Former ECB Head of Coach Development partners with FCCA

First Class Cricket Academy has linked up with former ECB Head of Coach Development Nathan Wood and his company CricketMind to provide access to specialist online mindset coaching and sports psychology for our cricketers.

As part of this collaboration, for every FCCA player who signs up with CricketMind, they will get 10% off their initial booking.

Nathan Wood spent six years working with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), initially as International and Specialist Coach Development Lead and then as Head of Coach Development from 2022 to 2024. As a player he represented Young England at U14, U15 and U17 levels and played in four Youth Tests and a Youth One Day International for England U19s, including sharing a century stand in Sri Lanka with Michael Vaughan.

The son of former Lancashire player Barry Wood, Nathan played for Lancashire and Cheshire before going into coaching, qualifying as an ECB Level 4 Master Coach and enjoying a stint as pathway coach at Lancashire CCC before launching Nathan Wood Consulting.

At FCCA, more than 20 of our players, male and players, have gone on to play first class cricket and countless in age group pathways and academies.

Nathan is delighted to partner with FCCA, recognising that we are able to provide expert cricket coaching, improving players by focusing on fundamentals, basics and volume in very much a subcontinental style of approach, without any trend following. In return, he is able to complement our coaching by providing sessions to help players with the mental side of the game and in doing so to unlock their full cricket potential.

Speaking to FCCA, Nathan said: “Any player who is below pro level can benefit from this. Professional players have had this kind of support for decades now but recreational players or those who want to get into the professional game don’t have this kind of resource.

“I have been involved in cricket for 50 years and in all that time the common sentiment is lots of players are magnificent in training because their skills are very good but they can’t transfer that into games because their mind somehow gets in the way, whether that’s performance anxiety, a lack of focus or whatever. So, most players actually don’t fulfil their potential because they don’t play to their ability level and that is all really to do with the mind and the way they approach things.

“I see this very much as a service which complements the technical and physical skills that they work on with their FCCA coaches, just to make sure all that hard work they do in practice translates to performance on the pitch.

“Also, it is not just about performance, it is about enjoying the game. There are a lot of players that the further they get up the ladder in terms of cricket recognition, playing for counties etc, they enjoy it less because of the pressure and it is more about getting into the team or keeping their place in the team rather than enjoying it, which is the reason why they started in the first place. For me, it is not just about performance, a lot of it is also about getting them to reconnect as to why they started playing in the first place and enjoying the game.”

You can find out more about CricketMind here: https://cricketmind.online/

Families wishing to book a session and take advantage of the 10% discount should use this link: https://cricketmind.online/first-class-cricket-academy-referral/

Alternatively, you can scan the QR code below.