I am continuing the throwing theme today with a funky fielding drill that encourages fielders to take calculated run out risks and rewards a group who work together to achieve a series of direct hits!

Nicknames are funny things aren’t they? For me, they encapsulate a given time and a given place as you end up acquiring a number over a playing and coaching career.

Most people know me as “Garas”.

With the season soon approaching, our floodlit Thursday fielding sessions are used to increase our throwing volume and we have been looking at different ways to attack a ball in the deep.

Millfield school’s junior batting programme for Year 9 (13–14 year old cricketers) is focused on the fundamentals of movement, balance and how we can best generate power and ball speed off the bat.

Do batter and bowlers arguments happen every week in your net sessions?

That’s the modus-operandi for many club and school net sessions, isn’t it?

It can be no different here at Millfield at times and as a result, our coaching group aim to come up with net formats to facilitate as much “bang for our buck” in our competitive net sessions as we possibly can.

I love it when a new coach comes onto my team, it means that I can start stealing his coaching drills!

In my first few years as a coach I used to go along to coaching presentations and hear about the benefit of reflection and review.

Having been bought up in a “beer and chat” environment as a player, all this was a bit lost on me: A bit of utopian and conceptual thinking rather than real coaching practice that I could use with teams and cricketers.

Then I met Ricky Ponting!

Last week I gave you the first part of my highlights of 2016.

Here are the the rest of my favourites from my top coaching year to date.

2016 was one of my fondest coaching years to date.

Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher. I bet he was a decent coach too! He knocked around the Lu State in China and passed away in 479 BC.