Commitment, desire and hard work.

These are all valuable traits in a cricketer. Look at Steve Harmison. After a nightmare in the first Ashes Test he put in extra hours to sort out his action.

It stands to reason that he should do this. After all, the harder you train the more results you will get.

To a point anyway.

You see it's very easy to overtrain if your cricket commitment gets the better of you.

For most club players, this isn't a problem. They don't train much, if at all. It isn't that they are not committed to winning on the day of the game, it's just that does carry over into the week.

But for a few, especially younger players with ambitions of turning professional, there can be no time to rest at all: Several games a week, training sessions and fitness work can build up.

Before you know it you have trained too hard and it's reducing your performance.

Know the signs of overtraining 

If you training hard at the moment then ask yourself if you are overtraining.

You might feel tired all the time, you can't train as hard as you used to or you constantly have a cold.

More than 2 hours a day with no rest days in a week is too much. You owe it to yourself to take at least one day a week as a rest day, and take the time to work in weeks in your training when you are not pushing yourself (just cut back on the intesity for a few days).

If you are worried about overtraining and your performance has dropped recently then the answer is simple: It's time to take a rest to recover.