

The First-Aid Course was useful also, as a non-clinical person!

The 6 hours assisted coaching required 4 of the sessions to be linked and progressive, so I chose bowling for the first 4 sessions, as our under 10’s (whom I worked with) needed to strengthen this area of their game. The other 2 sessions were batting and fielding related. Typical sessions take the form of:

• Warm-up and stretching for the main activities (up to 5 mins)
• Main Activities (typically 5 to 20 minutes per activity, and 2 per session)
• Game-based play (which forms most of the session, and so it should!)
• Cool-downs, session debrief and areas to work on next session.

The final assessment (approximately 15 minutes of coaching, followed by a reflection and debrief) was nice and relaxed and the assessor left me to run proceedings whilst observing.

In summary, it’s a fair amount of work outside of the course itself, so be prepared for that, but that gives you all the experience you need to pass the final assessment with flying colours!

So if you’re thinking about getting more involved with cricket coaching and nurturing the next generation of cricketers, hopefully the above information gives you an overview of the tasks involved. I’d highly recommend it!