Battrick » Rules

We recognise that you as the team owner are more au fait with the tactical and business side of the game, so we have given you the opportunity to hire specialist coaches to help you to improve your player’s skills. There are five different types of specialist coaches that you can hire: bowling, batting, fielding, wicket keeping and fitness coaches. All of these coaches can be hired from within the club info page. (You can read more about them individually in the Backroom Staff section)

Once you have hired at least one specialist coach, you can start to allocate a player to each of these coaches for the week within the nets area. Each coach will add one more available coaching session.

There are some limitations though. Due to the limited time and space available, you can only have 10 coaching sessions each week. If you have more specialist coaches than that, then you are simply paying them to sit around each week. Even if you do allocate a player to them, he will never get the chance to train as the net space will never be available.

Secondly, although each player can be allocated to more than one specialist coach, the effectiveness of the sessions will reduce with every duplication.

For example, if you allocate Botham to two batting sessions, he will get the full benefit from the first session, but due to the amount of work he has already done in that session, the amount he can possibly gain from the second session is much less. If he was allocated to a third batting session, he would receive again even less training. A fourth training session would only provide negligible benefit

However, if Botham was told to also go to a bowling session as well as the batting ones, he would still get the full benefit from the first bowling session. Again, any subsequent sessions would also see a reduction in training received.

There is also another kind of specialist that you can get some benefit from; sports psychologists. While employing these specialists will help your team with any morale issues you may be experiencing, they can also help your players with the more mental skills: concentration and consistency. Your psychologists will attend all but the fitness coaching sessions, and will be passing on helpful hints to the players while they are being coached. The more psychologists you have, the more advice can be dished out, although the law of diminishing returns does apply here too with each additional psychologist providing fewer words of wisdom than the one before.

Finally, form. All players that are trained by specialists are more likely to see a rise in their form that week, as are the players who play in a match, regardless of whether they actually bowl or bat, so be careful about leaving too many players just sitting on the side lines!

Remember to check that the players are allocated correctly prior to the training updates as hiring more coaches can lead to confusion and the wrong player may end up with the wrong coach. You have been warned!

One final and very important thing to note is that younger players (being relatively new to the game and keen to learn) are able to develop their game a fair bit quicker than your battle hardened professional. (whose is far more entrenched into his playing style - "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" to roll out a cliche)