In December, forty-four Oundle cricketers enjoyed a productive day of bowling and batting masterclasses with Warwickshire’s recently appointed county championship captain, Will Rhodes.
Will is a batting all-rounder who started his career at Yorkshire CCC until he moved to Warwickshire in 2017 in search of regular 1st XI opportunities. He has enjoyed two very successful seasons at Warwickshire, amassing just shy of 1000 runs in his first season and playing a key role in gaining Warwickshire promotion. He backed this up with nearly 800 runs and 15 wickets in Division 1 last season. Will also captained England in the 2014 U19 World Cup. Will has also been a regular player in the shorter format for Warwickshire, demonstrating that he has the ability to switch between formats and change his game plans at ease.
In the batting session, Will had the boys working on different skills that he believes are important in the development of batters in both the longer and shorter format, ranging from judging the line and knowing which balls to play or leave, to evading or playing the short ball, and using your feet effectively against a spinner. He finished with an insightful question and answer session.
The bowling session followed and, in similar fashion, Will picked a few areas to work on that he feels are important in the modern game, such as yorkers and variations that are effective in the shorter format, and introduced drills that he has used found useful in his development, such alignment drills to help with general bowling technique.
Both sessions were hugely valuable to all the pupils, and we are grateful to Will for sparing his time to come and support our school.
D Foster
