Your child has been told the same thing for six weeks. Head falling over. Front arm dropping. Not getting to the pitch of the ball. They nod, they agree, they go back in and do exactly the same thing again.
This is frustrating for everyone, and it is almost never stubbornness. It is a gap between what a player feels they are doing and what they are actually doing, and words alone are a poor tool for closing it.
A coach saying your head is falling over is describing an outcome. The child, meanwhile, feels like their head is perfectly still, because it feels still from the inside. Until those two versions meet, the correction has nowhere to land.
Why feel and reality come apart
Our sense of where our body is in space is surprisingly imprecise, particularly during fast movements, and particularly in children whose bodies are changing size. A young batter genuinely cannot tell that their front foot is going across rather than down the pitch. They are not ignoring the coach. They are working from inaccurate information.
The moment a child sees themselves on a screen, the argument ends. Nobody has to persuade them. They look at it and say Oh, and the correction starts working almost immediately because now they know what they are trying to change.
This is the entire value of video at junior level. Not analysis in any technical sense, just removing the disagreement about what is happening.
How to film it so it is actually useful
Most parent footage is unusable, not because of the phone but because of where it was filmed from. A few things make an enormous difference:
- Film from the side-on and from directly behind, not from the boundary at an angle. Two short clips from fixed positions beat ten minutes of wandering footage.
- Keep the phone still and horizontal. Prop it on a bag if you have nothing else. Camera movement makes technique impossible to read.
- Get closer than feels necessary. A player who fills a third of the frame is far more useful than one who is a distant figure with lots of sky above them.
- Use slow motion mode if your phone has it. Cricket actions happen faster than normal video captures properly, and slow motion is where the useful detail lives.
- Film the same thing several times. One delivery tells you nothing, because everyone plays an occasional odd ball. Six tells you what is habitual.
Training is usually a better place to film than matches. The angles are better, the repetition is higher, and nobody is under pressure.
Look at one thing, not everything
The most common mistake is filming a session and then watching it looking for problems generally. This produces a long list of things wrong with a nine-year-old’s technique, which helps nobody and often knocks their confidence.
Pick the single thing the coach has been talking about and watch only that. If it is the front foot, watch the front foot six times and ignore the rest. Children can work on one thing at a time, and adults are no different.
Some faults are much easier to see on video than in real time. Grip is a good example, since a hand position that looks fine in passing often shows up clearly on a still frame, and the way a batter holds the bat influences nearly everything that follows.
For bowlers, slow motion is particularly revealing. The amount of spin a young bowler imparts is genuinely difficult to judge with the naked eye, and seeing how much the ball is actually rotating out of the hand tells a spinner more than any amount of verbal encouragement to give it a rip.
The rules nobody mentions
Here is something that catches well-meaning parents out, and it is worth knowing before you set a phone up at a junior ground.
Australian Cricket’s child safety code requires prior consent from a parent or carer before photographing or filming children involved in the sport. Clubs have image consent forms for exactly this purpose, and anyone involved in livestreaming matches at affiliated clubs, associations or indoor centres is required to hold a Working with Children Check.
Filming your own child is normal and nobody is suggesting otherwise. The care is needed around everyone else. A camera pointed at the batter also captures the bowler, the keeper and the fielders, all of whom are somebody else’s children, and some families have genuine reasons for not wanting their child filmed.
In practice: tell the coach what you are doing, keep the footage for your own use, and do not post clips containing other people’s children on social media. If you are unsure, your club will have a policy, and the principles involved sit alongside the broader expectations set out in a code of conduct for everyone involved in junior sport.
Showing it to your child without making it worse
Footage can be deflating if it is handled as evidence. A child who associates the phone with being told what they did wrong will stop wanting to be filmed.
A few habits keep it constructive. Show them something they did well first, and mean it. Ask what they notice rather than telling them what you noticed, because a child who spots their own fault owns the fix. Keep it short, since two minutes is plenty. And stop entirely if they are not interested, because video that becomes a chore stops working.
Older children often become genuinely interested in their own footage and start asking to be filmed. That is the point at which it becomes a real development tool rather than a parent’s project.
Where proper setups add something
A phone covers most of what a junior player needs. Dedicated systems add things a phone cannot do easily: fixed camera positions that are identical every session, side-by-side comparison against earlier footage, frame-by-frame review, and ball tracking data that puts numbers against what the eye is guessing at. That capability is part of what separates a structured academy environment from general practice, though it matters far less than whether someone knowledgeable is interpreting what is on the screen.
The tool is never the point. A clear view of what is actually happening is, and most parents already have one in their pocket.
FAQs
What phone settings should I use?
Slow motion at the highest frame rate your phone offers is the single most useful setting, since cricket actions are too fast for standard video to capture usefully. Good light matters more than camera quality, so film outdoors in daylight or in a well-lit indoor facility rather than at dusk. Keep clips short, because long files are awkward to review and share.
How often should I film my child?
Occasionally rather than constantly. Filming every session turns cricket into something being monitored, which changes how a child plays and eventually how much they enjoy it. Once every few weeks, or when a specific issue is being worked on, is plenty to show progress without the camera becoming part of the routine.
My child hates watching themselves. Should I push it?
No. Self-consciousness about appearance is common, especially in the early teenage years, and forcing it will create resistance to the whole idea. Try looking at a single freeze frame rather than moving footage, which many children find easier, or leave it for six months. Plenty of players become interested later on their own terms.
Can I film at a match, or only at training?
Both are generally fine with the usual consent considerations, but training is more useful. Match footage is taken from wherever you happen to be standing, usually too far away and at an unhelpful angle, while training lets you choose your position and capture repeated attempts at the same thing. Matches are better for recording the occasion than for technical work.
Should I send footage to my child’s coach?
Ask first, and keep it short. A coach is far more likely to respond helpfully to three clips of one specific issue than to a long video with no indication of what you want them to look at. Be aware that volunteer club coaches have limited time, so a brief question attached to a clear clip gets the best results.
Train with Purpose. Perform with Confidence.
| Bring your footage in
If you have filmed something at the weekend and cannot work out what you are looking at, bring it with you. Half the value of footage is having someone who knows what matters point at the two seconds that explain everything, and most parents have more useful video on their phone than they realise. To book a session where technique is reviewed properly rather than guessed at, call 1300 310 769 or email info@conceptsports.com.au. Our centre is at 1/16 Poa Court, Craigieburn VIC 3064. Program details at conceptsportsacademy.com.au. |