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”.

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.

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.

I watched some Test cricket in Mumbai this week, it was enthralling viewing. All 28 minutes of it!

It's ECB Level Four final assessment week at Loughborough.

This is one of my favourite weeks of the year as I get to listen to a lot of fantastic coaches tell me about the great practice they are doing in their counties to support the development of young cricketers.

I normally take at least 10 ideas back to Somerset to use with the players at Millfield. 2016 is no exception to that rule!

One of the ideas that I am going to steal is one candidates model of "The Five Weapons of Spin!"

How do we increase someone’s throwing speed in a safe fashion?