After I posted the reason all cricket clubs need a coach yesterday I had a moment of realisation. I had totally missed another important factor a good coach can bring:

Testing

Well-rounded coaches will have knowledge in the technical, tactical, physiological and psychological aspects of cricket, and to improve on them you need to know where you are to start with.

Has your cricket club got a coach?

I'm talking about the senior section here, not the colts or youth teams. If not, have you ever considered why not?

I know that at the clubs I have played the answer to both questions is 'no'.

You may or may not have heard of Darren Rowse. He has been called many things, but what he does is takes lessons from life and applies them to his job.

Darren recently drew a comparison between practising tennis and practising blogging (he's a full time blogger) and came up with 10 ways to get better at blogging by practising. And just as those 10 ways work for tennis and blogging they can work for cricket.

There is not much that is more satisfying for a seam bowler than steaming in, beating the batsman for pace and seeing the stumps cartwheeling back. If anyone knows how to tease that extra pace out of you it's Ian Pont: Cricket guru and fast bowling coach to Essex CCC and the Netherlands World Cup squad.

It's time for another guest feature and our friend Ian Canaway of Cricketsecrets.com is back with some footwork advice.

Recently I was asked: "Is footwork really that important?"

My answer was emphatic: Good footwork is the basis for achieving excellence in cricket and is the foundation for good batting technique.

Greg Chappell is a big fan of focussing on the outcome rather than the process of batting skills. Our friend Kelvin has been back in touch with me with a batting problem. This is what he said:

Captaincy is the hardest cricket skill to learn because the only way to get better at it is to actually be a captain. But if you have no experience, how are you going to get the job?
One way around this problem, and motivate younger players, is for established captains to hand a little bit of responsibility to his younger players for a short period.

1. Some teams always play for the draw. Too many times a captain will blame the opposition for a boring draw. There are very few sides who deliberately aim to go for the bore draw. More likely, neither captain has taken control of the game enoughto keep it close. The answer: Be prepared to take a risk. You will play in a lot less draws.

Seam bowling all-rounder Kelvin has been back in touch with me.

You may remember he asked me some coaching questions a little while back. He now has a run up problem which I hope to solve for him.

Part of a good run up is being fit enough to perform it properly. In Kelvin's case, his hard work is starting to pay off in real cricket performance:

If the cricket club you play for is anything like mine, success means a great deal. We may be amateurs but we still want to do well personally and in our leagues.

But playing well means training well, especially for those of us who are not lucky to have the talent of Ponting, Flintoff or Ntini.

Time restrictions might stop you practising as much, but you can still train the way the top guys do. Here is how:

Make a commitment