Which coach has influenced you most? Leave a comment below to discuss the unsung heroes of cricket coaching.

Cricket is, above all, a game of technique and mental strength. It’s one that is ideal for coaches to flourish: providing direct advice to those with a burning hunger to perform.

Yet even with the awesome information power of the web, these influencers remain strangely isolated.

The men and women with the keys are rarely found outside the locked door of the professional game where they ply their trade.

I employed a baseball coach called Will Lintern to teach the Ireland Cricket Team to hit stumps on a more regular basis in the lead up to the 2011 World Cup. The aim was to become the best ground fielding team in the world.

Our indicators were number of clean pick ups, run outs and direct hits.

Will coached a number of principles yet the ones that are easiest to remember are the 3 Keys to Accuracy:

Ryan Maron - the former Western Province player - is one of South Africa’s leading coaches, running his famous Cricket School of Excellence in Cape Town for over 10 years as well as being Head coach of the University of Cape Town.

In this series, Ryan gives his batting tips for talented young cricketers. This week the tips are all to do with the lofted drive.

When your cricket team is batting, the role of the changing room and balcony is to ensure that the next batter goes into the wicket feeling focused, relaxed and positive.

This is irrespective of the challenge that he is walking into.

It is our job as coaches to protect that environment; to educate the players in appropriate winning language and behaviours because they facilitate excellent performances from your players in the toughest of circumstances.

It's very rare for coaches to be educated in how to run a team review meeting, yet we are all expected to review a game with our team at the end of a day’s play.

Often players switch off and think "this doesn't relate to me".

To help prevent that fate at your meetings, here are a few tips that have worked for me.

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

Cricket nets with built-in instant feedback on your bowling sound like something from the distant future. In fact, that is exactly what is happening now at the refurbished Taranaki Cricket Association's indoor training centre in New Zealand.

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.

There is a simple shorthand for what defines a good coach: reputation is everything. We look at a player’s first-class or International record and that helps us decide if we should follow his advice.

But you wouldn’t go to the dentist of you had a broken leg. So why go to a former player to fix your broken technique?

Of course, experience goes a long way but coaching cricket is a completely different set of skills than playing.