One of the big coaching challenges is developing the athleticism of fast bowlers.

One early season challenge is the adaptation from indoor surfaces to slow and two paced grass pitches.

I love working with lower order players. To me they are still ‘run getters’ and ‘partnership builders’ irrespective of their less extensive batting experience and limited practice hours.

I have just returned from a fantastic cricket training week over in Saint Lucia at the newly named Darren Sammy National Cricket Stadium. Andrew Strauss and I coached 22 children using the wonderful facilities whilst basking in the sunshine.

The 2016 World Twenty20 had brilliant skills on show.

Duncan Fletcher had lots of “Fletchisms”. One of my favourite Fletcherisms is “train the brain!”.

Jordan Finney is a cricket coach and sport psychology degree student. In this article he talks about how showing faith in players leads to more runs and wickets

Good performance and confidence are a bicycle chain.

The second ball throwing drill in this series is the med ball push. Catch up with previous articles on throwing drills here and here.

This is drill to the drills often used by fast bowling coaches. Yet it used used to develop an understanding of how the body generates speed through the body and into our hands for many of the other disciplines.

Sam Lavery is Cricket Professional at Portsmouth Grammar School in England. He is a co-host of the PitchVision Cricket Show. In this column he has a drill to make nets better.

One of the regular net drills Portsmouth Grammar School is the “zonal” net.

Part two of the “warm up to throw” programme is weighted ball work.