I spend a lot of time talking about working hard, but in many ways rest is just as important for players who want to improve their cricket.

Specifically, I'm talking about the demands cricket makes on your body during a game. To make your practice worthwhile you need to reflect these demands in practice: Your work to rest ratio.

Cricket is a stop-start game which means there is a high period of rest to each period of work. The exact ratio can vary depending on factors like where you are fielding, what you bowl, who is bowling or how much running between the wickets you are doing. As a general rule of thumb, the work to rest ratio is usually somewhere between 1:2 and 1:3. That is to say, for each 30 seconds of work you do, you should rest for between 1 minute and 1m 30s.

The clear solution to this is to use interval based training or SAQ cricket training to reflect this ratio, while long runs or swims have much less value to your cricket performance. So when you are thinking about how to improve your cricket fitness, speed and conditioning remember your work to rest ratio. It will save you a lot of wasted effort.

If you want a more comprehensive guide to reducing injury risk and increasing cricket specific fitness, check out county strength coach Rob Ahmun's guide on PitchVision Academy.