Today’s article is a guest post from Darren Talbot; Professional coach, Managing Director of Darren Talbot Cricket Coaching and founder committee member of the Surrey ECB Coaches Association.

Twenty20 has undoubtedly transformed cricket over the past few years. Its effects can be seen in club cricket too.

PitchVision elite coach Gary Palmer has coached a lot of players at different stages of their career and he has noticed how ego can get in a player's way.

In this exclusive video, Gary tells us why it's important to drop the ego if you want to be the best player you can be.

After the success of the last one, it's time for another quiz to test your cricketing knowledge.

In this short test we take a look at cricket practice, focusing specifically on the type of training you do at nets.

How good are your sessions?

PitchVision Academy interviews South African Coach of the Year, Richard Pybus. His impressive CV includes coaching Pakistan, Border and the Titans franchise in South Africa. We chatted about cricket technology, developing players and brain-based coaching.

PV: What do you see as the coaches' job?

As a coach, have you ever wondered about the talented player who seems to cruise without putting in the hard yards?

How much better would Player A be, you wonder, if only he had the motivation of the les talented Player B? The frustrating part is that motivation is more complicated that a simply telling Jimmy to buck up his ideas.

Despite all the recent innovations in coaching, some things remain constant.

I have been a coach since 1994 and have taught kids at almost every age and skill level. Long ago I learned that to be a success you need to do certain things. You could be standing in front of 40 8 year olds or trying to get the most out of an elite group of under 16 Academy players. These are the immutable laws of coaching kids' cricket:

Recently I saw a coaching session that seemed to be designed not for the kids to have fun but for the coaches to impress their own will to win.

I can just imagine the drop out rate.

The reason kids come to play cricket, in my view, is to have fun. Winning is a factor but without the enjoyment more will leave than stay.

How do good coaches go about this while still teaching the skills of the game?

Keep everyone involved

Long time reader Arvind got in touch about this post:

If sledging were to be accepted as a part of the game of cricket, would we then have to coach it like the other disciplines?

That got me to thinking. Is he right and if so what else should coaches be coaching at club level?

Watch the best cricketers in the world and despite differences in technique and style there are constants.

Talent, balance, coordination, strength and technique are all vital but more important is developing these factors as one.Like fingers working together to catch a ball.

As club players we want to make as much of our more limited talents as the elite do. We train when we can and work on our skills in the nets.

But just like training one finger and expecting to improve our catching, netting is not enough.

We need to look at the whole picture.