We have covered some standing up to the stumps drills in recent weeks and now we turn our attention to standing back drills.

Basic Hitting Drill

One of the real keys to coaching is to know your players and your team well enough so that you can raise or lower the pressure dial to get the most from your players.

Gaining rapport and building trust are the foundations that underpin coaching. Rapport and trust are more important than technical coaching. Without rapport and trust, even the most sound of advice often falls on deaf ears.

To illustrate how pressure, trust and rapport work, here are some real examples whereby pressure was added (or taken off) with highly positive outcomes.

Variation of drill is one of the big challenges for a coach working with keepers. As we discussed last week, we should always remember that we need to keep the practice relevant to the match as possible.

The great thing about standing up sessions is that they should never be dull: you can create lots of distraction, different spins and bounce types with the overall aim to be to overload the keeper so that the practice is tougher than the actual match.

We still need to keep the drills relative and functional to match play, yet feel free to let that imagination run wild.

The legside stumping is one of cricket's finest sights. I know as a former wicketkeeper I’m biased, but it’s a skill that turns games. It’s achievable by all keepers if these sound rules are followed:

80% of balls that are missed by a keeper go under the hands!

This is a finding from from the study I did in 2008 monitoring 52 high performance keepers from Under 11 County Age Group keepers to MS Dhoni and Mathew Prior in Test Cricket.

I don't know about you, but I work with a number of talented players who are prone to overanalysing their technique and outcomes when they are batting.

 I even did this myself!

 The result is that their over-analytical findings impede their ability to learn from the previous ball or shot yet also be focused and ready to play the next ball to the best of their ability.

I have been lucky enough to spend a significant amount of time around some incredible people and cricketers over the years. Yet that time would have been wasted if I hadn't learnt the benefit of asking questions.

Questions allowed me to gain and develop my understanding of cricket, coaching and life skills essential for peak performance.

The better we as coaches become at hitting balls, the quicker our fielders will move to elite in the deep. So get out there with your high catching coaches kit and practice your hitting.

I am often asked if the "English" method of high catching (fingers down) is better than its "Australian" counterpart.