Iain Brunnschweiler has a simple drill upgrade for you to get more direct hits.

Matches can be turned when you complete run outs: Direct hits will result in a wicket.

So it is important that you get your throws as close as possible to the stumps as often as possible. The problem is, when doing a throwing at stumps drill, we often simply use a 'hit or miss' outcome to gauge the success of the throw. This can result in a lot more misses than hits, especially in younger players. It's disheartening.

The good news is there is a simple way of setting more of a gauge to help understand progress and guide development.

Set up your 3 stumps to aim at, but then use an additional two stumps which are set a bit wider either side of the aiming stumps, one either side. This will create a wider goal.

You can then have a point scoring system,

• 3 points for a direct hit
• 1 point if your throw goes inside the wider goal
• 0 points if you are even wider than that!

This will allow players and coaches to understand who is regularly getting close, even if they are just missing the central target, and those who are missing wide of the mark.

The other advantage of this set up, is that you can make the target area wider or narrower, depending upon the skill level of the throwers. Or you could just have one stump in the middle with two other stumps providing the 'goal' within which to throw.

Give it a go, it can help both understand how close you or your players are getting each throw, and also will give you some points even if you narrowly miss!

Check out the Inspired Cricket Drills for a drill called ‘Scatter Throws’ as an example of a drill in which you could include this accuracy gauge technique to help make it more informative about you or your players throwing accuracy.