It's not long now until indoor nets start in the UK, which means the cricket season is fast approaching.

Great stuff!

It's very easy to waste this important practice time though: Especially at club level. So to help avoid that and make sure your pre season practice helps your in season form, here are my 9 tips to better indoor nets:

1. Have a plan. Go to practice with an idea of what you want to work towards. You may want to increase your range of strokes, develop a googly or just get your confidence up. Whatever it is, write it down and review your progress every week.
2. Have a coach. Coaches can help you set your goals and identify areas you may want to think about working on. A good senior coach facilitates you rather than tells you what to do. If you are lucky enough to have one, use him (or her). They can also run the net.
3. Have a team talk. Pre seaon nets is a great place to sit down with everyone before or after the session and talk about your team goals. You can iron out differences and support each others plans as part of a cohesive whole.
4. Work on fitness. Cricket is not just batting and bowling. Once you have had your bat, take some time to do cricket fitness work. It's a good time to do some interval work or plyometrics.
5. Do some fielding. A good way to warm up and build team spirit is to get some fielding drills done before you even pull out the nets. It's great practice, gives latecomers a chance to get loose and improves your alertness when you are batting or bowling.
6. Bowl 6 balls each. Make sure only the bowlers bowl, and they bowl an over each rather than one at a time. It makes the practice more realistic for bowlers and batters. Anyone waiting can do fitness work.
7. Have slow and quick nets. If you have more than one net, make one for spinners and one for seamers. Again, it adds to the realism.
8. Train more than once. We all have constraints on our time, but if you can net more than once a week you will be in better form come the spring.
9. Hang a target. This is one for the bowlers. Hang a target (it can be a jumper or something similar) behind the tip of off-stump. It's the bowlers job to hit it. This improves accuracy in the infamous 'corridor of uncertainty'.

By the way, if you hadn't realised, these tips apply just as much to outdoor practice. So take note even if you are currently enjoying good weather.

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