One of the most frustrating things in coaching is a line of cricketers standing in a queue waiting for their turn.

While watching other people play sport from the close vantage point of a queue can be fun, getting involved is much more productive and it also seems like a pretty good way to improve.

While a few areas of cricket have developed in this regard, one area that continues to see the queues build up is fielding practice. Not necessarily ground fielding, as there a lots of different fielding circuits that recycle the ball and can work without a coach at times.

However, catching still seems to be a little behind the times.

The coach seemingly has to hit the ball, which suggests it’s a game of one at a time, and wait your turn. This couldn’t be ideal surely?

While I was thinking about this, my thought process started to evolve as follows:

• How can I get more people catching?
• Why is one coach hitting towards 6-8 players?
• Why do we have a linear styled drill where the coach is on one side and the fielders are on the other?
• More catchers, needs more balls being hit
• More balls being hit either requires more coaches (rarely an option), or hitting balls into different places and directions
• What is the greatest number of angles I can hit a ball in?
• If I’m aiming to hit catches throughout the whole 360 degrees I need to be in the middle of the group
• If I’m hitting the ball out, how can I get the ball returned to me safely whilst challenging the players skills at the same time?

After I’d considered all of the above I came up with the followed structure. And it seems to work really well:

Now that I’ve trialled the drill with various different age groups and ability levels, I’ve started to think about how many other drill we have that work “quite well”, could be made more effective, more time productive, and ultimately give more players more opportunity to improve, and faster.

Can this get your mind working?