The progression of the Yorkshire women’s squad may well be influenced in small part by this summer’s Pakistan Super League, with one of their backroom staff set to be involved in the competition over the next couple of months.
Liam Holgate, the squad’s lead performance analyst, has been seconded to work for reigning champions Islamabad United, the team of former Yorkshire men’s overseas player Shadab Khan.
With the blessing of head coach Rich Pyrah and general manager of cricket Gavin Hamilton, Holgate will miss the early stages of the home summer but is confident the team will be well placed upon his return in mid to late-May.
“Yorkshire use an analytics company called Intelligent Cricket, who I work for, to bring a deeper level of insight into what they’re doing with their analysis,” explained Holgate, who has also previously worked with Yorkshire’s men and the Northern Superchargers women – he will be with the latter again this year.
“Intelligent Cricket got the offer to be part of the Islamabad United team for the year, and Rich is very keen on us, be it players or staff, to go and experience as many different environments as possible so we can pick up different ideas. He was very excited for me to go out there, and him and Gavin gave the green light.
Picture courtesy of Liam Holgate. Liam in his days working with Nottingham Forest FC Women.
“It will be such a good experience.
“Our team has players like Shadab Khan, Jason Holder and Imad Wasim. It’s a star-studded team who won it last year.
“I get to work with some great players and staff members as well. Mike Hesson is their coach. I’m really excited to get a grasp of their ideas and see how it goes.”
The competition runs from April 11 until May 18, with Holgate heading to Pakistan late this week.
“One of the big thing I’m most interested in seeing is what their environment is like,” he continued. “Everyone runs their environment differently, be it Ottis Gibson and Dani Hazell last year or Anthony McGrath and Rich this.
Picture by Liam Holgate. Liam will continue to work with the Northern Superchargers Women this year.
“But, at the end of the day, everyone wants happy players don’t they.
“I’m really excited to see how Mike does it and to see how different it is to what I’ve experienced before.”
Holgate worked with the Northern Diamonds last summer and has been with Yorkshire’s women all winter.
“It’s been a great winter for the girls,” said the Yorkshire Cricket nut, who has been watching the county from the stands with his equally passionate grandfather, Howard, for the last decade.
“The staff have been brilliant with them, Rich and Chris Brice. They’ve worked really hard, and I’m very confident that will pay off.
Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com. Liam Holgate gets batting advice from former Yorkshire overseas star Kane Williamson.
“I hope to come back and see us in the quarter-finals of that County T20 Knockout Cup. There’s no reason why we can’t do something special there.”
Holgate has also previously worked in football with the women’s teams of Nottingham Forest and Leeds United, and says analysis is becoming an increasingly important and valued part of cricket.
That can be from analysing Yorkshire’s players and their opposition to “game research”.
“I do a lot of research on what it takes to win games of cricket,” he explained.
“The obvious thing is hit more boundaries and take more wickets, and it sounds simple doesn’t it. But there’s a lot more detail which goes into it.
Picture courtesy of Liam Holgate. Liam will return to his duties with Yorkshire Women midway through next month.
“That’s something we do that no other county is doing to the same level.
“Analysis is massive. You look at some of the tools we’re producing nowadays, whether it’s language models or the deeper algorithms which give us expected values, that’s an unbelievable depth of work.
“Also on a day-to-day basis, the players are much more interested in coming up and finding out about the numbers to their game. A few years ago, it was quite subjective. But now we’re able to say, ‘This session, you’re five percent quicker’.
“Once instance we have at the moment is that Grace Hall is releasing the ball 10 centimetres higher in her action this year than she was last year. That’s a big number, which is great.
“Some players use it more than others, naturally. When Matthew Fisher was here, he and Harrison Allen (men’s lead performance analyst) did some great work. He was very excited for it.
“Some will just want video pre-game. Part of my job is to deliver video clips on other teams, just so that the players have a bit of knowledge of what to expect.”
