How would you like to add an extra run per over to your team's score?

Better yet, how would you like to do it while while increasing your own scoring? You can do both by practicing your strike rotation.

Running between the wickets is one of the few genuine moments of teamwork in cricket. You have to work closely with your batting partner and have an understanding between each other. While this can happen naturally (you are probably thinking now of a batting partner that you run well with) it often fails. This leads to missed run chances or even run outs.

Both can be avoided by thinking outside the 'net mentality' of most practice sessions.

Escaping the net mentality and scoring more runs

Think back to your last team practice session. How many chances did it give you for really practicing running with a partner? Chances are none: You were stuck in a net, playing your shots and not having to work with a partner.

Because of this net practice, rotating the strike is a skill that is not often developed in club and school cricket. Naturally, chances to score extra runs are missed and teams settle for far fewer runs. I'm sure you can think back to a few games where this has happened with your team. It's especially true of sides with a player or two who slows the rate through lack of confidence in playing their shots. No amount of netting is going to help these problems, but getting out of the nets and doing some team running drills can.

And not only the blockers in your team. Even if you are the club cricket equivalent of Sehwag, you can benefit from a better understanding of your batting partners.

How to practice strike rotation

So let's assume you are staying out of the nets and working on strike rotation. What do you do?

1. Think about the simple tricks first

Let's assume you know the basics of running between the wickets: Calling, turning and the like. Sit down as a team before you start your practice session and talk about the more advanced common sense tricks you can use to steal runs and frustrate bowlers who are looking to keep the score down.

The idea of these tips is to develop the fast and simple tactical things you can start on right away. There is no lag time between practice and matches and they can start making an instant different to your score.

Here are some of miCricketCoach's ideas, you may have more yourself:

• If it hits the pads, it's usually a run. Most of the time a ball deflecting off the pads goes into an area with no fielders. If the non-striker is aware he can call the striker through for an easy run before keeper, fielder or bowler can get to the ball.
• Always look for another run. The trick with this is just to change mentality. If you are always looking for the extra run you will get it when the chance comes. You never know when a simple return will turn into an overthrow for example. The golden rule is staying alert for another run until the ball is dead.
• Always play tip and run. A classic mistake a club level is to assume tip and run is a specific tactic for when a batting team is getting tied down. What's stopping you from using the tactic throughout an innings? If you have a good defence all you need to do is think, "quick single" after you have played the shot. You don't need to cut out your booming drive to do it either. Just look to defend the good balls and set off if the chance comes to drop it at your feet.
• Pick out the poor fielders. Every side has better and worse fielders. If you are in the middle you should know who the ones are who stand a little too deep to save a single, collapse under pressure or are always surprised when the ball comes to them. It's these fielders you can exploit if the ball goes near them for extra runs. On the same note, it's important to recognise the better fielders and take fewer risks with them to save you from a red-faced run out.
• Decide when to nurdle and when to run. Although you can play the 'hit the gap' game through an entire innings, it is best done in the earlier stages of the game when the best bowlers are on with the ball in its best condition. If the going is tough early on, your running can keep you in the game. However, towards the death of an innings you might be looking to hit more boundaries and so tip-and-run becomes less important. That said, you can still do mighty well by scoring 4-5 singles along with a boundary every over, even at the death.

Once you have your mentality sorted you can move the training session on to a simple batting drill that can act as part of your warm up. It teaches you and your players to work the ball around safely by angling the bat.

Get the players into pairs, one batting and one throwing a ball as a feed. Put different coloured cones at various fielding positions such as point, square leg, mid on, mid off, midwicket and cover.

The aim of the game is for the batter to hit the ball to each cone in turn from the same line and length ball. They do this by adjusting the angle of the bat and their body position to find a way to get the ball in position. You can find out more about the technical points of doing this in this online coaching course.

The drill is very flexible and can be done with an underarm, overarm or bowling machine feed. Most ages can try the game and the more you do it the better you get at learning how to play the ball away from fielders and through the gaps.

When your warm up is complete (although it's as much skill development as it is warm up), you can play a simple game to teach yourself and others how to judge a run.

This judgement is another under-developed skill in amateur players. One of the ways you can tell a professional cricketer from one who plays on weekends is his ability to judge what is a run and what is not. Most club players sensibly err on the side of safety, not taking runs that might be a little tight. However, with a little practice you can get your own team's judgement up to a much higher standard.

This game (you will need a few players to make this work) shows you how to do this:

• Set up the fielders and coach in the same positions as the 360 degree fielding drill.
• Add in two batsmen to run (ideally the pairs will be put together in a way that they are likely to bat together in games, for example the regular openers should be a pair).
• The coach/feeder hits the ball out the fielders randomly. It helps if the coach can vary the strength and accuracy of the hits, some going straight to fielders hard, others finding the gaps.
• Initially the pairs should try to run for everything. This will lead to run outs but will also show the batsmen that there are perhaps more runs available than they think.
• Once every pair has had a go, do the same drill but allow the players to judge runs. You can make it competitive by keeping score; the pair with the most runs is the winner.

You can download a free pdf version of the drill from here.

These three elements can comfortably fill a training session or two and I'm will to bet they will put your team far ahead of most others at the level you play. Certainly more than another hit in the nets would. It just takes a little bit of creative thinking but it's a fun way to spend a training session as well as providing a valuable lesson.

image credit: Gone-Walkabout