How big are your players catching areas?

Super slow motion cameras are great for noting the size of catching areas in both keepers and fielders. Often, we see that catchers line the ball up with one open hand and more closed one, this is great if judgement is spot on or if the ball does not dip or deviate in the air.

The two player batting drill is a staple of cricket practice: You throw, your mate hits the ball, you swap around. It works. And when you add a third person it can work even better to hone your technique.

Here's a video of a one to one session with a spinner using PitchVision to provide analysis.

In this session we took a look at a player who wanted to add a string to his bow as a bowler, and wasn't sure exactly of his strengths and weaknesses. So over the course of 70 balls, I combined good old watching him bowl with reviewing the video of his action and combined it with the pace, turn and accuracy outcomes we saw on PitchVision.

The second of the Graham Thorpe batting against fast bowling drill packages is fun, functional and a wonderful drill to layer up with last weeks drill.

This video is a slip catching drill at an indoor training session where the only space available was a net.

I had a great pleasure of working alongside England Lead batting coach, Graham Thorpe last week. Graham presented a batting masterclass which covered his approaches to developing quality players of pace and spin.

Thorpey's philosophy to coaching any batter, irrespective of age, was to 'coach back from the challenges of International game'. The first International game challenge that he identified was the fast, short pitched delivery.

Here's how you can check to see if your hunches are right.

Good cricket coaches have good hunches. They can sense something and make swift changes based on their experience and skill. That's the art of coaching. But hunches can also be wrong, or biased. That's where you can use data to back up your hunch, or find out if it's wrong.

Inspired by Mark Garaway's standing up drills, I did some work with some wicketkeepers on standing up to seamers.

We duly set up a drill with a bowling machine to work on leg side takes.

The machine was previously set up for right arm over, pitching on off stump, so rather than adjust the machine we:

Here's a brilliant batting drill based on a TV show.

First the back story: I ran a session this week with four cricketers from school who haven't played a great deal over the summer holidays. One of the players in the session has made huge progress this year.

Train hard; get better. Do your drills. It's a simple mantra, but it's missing a crucial part of the process of practice to improve. Cricketing technique, tactics and mental strength require one more "drill".

Review.

By thinking of review as a drill, and reflecting on your practice and games, you will get better faster. You will even get better between practice sessions. It works by giving you a feedback loop that has been proven to boost skills faster than anything else. It gives direction to your training, encouragement that things are working and confidence that you can repeat the right skill at the right time.

Yet, most of us don't bother much with it.