Jimmy Anyon, Director of Cricket, Explains Why it’s Processes and Positivity That Build Winning Teams

We take great pride in our cricket programme led by our exceptional Director of Cricket, Jimmy Anyon. With a philosophy rooted in nurturing individual strengths and fostering a love for the game, our program emphasises confidence-building and teamwork. In this interview, Jimmy shares his journey, coaching insights, and the ethos that drives our cricket teams to excel both on and off the field.

When did you first start playing cricket?

I first start playing cricket in the garden with my dad. I was a real little child, and I’ve got a memory of my gran making me pads out of ice cream tub lids, playing with a tennis ball in the backyard of the farm. It’s probably one of my oldest memories. I must have been four or five then. So yeah, quite a long time back.

Why do you think you fell in love with cricket?

I don’t know! I fell in love with a lot of sports and I think I just happened to be better at cricket than the other sports and that’s probably why I carried on longer. It’s a game you can’t conquer. It’s one of annoying games that you can’t perfect and then you just want to keep getting better at it over time. It’s an internal battle that you’re always having with yourself when you play cricket. So, I think it’s the mental side of it that I enjoy and that’s kept me going with cricket longer than other games.

Was there an early icon of the game that you looked up to that drove you forward?

Yeah, Mike Atherton was my favourite player as a kid. I wanted to be like Mike Atherton. I wore the same same helmet and used the same bat. Then I became a bowler, and after that, it was probably Shane Warne. Then Darren Gough and Glen McGrath were my two bowling heroes.

Who out of the current crop of players inspire you?

You can’t help but be inspired by quite a lot of them. I mean, look at the success of England, especially under McCullum and Stokes, I mean Stokes is pretty inspirational what he’s done with English Cricket. Joe Root is probably one of the best batters the country has produced. The freedom that the white ball team play with – it’s just something that we’ve never seen before in English cricket. So, I think if you can’t be inspired by the current crop of England players, you’re probably not going to be inspired by cricket, I guess.

What’s your proudest coaching moment in cricket so far?

A few lads I’ve worked with have gone on to become professional cricketers. That’s obviously great; I’ve helped them on their journey. By the same token, just this morning I got a message from a Year 12 kid who’s not played cricket for three or four years and now suddenly wants to take it up again. So, both ends of the spectrum. So, I’ll say that anybody that you help get where they want to be on their cricket journey; that’s why you do the job.

You’ve got players of all levels here at Sedbergh, how do you help players develop confidence to go out and be their best?

I think you try to build confidence in a player and how you get there is just keep reminding people of what they’re good at. I think most people focus on what they can’t do. So really try and focus on what people can do first. Everybody’s got some strengths and some skills and if you can stick to those, you tend to perform to the best of your ability.

If you’re constantly looking at the negative, asking yourself, “What can I fix? What am I doing wrong? How can I get better?”, it’s not always a helpful state of mind. I think you’ve got to look at what am I good at and keep reinforcing that and reminding yourself what you can do. So, as a coach, I try to get people to recognise what they’re good at and not worry too much about what they can’t do.

What’s your mentoring style within that? So that people know what they can do and how that fits within the 11?

You’ve got the strengths that are going to build a team. So, how you get that to work within a team is just to highlight the parts that are helpful. Cricket’s a weird game; it’s an individual game played in a team. So, when you are batting, it’s you versus the bowler. If you get the individuals playing to their best, that will benefit the team. So, you’ve just got to look at it and go right, if this player is an attacking batter, he’s just got to go for it. If he’s going to get 30, 40 runs more regularly when he goes after it – as opposed to trying to grind it out – then you’ve just got to let the player do that.

I always try and find that area of the game that helps a player be proactive and I think that will help the team.

As a parent or coach what’s the best kind of question conversation can you have with a player to support the player’s confidence and move them forward?

Obviously it’s nice if you get a hundred runs or take wickets, but it’s processes for me, “How did you go about today? What was good?” You could have played well and you could have got three. You could have had a really tough spell and then nicked a good ball. So, if you asked the question, “How’d you do?” and you’ve got three – then you’ve done badly.

If you have stuck to your game plan and your processes and you got out to a good ball, you’ve got to celebrate the process, not the end result. And if you keep doing the right process, the results will eventually come, which is difficult to believe if you lose a wicket or two.

So, I think that’s why you need support from home and from coaches, especially as a young person, to try and understand that if you keep doing the right thing the results will come. So, I’d have those questions around that and did you enjoy it? That’s the other reason we play. Let the kids enjoy it, let them make mistakes. Don’t be too harsh on people. Any game where you’ve got more thinking time than doing time is tough, especially this day and age. People now have social media pressures and people take the mick out of each other on social media when they get no runs. So I think you’ve got to take that weight off people and take away from the performances and go, “How did you train in the buildup? How did you put into practice? It didn’t work today, don’t worry about it. Keep going because it’ll work down the line if you keep doing the right thing.”

How would you want our Sedbergh teams to be described by spectators and the opposition?

I would want Sedbergh teams to be described as positive – enjoyable to watch and showing how much fun they’re having in each other’s company.

I think if you look at the England team as a template, obviously that’s how everybody would love to play cricket. I appreciate that’s not always possible – you’ve got different players, different conditions, and you’ve got different facilities, but you can take elements of that. Right now I’m seeing an England team that looks like it’s really enjoying what they do.

We want to take our game to the opposition and we want to enjoy each other’s company while we’re playing. Hopefully that means players want to come back and play next week and the week after and the week after.