They say you should never meet your heroes, but my meetings with Mike Brearley in his North London home over the last few weeks have been everything I expected.

A good cricket team is made up of different personalities and skills. Helping make the right blend of these elements starts with the captain and the team he or she selects.

Selection at club or school level is different from the top tiers. There is very little concern about picking the extra batsman and the like. In fact for many captains the only selection issue is whether you can raise 10 other players!

There are basically two ways to bowl a cricket ball.

The first is trying for the 'magic' ball. Perhaps it's the yorker that swings in fast and late, or the off spinner that drifts away before turning and bouncing. They are unplayable and make the batsman look helpless against your superior skills.

I can't see the IPL time out catching on in club cricket. Yet strategy is a key part of the game at any level.

John Buchanan caused a huge stir in the IPL when he said "I see there is scope to challenge the way teams have been run in the past".

The former Australian coach went on to outline that his Kolkata Knight Riders side could announce a formal captain on a game-by-game basis and they would be used in a vastly diminished role:

Is it pointless taking wickets in limited over games?

Victory simply requires you to score more runs than the opposition in the allotted time (usually 50 or 20 overs). Whether you are in the field first or second you job is to keep the score as low as possible. That means defensive tactics.

Should you be resigned to not taking any wickets as captain or bowler then?

More audio cricket coaching delights for you download this week. Kevin is trying to keep himself busy while David is run off his feet, especially with coaching.

In the show we cover:

The great thing about declaration cricket is it gives you the opportunity to risk losing in order to win. Yet captains all over the world from the village green to Test match regularly ignore the bit of advice I picked up on Twitter last week.

Positive move as it is, batting first leads to some tricky problems for batsmen and captains alike.

Whether you play declaration cricket or limited overs (or even a hybrid of the two like the league I play in) there are two main problems:

In my experience, the leg side short positions are underused in club cricket.

Even at Test level a short leg is often left out, or when they are in place they are the first close catcher to be removed. Lower down the system, my team tends to play on soft, green and with a low bounce. You can see why many captains decide it's not worth putting a player 'under the lid'.