Cricket coaching, fitness and tips - Batting

Cricket Technique without Technique: How to Play the Drive

David Hinchliffe — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 05:04:00 +0000

Forget getting told how to play a drive, here's how to learn it.

At PitchVision, we get asked all the time about batting technique. People like you, hungry for knowledge, search online for the perfect explanation of the perfect technique. You want to know how to do it so you can be consistent in our run scoring.

But are you?

I'm willing to bet you're not.

I know I wasn't when I played, despite hunting for detailed technical answers my whole career. I nicked off drives. I played perfect shots and missed the ball. I bet you have done too.

The evidence of your own experience suggests that getting a tip on the right footwork (or whatever) is not the way you develop your cricket.

And the research agrees.

What has been found - through both formal research and the experiences of high-performing coaches around the world - is this:

You learn how to play straight through trying to play straight

Seems obvious?

Think about why you are reading this article. You probably want advice or tips on how to play the drive. You want to know where the feet go, what the head does, how to swing the bat straight and avoid the mistakes of bad driving (even if you don't most readers will, trust me).

Knowing all this, and a hundred more points in the perfect shot won't make a jot of difference.

You have to do it.

And to do it, you need to set up some cones and try to hit the ball through them.

Let the drill be the coach

In coaching theory, this is called "constraints-based coaching". It's insanely effective in both the lab and the nets. Constraints are how Don Bradman taught himself to bat. And he was all right.

A constraint is just a way of working on a specific skill by adapting a game of cricket.

So for example, if you want to improve your drive technique, you can set up a game where your mate bowls to you while you try and hit the ball between two cones set up at mid on and mid off with a full swing of the bat.

Yeah. That's it.

Too simple surely?

Nope!

As you try, you learn what works and what doesn't work. You start to develop a way of driving.

There will be failure. That's OK.

There will be success.

And you have not had a technical tip the whole time. The drill has allowed you to coach yourself.

Video is a massive help with this, as you can see what you did afterwards, rather than trying to adjust your body during the session. Combining PitchVision line and length data is also a huge benefit as you can filter how you deal with different types of delivery.

What about correcting batting technical errors?

This idea breaks the old trick of "error identification and correction": Looking at the player, pointing out flaws compared to a perfect model and trying to stop these flaws with drills.

There is nothing wrong with a technical perfect model to work from. It's just that no one ever achieves perfection, so chasing perfect technique is the wrong place to start to develop. Instead, research has shown technical specifics is the last thing to work on. We develop much better by focusing on the outcome. In the case of playing a drive, this means hitting the ball straight more often than missing it! Again, Bradman never had his technique "corrected" and he scored a couple of runs.

During your exploration, you might try some of the things that you heard work, but there is not much that works for everybody all the time so you may well abandon the idea.

Experimentation is crucial. And you can't experiment if you are doing fixed drills to try and correct a flaw.

So forget technical flaws, forget repetitive drilling, forget relying on an expert coach to give you the answers and keep technical perfection out of your mind.

Instead, think about why you want to play the shot, set up a game to challenge you to learn how to do it consistently then work out the answer for yourself. After all, your coach can't play the shot for you and they can't help you if you need to adapt on the fly. It's all up to you.

Train that way too.

Here's a Simple Batting Tip to Unclutter Your Mind with Distributed Cognition

David Hinchliffe — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 07:20:00 +0000

Don't you hate it when you can't stop thinking about how you got out?

You sit on the side of the pitch filled with regret and frustration. Sometimes this feeling lasts for days. You kick yourself, you dwell on what you could have done differently. You consider if it's all really worth it.

When it's really bad, you carry all these thoughts into your next innings. Instead of just reacting to the ball you are double checking your technique and tactics and getting your mind in a whirl.

It's painful.

It clutters your mind.

It lowers your batting average.

But you care. You are a thinker about the game and you want to get better. It's only natural to consider what went wrong to stop it going wrong again. After all, anyone can make a mistake once; twice smacks of incompetence.

You can keep the good parts without going through night terrors and waking at 3am screaming about an inswinging yorker.

Experts call it "distributed cognition".

Round here we like to call it "writing stuff down"

Clear your mind: write it down

Your brain is a powerful tool. It's incredible at having ideas, joining things together and solving problems.

It's also terrible at storing these ideas.

When you are racing through possibilities about your batting, each new idea creates a stress on you. You can't remember the first idea after you have had a few. When you try to remember it, you forget the other ideas. No wonder your mind is a mess.

So, cut out the pain and write things down.

That way you no longer need to remember everything. It's on a handy piece of paper. As soon as the idea comes to mind, write it down somewhere. It doesn't matter how stupid the idea might be. Your only job is to capture it so you can review later.

Suddenly you find that you mentally unclench.

The brain is free from its stress and can relax when you are in the middle. "Don't worry" it tells you "we can think about this later, for now, let's just watch the ball shall we?"

The catch: Review often

There is a catch to this batting tip: You also need to review everything you write down.

This is a simple task, and is best done as soon as possible after your innings (including training). You grab up all your notes and go through each one to decide if it's worth exploring, then create an action to take if you want to try it.

Let me give you an example.

A young batsman is facing an accurate spinner in a one day match and unable to rotate the strike. After the game he realises that he could have swept more for easy runs, but at the time he felt he was not confident to play the shot.

He sits down after the match and looks at the note on his phone "sweep spinners!" it says. Underlined.

So, he notes down that at his next net session he is going to practice the run sweep and tuck to build up confidence.

This review is also a great time to come up with new ideas and decide to continue doing things that went well.

So after each innings, sit down and think about:

What did I do well that I can keep doing?
What did I do badly that I need to stop doing?
What can I work on in practice?
What crazy thing can I do that might just work?

Make sure you turn the "blue sky" thinking into solid actions for the next innings or practice.

How long to think for

How long should this whole capture and review process take?

A few moments to write down a thought to get it out of your head, then perhaps 10 minutes to review things and create some solid actions. Take longer if you need it. You probably won't.

How easy is that?

Let's face it, if you don't set time aside, you will be thinking all the time!

Instead, you feel free from the shackles, your mind is clear and you bat with a purpose that fits your batting style perfectly.

All because you brought a pen to your match.

Why You're Getting Out LBW

David Hinchliffe — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 05:17:00 +0000

LBW always seems a bit unfair. You are sure it was sliding down the leg side, but when you look up the umpire's finger is slowly raising.

Your team mates console you by telling you it was a shocker and you can't get the umpires these days. Deep in your heart you wonder why it keeps happening to you more than anyone else. You know its not likely that a whole series of umpires have bad eyesight or are looking to get off the pitch early because it's getting late.

Maybe it's you.

Maybe you are the classic "big candidate". (As my team calls the players who look like they are going to get out LBW.)

Yeah, so why am I getting out LBW?

First, we need to establish if there is a problem at all.

If you have got out three times in a row to LBW then the red warning light is flashing, but we are not at full troubleshooting mode yet. It may be no fault of your own. You might get a bad decision, followed by a brilliant fast inswinging yorker and then a lazy shot: Three different reasons and only one in your control.

So, let's make sure there is a pattern first.

Ask yourself: Are you getting out in the same way repeatedly? For example, early on when the ball is swinging but the pace is gentle are you still getting trapped? That's a trend that needs further examination.

I'm sure it's more than bad luck, what's happening?

The first thing I look for in the LBW candidate is "falling over".

What does that mean?

Simply, you are strong on the off side, especially on the cover drive, so you always have half an eye on playing that shot. It's sensible, it's a strong area.

However, if you misjudge the ball and it's not a wide half volley you are in a bad position:

Your front foot is pointing to extra cover.
Your backlift goes behind your body (you can sometimes even see this in the stance).
Your head is leaning to the off side, sending your weight, and feet, towards extra cover.

One or more of these leads to you stepping in front of your stumps - sometimes called "planting" - and having to move your bat around your front leg. When you are too slow, the ball hits you dead in front.

The bottom line is that your balance is wrong.

OK. How do I get my balance right again?

Don't panic.

Some people can get away with balance that is a little off. Graeme Smith scored buckets of runs and always looked like he was about to be out LBW, even on two hundred!

However, assuming you are not doing as well as Smith, you can do a simple drill to correct your balance.

Face left arm bowling (for a right handed bat).

Open your stance a little to make sure both eyes are looking at the bowler then get on with it. You'll adapt as time goes on as you will be forced to play straighter and not through the covers.

There are a few ways you can do this:

Bowling machine set up for left arm bowling, ball swinging in.
Right arm around bowling, throwdowns or sidearm.
Left arm over bowling, throwdowns or sidearm.

This drill will allow you to work out your way of playing and adjust because it exaggerates your flaw so much you have to change to survive.

Give it a go over a few sessions and watch the difference it makes.

The Art of the Target: How to Target Bowlers to Improve Your Scoring Rate

David Hinchliffe — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 07:43:00 +0000

Can club and school cricketers use the fashionable tactic of targeting certain bowlers?

It’s possible.

The idea is simple: You know you are coming up against a side with a mixture of quality of bowling. So, you decide to take fewer risks against the good ones and make up the difference by attacking against weaker bowling.

If the plan works, you end up with a bigger total than if you play every bowler on their merits.

It’s also great in limited over games where there are restrictions on the bowlers. You can force a weaker bowler out of the attack, meaning the better bowler has to bowl out sooner and you have more overs against part-time bowlers.

Here’s how you do it

Choose a target

Your first consideration is to decide who to go after.

If you play regularly against the opposition you will know who this is before the game. In fact, you can prepare early in training sessions up to the run up to the game with the target in mind.

There are no rules about who you target because it could be anyone in the right circumstance. Here are some types of bowler I have seen targeted well:

The accurate but relatively slow medium pace bowler.
Any bowler who is not getting the ball to do much (spinners on a flat pitch for example).
Quick but wild fast bowlers.
Part-time bowlers.
Any bowler with a short boundary in your hitting area.

As you can see, your target does not have to be a bad bowler. They may be very good, but conditions are against them and in your favour.

You can agree the target beforehand or - if you are feeling confident - even decide to take someone on during the game when you realise they have a chink in the armour.

Attacking the bowler

When you have decided to go after someone, stay calm. It’s easy to get carried away and start swinging. This is not mindful batting.

Instead, mentally switch your gear up.

Go from “just batting” to “controlling the game”. Instead of waiting for the bad ball, think about where you can create a boundary.

If you have prepared well, you know your scoring areas. You know the shots that get you to score more quickly and you are confident you can take a bigger risk than normal because it will likely pay off.

One excellent example of this I saw in a club game was a friendly match where a club professional opened the batting against a keen but inexperienced medium pace swing bowler. The overseas batsman defended the first ball of the match and saw it was a gentle pace with a little away swing. He decided he could easily play this type of bowling and promptly hit the second ball of the match over mid off for a giant six.

The formula was there: weaker bowling combined with batsman confident in his scoring areas. The batsman had not changed his game, but had calculated he was good enough to risk it.

Be flexible

This method takes a combination of good technique and tactical nous. Sometimes you will get it wrong, so be ready to be flexible.

Imagine you are the batsman above. Imagine you decide to play the same shot and you are as confident at is as he is. Now imagine you attempt it and edge it down to third man.

You might decide to take that clue. The bowler could be better than you think. You need to get your eye in more. You might think that shot is not as easy as you thought. You drop down a gear and decide to wait for the bad ball a bit longer instead. There is no harm in that.

The point is, like all batting, you need to constantly assess your approach based on bowler, conditions and how “in” you feel. It’s more than simply deciding the bowler is rubbish and trying to smash it without a plan.

Prepare to attack

Using PitchVision at nets will help you with this. You can find out what kind of bowler you are able to attack with a high degree of success, and what kind of balls give you more trouble.

Once you know this, you can practice to make yourself more confidence in your best shots and hide your weaker areas.

Call to get more details here.

The Total Guide to Preparing for Different Pitch Conditions

David Hinchliffe — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 02:10:00 +0000

Do you worry that batting indoors will ruin your outdoor form? Have you got a game coming up on a different type of wicket from your home pitch?

This is the guide for you.

With a little careful preparation over a couple of sessions (and a warm up), you can get your feet, hands and bat ready for excellent timing from the off.

Here’s what you do.

Practice drills

In an ideal world, you will practice in the exact conditions you are going to face in your big game. This is not an ideal world.

Even if the wicket and weather are identical, you won’t face the same bowlers. You won’t have the same level of energy and you won’t feel the same amount of pressure. So what can you do?

Make it up as much as possible with some drills.

For example, preseason for my club is mostly constrained to indoor practice on fast, bouncy concrete. Yet, matches are played on soft, low wickets where the ball swings and seams laterally. It’s far from ideal and upsets timing.

We use the the following drills to balance things out:

Then, in normal nets we encourage bowlers to bowl fuller with outdoor lengths (tracked on PitchVision) and batsmen to try and get forward to everything.

This is helped by placing two mats in one indoor lane to slow the bounce.

However, it’s still easy for bowlers to bang it in short, so we use the instant feedback from PitchVision to show when this happens. This naturally pushing bowlers forward, knowing they will probably get driven but happy they are hitting the right length for outdoors.

And you know what that means?

More realistic practice for the batters!

If you do this kind of practice for a few weeks before the start of the season, you find you are better prepared for the change.

Game plans

So you have done some practice. Maybe it’s not perfect but it’s something. Match day has arrived.

What next?

Before the game, make sure you do a few simple throwdown drills to get yourself in the right positions. For slow, low, wet pitches you can use the no feet and one leg drills above. But whatever the pitch, pick the drills that work for you to get yourself moving.

Then decide your tactical approach.

I usually advise a confident and watchful approach for a few balls. It will take you a while to feel well set, even if your preparation has been perfect. So, take your time. Look to play the lowest risk options at first.

In our example of moving from indoors to outdoors, you will be surprised how many bad balls you get. Bowlers also have early season cobwebs. They tend to bowl too short after a long winter indoors and you can take advantage:

Back foot driving slow, low back of a length
Front foot driving half volley length
Pulling long hops.

With confidence and a touch of luck you can easily score at a decent lick by playing the way coaches have advised for decades.

The main difference is these days, coaches ask top order batters to thrive under these conditions rather than simply survive. You might ask if there is a difference. If you know how important mindset is to your game plan, then you know the difference is huge.

But let’s imagine your mindset is good. Nevertheless you find you are bogged down and not getting the ball away. It might be good bowling or that you are still not timing it well.

Stay calm.

You can go up a gear with simple tricks like this. You are still playing safe, just looking to take control a little more. So, you slightly increase the risk in order to get your engine revving.

Summary

It’s very difficult to prepare perfectly for different conditions.
Start with simple drills to get your technique in line with conditions.
Make sure you have a few practice sessions in conditions as close as possible.
Adjust your game plan to give you the best chance of success.
Go into the game with a confidence and positive mindset, born of good practice and a good game plan.

Use the "Just in Time" Trick to be a Focused, Confident and Disciplined Cricketer

David Hinchliffe — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 06:43:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered how you can turn a slump in form into feeling on top of the world in one ball?

You know the feeling. You are batting terribly and feel like you will never middle another one. They you get a soft half volley and you nail it right out of the screws. It screams to the boundary and you are transformed. As the commentators often say, sometimes it just takes one good shot to feel good again.

Yet, nothing has changed. You are exactly the same person you were one ball before, with exactly the same skills.

What has happened is all in your mind. Yes, it feels totally real because you have just done something awesome. You haven't changed. You have imagined ahead to future balls and realised you can continue to be awesome. This is a kind of visualisation we don't often think about, yet as you have seen, it's one of the most effective mental skills you have.

"Just in time" visualisation

When you normally think of visualising, you probably imagine the opening batsman in the middle of the pitch before play starts. He is thinking through his innings. This works well.

And then there is the other kind of visualising. The kind that you do during a game in the gaps between balls. The kind that can destroy your confidence, or send it soaring.

When you know that these moments between balls are little pockets of "just in time" thinking, you can free yourself of the tyranny of bad form. You realise instead that the previous ball is no more or less important than any other. No mater what happens you can use "just in time" visualisation to stay focused and level.

How do you do it?

It's not that different from the visualisation you have been doing already (click here for a primer if you are not sure). You simply take the moment between balls to think about doing something insanely well.

Have you just played and missed?

It's time to put that negative thought about your weakness outside off stump aside and instead think back for a moment to a game where you were hitting it through the covers at will. It even works if you have never creamed it through the covers at will!

Of course, the main difference is that you only have a few seconds. Time is of the essence. So when the balls goes dead, and with haste not speed, do the following:

Consciously look to put the last ball out of your mind.
Imagine the last ball again, this time with a successful outcome.
Decide if this outcome is the right tactical approach.
Tell yourself something generally positive like "Today, I am ready to be at the top of my game".
Clear your mind ready to play the next ball.

This takes discipline as the monkey in your mind will be saying "forget the mumbo-jumbo, you just played a bad shot, you must be about to get out". Perhaps the monkey is right, but it's more likely to be wrong. It's basing it's evidence on the factually incorrect peak end rule. In reality you know you are able to recover from a poor shot as long as you are still at the crease. Tell your monkey that all will be well by showing it how good you really are.

And what about when you just play a good shot?

You can use the same method to make sure you don't get carried away and start trying to hit everything. Tell yourself that one good shot does not make you Chris Gayle. Remember the last ball fondly then put it aside, telling yourself that you are ready to play the ball on it's merits and the tactical situation.

One good example of this is hitting a spinner over the top for a boundary. If you do it well the fielder goes back and the spinner will probably fire one in because she fears a repeat. So, calmly take the run she gives you. Hit the ball out to the boundary runner to complete five runs in two balls.

Using this trick, you can stay focused on the bigger picture, even when in the heat of battle. This will keep you calmer, more focused and more confident in the middle.

Which is Best: Nets or One to One Training?

David Hinchliffe — Mon, 19 Mar 2018 06:55:00 +0000

If you have cricket training options, which is best?

Most cricket training happens with groups or teams. We get together with our teammates and have a session. There is also the classic "one to one" training, where a coach and player get together for an hour or so to work on something specific. Finally there is the middle ground of small group sessions with two to five players.

With so much flexibility, it's important to know the up and down side of each way of training so you can focus on what is best for you. Let's go through them.

Squad nets

In a group, there is a lot you can get done in a short time with a lot of people. It's no wonder this is the most popular way of training. It's convenient.

It's suitable for very young players learning techniques and older players who want to bat and bowl against each other. I have had sessions with more than 30 players in attendance and been at sessions with only five (less than five and it becomes a small group). With larger numbers of players getting together it's excellent.

It's the only format you can realistically do middle practice. And team fielding practice is a good way to bond players together.

Traditionally, it's also good fun to get together with all your cricket mates for a bit of banter.

Aside from these benefits, there are some down sides.

It's hard to manage well. Players tend to bat for too short a time and bowl for too long. Perhaps the team leg spinner who bats 11 is happy with a few minutes batting and 90 minutes bowling, but the opening batsman who doesn't bowl will feel frustrated. At middle practice, not everyone gets to bat.

It's also difficult to do deliberate practice. Different people have different goals at practice and it's hard to match them up. You can't work on specific techniques or tactics if you are going against the wrong type of player.

One to one nets

The obvious answer to the issues of team practice is a one to one session.

Here you can focus 100% on your aim: Find the right person to train with and you are golden. A good coach can feed balls to you in the right areas, you can bowl at a cone or on PitchVision, or throw at a stump and get instant feedback. You can take your time to discuss things and try things in a safe environment.

In other words, you get a lot more done in a hour one to one than you would in three hours in a squad session.

That's not to say it's all roses.

Apart from the lack of team bonding and banter, your training is detached from the reality of the match. You don't have other people around to put the same pressure on you. The chaotic nature of a cricket game where anything could happen is removed as you hone in on specifics.

If you struggle with decision making and playing under pressure, one to one sessions have limited use to you (unless your coach is very creative and experienced).

Finally, it's a lot harder to set these sessions up. If your team has a coach he will be limited to how many one to one sessions he can run in a week. If demand is high you could miss out. It doesn't scale well.

And just to go back to the point about banter: It is important to train as a team if you want to play as a team. So, one to one training is never the ultimate answer for cricketers.

Small group nets

The middle ground is a small group of between two and five players. Here you get a lot of the benefits of both other types of training without losing much.

At my club, we run five small group sessions. They last an hour and are broken into batsmen and bowlers. The batsmen can work on batting skills against the bowling machine, sidearm, and bowlers (when they are available). The bowlers can do target practice and if the get fed up bowling can have a bat against their mate. I find a bowling batting against a bowler is more likely to "bat properly" (that is to say, play like a match situation rather than trying to smash everything).

This way, you get some of the team bonding of a squad net, but almost as much focus on specifics as a one to one session. The also coach needs to commit far less time (in my case, five hours instead of 20) meanings they are more realistic to put on.

Naturally, this compromise is not perfect. If you want a fully focused session, one to one is the way to go. If you like to interact with the whole team then you need squad nets. For everything else, small groups are a wonderful choice.

Summary

If you have a choice of the way you train, there are lot of options. Often the coach defines exactly what you do, but if you can you will benefit from all the different methods:

Squad nets ideal are for team building, role setting, larger groups, fielding practice and middle practice.
One to one practice is perfect for working on specific skills with less pressure.
Small group nets allow greater focus than squad nets and allow some team building and role defining elements.

For me, the "best" solution is a combination of all three, balancing out things depending on what you need to do to improve. Work with your coach or captain to work this out on both an individual and team level.

Batting Tips: Score More Runs with Unfair Net Practice

David Hinchliffe — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 06:09:00 +0000

Here's a problem: Batting is unfair, batting practice is too fair.

What do I mean?

The biggest frustration of batting is getting out. One mistake and it's over, even if it's the first ball you have faced of the season. Yet when we go to a net practice we all do 10-20 minutes no matter what happens and walk away satisfied that we got a good hit.

The problem, then, is when you practice you feel no pressure and when you bat in a game you feel all the pressure. There is a huge disconnect and your practice time is wasted. It leads to losing focus, playing poor shots and fewer runs.

The solution is simple: make practice unfair.

The exceptions

Before we get onto "planned unfairness", there are some exceptions. Sometimes, you need to bat for time regardless of pressure. These exceptions are,

Picking line and length
Shot selection
Shot execution
Fitness

However, all these require a little more effort than just saying "I'm working on my shot selection today".

The first three can be called broadly "technique" because they make up the three elements of batting; picking up the ball, choosing the right shot to play and playing that shot. With a bowling machine you are working more on the last one, with bowlers you are working more on the first two.

It's more a time element than a pressure element. Hit balls and try to pick up the line and length early. Face the machine or throwdowns to hone the movements and timing. Measure how you know when this is working by tracking your performance.

The same applies to cricket-specific fitness, where you run in nets - with drills like this - to replicate the challenge of playing a long innings. Time and effort aare more important than pressure.

Unfair batting practice drill

However, if your goal is to make batting practice realistic you have to have built-in unfairness. Here's a drill we did recently with a middle practice to show you what I mean.

In this session we had a full field so batsmen batted in pairs and two bowlers bowled in tandem from the same end. Everyone else fielded with all forms of dismissal allowed.

Each pair had no time limit, and four wickets. Once the last wicket was done, the pair were out for good. To make it tough for batting - and to encourage good strike rotation - pairs had to take at least one run every third ball.

What happened in the session was unfair,

Most pairs got about 15 minutes to bat but it depended on the bowling and the running!
One pair batted for much longer than usual.
One pair batted for a very short time.

The short batting was frustrating for one of the batsmen who watched his partner get out all four times, including being run out because he didn't run his bat in. He was clearly angry and called it unfair. I pointed out that the nature of the drill is to be unfair. He had agreed to play it. While I understand he felt he was not ready for his game on Saturday and this was his only practice, he eventually understood the whole point of the practice was to be unfair. It showed him something about his reaction to a situation very similar to getting out early to a bum LBW decision.

Naturally, doing this every week is counter-productive, but working on how you deal with pressure - and unfairness - is a crucial element in your quest to better batting. Make sure you are harsh on yourself sometimes if you want to be the best you can be.

More Runs with These Shot Selection Drills

David Hinchliffe — Tue, 20 Feb 2018 05:44:00 +0000

Before you can smash that half volley through the covers for a searing boundary, you need to pick up the half volley. That's shot selection in action and - as batsmen and coaches - we should never take it for granted.

But how do you train for shot selection?

Learning the technique of a shot is much easier. You are moving. You can get feedback. You can drill repeatedly until you get it right. But it's hard to come up with "drills" for a process that only goes on in your head: While you are identifying the line and length of the ball, and then choosing a shot, you are not doing anything with your body.

Fortunately, it's simple to integrate shot selection specific drills into your normal training. Here's some things you can do.

Decide your shots

Start with basic principles. Ask yourself, "in an ideal world, how would I deal with different types of balls?"

This is mostly simple; you drive the full ones, you cut and pull the short ones. But there are grey areas. Do you sweep spinners or use your feet? How do you deal with a length ball at the death? What shots do you cut out when your team loses five wickets for 20 runs?

Stick to shots you know you can play at first. You may also decide to learn a new shot or two, but begin with what you have. And be honest. If you can't play the flick off your legs then don't imagine you will start now because you have planned it. If you only have two reliable shots then stick to them. They will get you a long way.

You can make these kind of decisions away from nets and games where it's easy to think things through with an uncluttered mind. Use this as a starting template to avoid temptation through scoreboard pressure.

(You can also use nets as "thinking time" but they need to be set up in a very particular way to be effective, so unless you are going to do this, keep the thinking and playing separate.)

How to adapt nets to shot selection

We know from research into elite batsmen that facing bowlers improves your ability to quickly pick up line and length. So, nets are ideal.

Where most of us go wrong is not tracking what happens in nets. We rely on memory and hope. We say things like "I felt good today" or "nothing went well today" when in reality it's usually a mixture of results that we can only see properly by reviewing the whole session.

So, when you feel you need a shot selection tune up, you can have your normal net with normal bowlers (or a coach with bowling with a sidearm). However, you also need a way to track what happened.

Tracking is best done with video, but you can also do it with hand notation. Keep a note of each ball and whether you chose the right shot (based on your own standards). Did you nick that half volley while trying to drive? That's a technique issue not a shot selection issue. You get a gold star for picking the ball even though you would have been out in the game.

At the end of the session you will have a certain number of balls you got right, and a certain number you didn't. Aim to increase the former and reduce the latter over a period of a few sessions.

Additionally, it helps if fewer bowlers bowl at you in nets because it give you time to pick up the cues you need from each individual action. So, if possible, get bowlers to bowl at you in overs one or two at a time.

When the session is over, take a moment to think through how it went initially and what you might like to do next time. Then between sessions, review your performance in more detail (look at the video, review the stats) and be sure you are planning ahead for the next session based on the results of the last. Imagine you are an airliner and this review process is your autopilot keeping you exactly on course by constant minor adjustments.

Warning: Avoid the machine

One tool for batting to avoid while you are working on shot selection is the bowling machine.

They are wonderful tools for technical work, but remember shot selection is all in the head. That means you need to be able to see someone delivering the ball, and you need to be uncertain exactly where the ball is going. The bowling machine can't provide that.

Clearly, your best option is to face bowlers. If your main aim is shot selection, a net works best because you don't have the pressure of the game situation. However, eventually you need to apply your skill under pressure too, so middle practice is also a good place to improve your shot selection.

Another good option is a coach. If the coach can bowl to your standard then have her bowl! Even if they are not quite as good as you want, getting them to bowl from 18 yards is an option. If she can't bowl to the standard you need, then turn to the sidearm. This gives even the most terrible bowler much more pace. The best option is to have the coach bowl with it. It does take practice but it's worth it.

Review like your career depends on it (it does)

Drills are great, but they are far less effective unless you build in a review.

So, consider it a golden rule that your session is not complete until you have done a review. Don't panic, this doesn't have to take a long time.

Spend 2-5 minutes after your net to think about the session. Discuss it with a coach or team mate if you want or quietly reflect to yourself as you take off your pads. Make a couple of notes about how it went and what you want to do next time. These can be mental notes, a quick scrawl on a pad, an entry in Drafts , notes in PitchVision, or 12 pages of feels in your diary. Whatever works for you.

Between sessions, go back to the results of the session and look in more detail. You should have tracked something over the session so you might be satisfied with "I improved this week, great!" or you can sift through the data with a fine toothcomb. That will all depend on your personality, but the key point is to have a second check over things before your next session and decide what you will do.

Then at the session, make sure you have let someone know your goal for the session before you walk in to bat. Again, there are options for this. You can tell the coach, tell the bowlers or write it on a whiteboard. This is a key step because it makes you accountable. You are more likey to stick to the plan if someone is watching.

Repeat, adjust and improve.

The Cricket Shot I Hate Most... And How to Play It!

Millfield — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 05:45:00 +0000

I don't have many 'pet-hates' but remarkably my biggest one concerns a cricket shot that gets warm applause when executed well

I hate this shot with a passion!

What is it? Read on.

Back in 2008, we decided to do some analysis on batsmen around the shots that they played, their shot-specific strike rate, average, frequency, runs per Shot, chance per shot and dismissal rate.

It was a brilliant process which resulted in some good subsequent coaching interventions for our own guys and more targeted planning around opposition batters.

What came out as the worst shot in cricket?

The shot that came out with the lowest SR, lowest Runs per shot (attempted) and worst average across the board was the late cut.

The late cut makes my SUDS rocket!

SUDS is an acronym for Subjective Units of Distress Scale. This scale runs from 0-10 and the late cut fires me up to a peaky 8.5 when one of our players tries another late cut.

And another dot is added to the scorebook!

On occasions, I have toyed with banning the shot all together.

Then I am reminded that I have been lucky enough to work with a few players - only a few mind - who have been excellent players of the shot and had completely different stats for the late cut.

Bell and Trescothick: Late cut legends

Ian Bell is by far the best late cutter I have seen at close quarters. Belly plays the shot very naturally and often took the ball out of the keepers gloves as he let the ball pass him before making contact.

Marcus Trescothick plays the shot with more of a straight bat rather than the horizontal bat of Ian Bell. He also makes contact with the ball very late and relies on having a very soft grip at point of contact to allow the ball to release off of the bat face and down to 3rd man.

This is a shot Marcus plays more against seamers than he does against spin bowlers.

In recent years, there have been two young professionals that I have worked with who both play the shot well and at the right times. So the first lesson here is to encourage people to get good at the shot before playing it in games.

How to practice the late-cut

Both Marcus and Belly are excellent trainers. They bat long and both focus hard on their drills.

A drill that can help a player to develop a late cut is to kneel down on the floor, get a mate to underarm feed the ball up from an appropriate length with the batter concentrating on their upper body, arms and hands to guide the ball past the keeper.

If you do this into a walled corner area (in a courtyard for example) then the ball will roll back to you or the feeder enabling cyclical practice.

Progressions for drill can be:

The same kneeling drill with a bouncing ball thrown into the appropriate length.
Standing in the contact position (reverse chaining) and concentrating on the contact against the moving ball.
Getting someone to bowl as you move from stance into the end position and play the ball away (throwdowns).
Targets can be introduced to add pressure, precision and points scoring.
Finally, practice hard against bowlers to challenge you decision making, as well as execution skills. When you have layered up through these progressions and mastered the shot in nets then you are ready to go in a game.

Another way of practising is to become your team's "nick man" for slip catching practice. If you can run the ball to slips in catching practice at will and then you can run the ball into gaps past the keeper in matches too!

You help your mates get better at catching whilst developing your own game!

Sharpening decision making

We often see the frequency in late cut attempts increase as pressure rises against spin.

Often, this comes when the field that is set does not lend itself to the shot being played at all.

At this point effective decision making has gone out the window. The shot is often a reaction to pressure rather than an educated and well practice option being played appropriately.

Encourage your players to identify when the shot is on from the sidelines. For example, when there is no slip in place and there is only one person behind point on the offside.

Going back to Ian Bell, he was great at getting these shots away for two or more, which then led to the opposition captain moving an on side fielder into the short third man position to bolster the behind square defences on the off side.

Those sideline conversations have a huge impact upon match play decision making.

When 'Belly' moved that fielder you would often see him target the square leg or fine leg position that had just been vacated. That is brilliantly appropriate thinking.

Now how not to do it.

In contrast I see many young players trying to late cut spin when their is either a slip and a backward point in place or even worse, when there are two men behind square on the off side.

Dot ball city!

There were a few examples of this at the brilliant Bunbury Under 15 Regional Cricket Festival this week at the beautiful Radley College. It will be interesting to see if those same players have either learnt to play the late-cut better or smarter when I next see many of them play at the ECB Super 4s Regional Festival in a couple of years.