As newly appointed Director of Cricket (Aug 2023) one of my objectives is to improve the provision of colts coaching at the club and have clear pathway from our colts section all the way through to our first team.
We are also committed to providing dedicated girls cricket and this will be a big focus for us in the future.

I have divided the club into 3 segments:
Participation - Under 5 to U11s.

Development - Under 13 to Under 15s

Performance - Under 16s upwards

Our coaching will be relevant and relative to the segment that the player is in.

Throughout everything we do, our coaching team and players will be following our "Code of CDCC". This is a set of principles / behaviours (agreed by our first team), that we expect all our teams to abide by. For the performance section of our club, this should be fairly basic but it still provides a strong foundation for our training sessions and how we play. It's amazing how even the most experienced players can get the basics wrong!

Our aim is that, over time, you should be able to see all our teams (from colts to first team) demonstrating these behaviours in all our matches. By doing this we are creating our own positive brand of cricket and a real identity for the club that we can all buy into.

Our colts teams will not be judged by the actual score within the game. Instead, our team managers will be appraising our performances against our CDCC Code. Winning matches will be a natural bi-product of following the code but the emphasis is now taken away from the actual result.

Our Code of CDCC is as follows:

When fielding / bowling:
1). Walk-in positively and with intensity for every ball
2). Throw the ball in quick and hard
3). Point 2 is allowed as we have a minimum of 2 players backing up EVERY time.
4). Keep the ball "up" when passing it around in the field
5). Everyone to encourage and be vocally positive

When batting:
1). Non striker backing up with intensity
2). First call is NEVER "no." Its either "wait" or "yes" with correct body language
3). Always look for opportunities to rotate the strike
4). Run hard at every opportunity - never jog a run - don't look behind you.
5). Always turn the right way (not blind)

General:
1). Looks smart - play smart
2). Be, sound and behave positively
3). Always look to positively affect a game
4). Don't be scared to fail - failure trying to play the right way is always a positive
5). A star team is better than a team of stars

With very best wishes for the coming season,
Jon Stewart
Director of Cricket

Cookham Dean Cricket Club