As some of you may be aware, our regular Colts Coach Mikey Thompson has recently been offered full time employment with Middlesex. Unfortunately, his new working hours mean that he will be unable to continue his role on a Friday evening. He still wishes to be involved with the club and he will hopefully still be regularly appearing with our 4th eleven so many of the older colts will get the opportunity to play alongside Mikey as they progress into senior cricket.
We are delighted to welcome our new coach, Michael Griggs. Michael has a wealth of experience as you’ll see from his profile below which he will be bringing to the club, continuing the club’s ethos of ensuring that everyone gets the chance to play cricket. We will give every one of our members the best possible opportuntiy to develop their game!
We would like to thank Mikey for all the hard work he has put into the club as we look forward to a new era with Michael.
Our Friday night sessions at the Paddock begin for the summer season on the 26th April we look forward to seeing you all there and, remember, if you have any friends who may be interested, please bring them along!
Michael Griggs
Michael is qualified as an ECB Level III cricket coach, and also as an ECB tutor and assessor. He has varied experience of coaching cricket over many years, in both the United Kingdom and overseas. Although he considers himself an ‘Essex boy’, cricket coaching and teaching English as a foreign language has taken him much further afield.
In other countries, Michael has enjoyed cricket coaching experiences both as a professional and a voluntary coach/tutor. These include two seasons as the Cricket Coaching Director at a premier cricket club in Auckland, New Zealand, and numerous visits as a cricket coach for schools, cricket clubs & academies in Sri Lanka. He was fortunate to be awarded a six-week overseas cricket coaching scholarship to Sri Lanka in 2006, by the ECB and the Lord’s Taverners, where he spent six weeks conducting research into the development of spin bowling and batting against spin in that country. On behalf of UK charity Cricket Without Boundaries, he has also made three visits to sub-Saharan Africa (Botswana twice, and Rwanda) as a volunteer coach and tutor, to raise awareness of protection against HIV and Aids, as well as to generate interest in cricket among primary schoolchildren there.
Michael has also had substantial involvement with women’s cricket, spending five years employed by ECB as the Chairman of Selectors for the national England Women’s cricket team in the 2000s. More recently, he spent time assisting in the development and delivery of cricket coaching in Madrid, Spain, while generating more interest in the sport there among local schoolchildren and club cricketers. He lived and worked as an English teacher in Spain quite recently, and did the same in other countries over the past few years, including Russia and Italy.
He’s worked in three different independent schools in the UK as the school ‘Cricket Professional’, he’s been the Junior Cricket Manager at different cricket clubs in Hertfordshire and Middlesex, and he’s delivered many ECB Level I and Level II cricket coaching courses as both course tutor and independent assessor.