How many good players of spin are there in club cricket?

Playing spin is difficult and takes practice, but good spinners are rare in the non-professional game and so batsmen don't get to face them much in the nets or in matches.

The result is batsman who can defend or slog, with not much in-between.

We get all technical this week as Sam Lavery of Pro Coach Cricket Academy joins Kevin and David to go over some bowling and batting questions.

We also learn about David's latest game and the tribulations of captaining a side who can't get runs in the top 6.

Gary Palmer, PitchVision Academy Batting Coach, has 20 years of coaching experience talks about how to play off the back foot well. If you would like group or one-to-one coaching with Gary visit CCM Academy.

Long before Shiv Chanderpaul was playing an Englishman, Peter Willey, came back from a tour of the West Indies with a similarly open batting stance.

Judging by the number of questions we get here at PitchVision Academy, a lot of players and coaches have a cricketing problem they need solving. Everyone has something; a technical flaw in the cover drive, not quick enough bowling, getting gassed with low fitness levels and a hundred other things.

We also know that there is a frustrating gap for most of us.

The coaches and experts with the answers to your problems are expensive or inaccessible, or both.

At least they were.

Imagine the scene, you turn up at nets. The bowler's bowl and the batsmen bat. Sometimes they swap places. It's all pretty typical.

The guy is just expected to never make a mistake, even when all the work he gets involves taking throws from fielding practice.

The problem of coaching a specialist

Critics had wondered why older players with Test pedigrees like Kallis, Vaas and Tendulkar were even bothering with the IPL. Maybe for the money, because their games are not built for the crash bang format.

It's a situation many older club players can relate to as well.

This article is part one of a series from Laurie Ward of The Complete Cricketer Academy.

This series of articles isn't about what you think.

Reading a title like this you will think of mental toughness, tactical awareness and the psychological side of the game.

But today we are going to talk about your head has a key role in the techniques of cricket.

This is part of a series on How to exploit batsman's weaknesses. To see the other weaknesses click here.

On the surface, an open stance is an excellent way to play. It gives the batsman a balanced position from which he or she has a wide range of scoring options.

But it can also lead to their downfall, if you know how to read it properly.

This is part of a series on How to exploit batsman's weaknesses. To see the other weaknesses click here.

A "closed off" stance is one of the easiest weaknesses to spot and exploit because the batsman reveals his hand before he has even faced a ball.

It's also very common in club cricket. At the level I play I see it every weekend at least once, especially with lower order and tail-end batsmen.

As you know, PitchVision Academy coaching courses are the most comprehensive guides to improving your game featuring some of the best experts in their fields.

For a while now we have been giving away some free samples of what you can get when you invest in an online coaching course, so I thought it was time to collect all these free samples in one place for you to enjoy without having to search through the archives.