A 1^st XI regular has gone on holiday for 2 weeks.

You have been called up for the first time. It is the chance you have been waiting for all season.

This is a real opportunity; you have the chance to be more than just a stand in for the week and a chance to stake your claim to a regular place in the team.

Find your role

The first thing to consider is your role in the team.

Runs and wickets are limited as a way of seeing how well your team is doing in the field. There is no easy way of seeing where the psychological momentum lies.

At least, there wasn’t until some bright spark in the England setup developed ‘Match Play’

Match Play is used to judge how well a team is performing as a unit in the field without comparison to the opposition or the conditions.

It concerns the mental boosts or falls found during the game and how this affects the confidence of both sides.

Every team has the unlucky bowler who beats the edge to ohhs and ahhs from the slips yet picks up the rare wicket.  The ball just swings too much to find the edge.

Can you turn that bowler from “unlucky fred” into “fantastic fred”?

As club players we all want gun bats that last for years.

But the way bats are made means that you are going to have to choose between the two.

You see, each piece of willow was once a living thing. Each one has the variety of attributes associated with something found in the wild.

Bat makers will tell you that as each piece of wood is different it is hard to find any correlation between the numbers of grains and how well a bat will perform.

Batting advice and coaching is high on the agenda this week as we look at when to use a bowling machine, and when to use throwdowns.

Plus we talk about the double-edged sword of a shot that is the off drive and Gary Palmer finishes off his interview by talking about the ultimate batting coaching session and what makes up talent.

But it’s the only tool the batsman has, so the correct bat will give you the chance to be as good as you can be. Choosing which bat to buy is a crucial decision.

There are bats worth £500 and there are bats worth £80; both made out of the same stuff.

Is it just a matter of buying the best one that you can afford and hoping?

With sledging high in discussion this week, the team take a look at every aspect of mental disintegration from club games to high profile international matches. And poor Burners tells us that he often gets more from his own team-mates than from the opposition.

We look at the influence of overseas professionals on the game, and answer your questions with Mark Garaway and David Hinchliffe giving some revealing answers in the questions section.

This is a simple yet highly effective drill I have used with players right up to international level to improve straight driving.

The drill is to get players to hit balls with all your weight on the front foot, the back leg in the air. The feed starts underarm before progressing through to throw-downs and bowling machines.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become a first-class batsman?

Who better to ask than someone who has been there, done it and seen it all from playing internationally to smashing boundaries in the IPL?

That man is Aakash Chopra and he is revealing all in the latest coaching course to hit PitchVision Academy.

And right now you can get a free preview of the course.

When the season is over and the sun has disappeared from the sky the temptation is to hibernate until indoor nets start again.

But a recent trip to a physio for a sports massage changed my mind about winter training.

I had noticed over the last couple of years that my back began to feel tighter and tighter and now was the time to do something about it.

My logic was to give my back a service to allow it to feel loose for a few months before the strain started again.