There are a number of possibilities:

• Your head is not over your front toe in the stance (your weight is too far over to the off side making you fall over).
• You have a closed batting stance or trigger move either with the shoulders or feet.
• Your backlift is over middle or leg stump stopping you from playing straight and through the on side. It should be over off stump or slightly wider, coming back down straight.
• You are trying to play through the covers rather than through the V and are looking to go off side too early.

Get your coach to tell you which of these you are doing and they should be able to correct it.

Let us know how you get on!

Thanks, I'll be going to the nets today, so I'll probably try opening up my stance, and also working on my trigger, which is just a a step in front of me with my front foot.

Ah that is probably the issue, I would guess you are closing yourself off. Try standing stil or going back and across if you must. It can be hard work to correct though.

I also remember reading in the Bob Woolmer book that you shouldnt go back and across to spinners as it is too hard to track the ball after this movement, do you agree?

Hmm not really. It is hard to track the ball if you are moving as the ball is delivered, but if you do it before release it's OK, especially to spinners who turn the ball in. Although I would prefer no trigger movement to any bowling except the very quickest. It's VERY hard to get right.

Okay, I tried opening up my stance and not closing myself off with my trigger, but it didn't seem to work, i think it may be more of an issue of losing form, seeing as i couldnt manage to time any drives.

Sadly, it's not going to take one session to get right. Your muscle memory is programmed to play in a certain way and you can't overcome the feeling just by trying it once. You will need to drill it out over a longer period without the complication of a a bowler causing confusion.

Go back to basics, do some tennis ball drop drills and move to bobble feeds before changing it in a proper net.

I'll give it a go,
what sort of tips would you give to get back in form? I tried visualisation while bowling and batting today, but although my batting improved from yesterday, I am not happy with that standard of batting, my timing could be improved and my shots were not very solid.

Great question. It's a tough one and is different for each person. I would suggest looking through these articles to see if any of the tips work for you:

• Back to basics
• Confidence is like a bank account
• Mental nets
• Relaxing at the crease

Also there is the mental training course on PitchVision Academy for a more comprehensive answer.

I'll have to save up my pocket money!

I agree, this problem is your front foot trigger movement towards off. If you lead with your foot then the big muscles in your leg want to move your leg away from you, towards the offside. This is ok for shots on or outside off stump but is a problem for those on leg stump. I think the key is to rotate the top of your body towards the line of the ball or lead with your shoulder, this in turn opens your hips and your foot will then move straighter down the pitch.

I use a tennis ball drill to teach kids this. They adopt their batting stance without a bat. I throw the ball on the line of their legs and they have to move their hands to catch the ball on the bounce. It seems that when you are thinking of getting your hands to the ball then all the above happens naturally.

Steve

Hi,
So should I try and rotate my torso towards the bowler with my trigger movement?
Thanks

I would stop thinking about your trigger move, it seems to be putting you off. Keep your head still and eyes level when waiting for the ball. When playing a shot move your head to the ball and stay balanced by keeping your head over your toes. Hit your hands through the line when driving. Drill, drill, drill until your body is in the right position.

The most obvious explanation is that you are simply moving your front foot into the wrong position as you move forward to address the full pitched delivery. Your feet will start (roughly) on leg stump in your batting stance, and will then move forward and possibly across as the ball is coming towards you. If the ball is on middle stump, your feet should simply move forward on a line of leg stump so that your bat can come through on the line of middle. If the ball is on off stump, then your feet should end up in front of middle and your bat should come down on and off-stump line. What it sounds like you are doing is putting your front foot too far across, which impedes the trajectory of the bat to hte contact point, forcing you to play across the line. Try and ensure that you pick up the line early and are moving your front pad to a position approximiately 3 inches inside the line of the ball rather than directly into the line of the ball. Your bat should also make contact with the ball out in front of the pad rather than alongside it.

Another thing to check for is that both feet are pointing down the wicket immediately after contact, and that your backfoot has moved sideways into line with the front foot(I think there was an article showing good pictures of this a while ago). On any front foot shot, both feet should be aligned with the pitch at the point of contact.

Hi,

I have few problems with bowling and batting. First of all, i intend to concentrate and looking at bowling crease and last moment i have been seen the batsman stumps. So please help me to correct this error. Then when i am batting i keep my touching on the batting crease. i think it is reason for slow moment. then i am facing trouble to getting even singles against spinners.

It would be grateful if you could advice me to correct my errors.

Thank you,

Best regards,

Ajith

This problem regularly creeps into my game and over the years I've found a few effective ways of dealing with it. Firstly I attempt to get my weight coming forward and drill a lot of on drives (throw downs), eventually your leg will open up to play the shot well. I have found trigger movement to be important in curing this but i took it a step further by taking my stance in a position i might trigger to if I was moving correctly into the ball and had myself generally inside the line of the delivery. from here I'd take take a slight shuffle across to get on middle and leg from legstump guard while trying to keep my head on the line it was previously.Taking stance with your foot almost lined up to the bowler helps too, if you are good player thru the offside you will not lose that by doing these things you'll probably just hit it thru extra cover instead of cover which is never a bad thing.