Jonathan Batty Returns from Australia
As we warmly welcomed to Mr Batty, our Master in charge of Cricket and Assistant Director of Sport, back to school a couple of weeks ago, there were a few burning questions that we wanted to ask about his short but exciting stint down under – not including why didn’t you pack the sun in your suitcase and bring it home?
You’ve had an exciting few weeks -what have you been up to!?
I’ve actually been away in Australia working as Head Coach of the Melbourne Stars Cricket team in the Women’s Big Bash league. The Big Bash is a franchise tournament, that is generally recognised as the premier T20 competition in world cricket. The women’s competition is in its 8th season and attracts the best international players from around the world as well as the cream of the Australian domestic players. It’s also one of the more arduous competitions with 8 teams and 14 matches in the competition in 5 weeks, with huge amounts of travel all across Australia.
Continuing to coach at a pro level must sharpen your skills and broaden your learning – how do you think it helps the pupils you coach here at Caterham?
I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to combine my school career alongside still being able to coach elite, professional athletes in both The Hundred and the WBBL. There are so many crossovers, and it’s still striking that the best international players are the more often than not, the players who can consistently nail their basic skills, which is the same message that I pass onto the pupils at school. A lot of my work with the professionals is helping them understand their strengths and how best to use them to win the battles that occur in professional sport, which sits really nicely alongside helping our pupils understand their strengths, as well as understanding where they are on their sporting or academic journey. It also allows me to stay at the cutting edge of new developments within cricket and pass those on to the pupils here at Caterham.
How far did your team get in the competition?
Unfortunately, we missed out on qualifying for the finals by 2 points (1 win). We won 5 games, and had 3 abandoned due to rain. With a very young and inexperienced side, there were lots of successes to one proud of. We were also in winning positions in 2 or 3 other matches, which with greater experience we could have won and progressed through to the later stages.
What were the highs/challenges of the last few weeks?
The highlights were some amazing performances by the players, a young Australian player called Tess Flintoff set a world record against the eventual champions, The Adelaide Strikers, by scoring 51 runs from only 16 balls. Alice Capsey the young English superstar, who also played for the Oval Invincibles in The Hundred, also played a couple of outstanding innings including scoring a magnificent 80 against Hobart Hurricanes.
The main challenges revolved around the travel aspect which saw us taking 10 internal flights including travelling to Perth on the West coast twice (each flight was around 5 hours) In total the team covered over 21,000 km within Australia.
The weather was also unseasonably cold and wet, which meant that playing conditions were more difficult than expected.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH MR BATTY INTERVIEWED ON STARS TV
