The Launch of PitchVision's Batting Simulator - the "Batting Studio" - at mainstream entertainment venue Bloomsbury Lanes in London has brought the future of the game into the spotlight.

The arcade-style batting lane, where anyone can face up to virtual bowlers and compete with friends, seems tiny compared to the behemoth "real" Test, ODI and T20 games. However, that doesn't detract from the wider implications, especially as this lane is the first of many worldwide.

What are those implications?

MS Dhoni recently lamented the lack of fast bowlers in India,

"We're going through a stage when we don't have the same firepower when it comes to the bowling department."

That has to hurt if you are an Indian fast bowler.

But it's true at club and school level too, it's not just an issue at the top.

Preseason is an exciting time of year as cricket is just around the corner.

It's a great time to put some profiling into place to help us design an strategy or coaching programme that supports your players through the season.

If you want to improve cricketers you need practice regularly and monitor your performance.

That’s been the challenge of Millfield School and Mark Garaway the school’s Director of Cricket Coaching: even for a top English independent school, that has produced some fine first class players Simon Jones, Craig Kieswetter, Ben Hollioake and David Graveney.

The facilities are excellent, but there are still challenges to further boost the boy’s performances at the school.

Yorkers are the fast bowler’s most powerful weapon. You feel like you have got one over on the batsman when you duck one in onto his toes in front of middle stump. Even when it doesn’t get the wicket, it’s impossible to score.

But the yorker target area is small and even a slight error makes your toe-crusher an easy full-toss or half-volley.

You have to practice smart.

All professional cricket teams are now equipped with a mysterious figure hunched over a laptop during matches; the analyst. But what does an analyst really do that is different from the coach?

Cricket nets with built-in instant feedback on your bowling sound like something from the distant future. In fact, that is exactly what is happening now at the refurbished Taranaki Cricket Association's indoor training centre in New Zealand.

It doesn’t matter how good a coach you have, because when you cross the white line it’s all down to you. No coach can play for you. You have to learn to understand your own game because you can adapt to the changes proposed by your coaches.

But in today's cricket world, a keen self-understanding is uncommon.

Meanwhile in the academic world the opposite is true.  Schools and Universities specialise in teaching skills then measuring how well you have learned through exams and coursework.

Cricket nets have an inherent problem; you don’t know how far the ball has been hit or whether it would have cleared the field. That is until now; because cutting -edge cricket technology now allows you to use net space for realistic training and entertainment.

As some of you may know, the PitchVision Cricket Research Centre in Dehradun, India is a state-of-the-art test facility for cricket equipment. It includes high speed cameras, laser locators, PitchVision sensors, a huge overhead projection screen and a test team of 12 that specialise in recording and validating performance data for cricket.

 Using technology to improve your cricket isn’t always about spending a lot of money. Sometimes you can get excellent results without a large investment upfront.

But you have to be careful too. There are many products on the market making big claims. Not all of them are as good as they make out. So here are 5 of my top picks for technology that you can pick up cheaply and make a difference to your game.