The use of weighted balls in power hitting and pitching in baseball is not a new thing, but it’s so brilliant that even us traditional cricket coaches are now cottoning on to the merits.

We had a great question come in on the Cricket Show from Basit, who talked about his lack of confidence to get behind the ball when it's aimed short pitched and at the body. He felt that he was taking too many balls on the body. This often comes from a lack of confidence through a player believing that they have not got the skills to attack or cope with the incoming delivery.

It is then the coaches' responsibility to build both confidence and competence through a series of drills.

Following on from the positive feedback on the standing back keeping drill using the multi-stumps I thought I would follow up with another keeping drill that was given to me recently by one of our International players here at Millfield School.

Tom has developed this drill with Iain Brunnschweiler in a recent England tour to the UAE.

You'll need a Katchet Ramp, multistump, Bat or Skyer and some cricket balls.

The aim is to simulate standing up to the stumps to both medium pacers and spinners, focussing on areas such as posture, hip and shoulder turn, catching area, and the ability to react to significant deflections from a realistic "nick-distance". In other words, to push back the boundaries of what is possible when standing up to the stumps.

One early season challenge is the adaptation from indoor surfaces to slow and two paced grass pitches.

I love working with lower order players. To me they are still ‘run getters’ and ‘partnership builders’ irrespective of their less extensive batting experience and limited practice hours.

I have just returned from a fantastic cricket training week over in Saint Lucia at the newly named Darren Sammy National Cricket Stadium. Andrew Strauss and I coached 22 children using the wonderful facilities whilst basking in the sunshine.

The 2016 World Twenty20 had brilliant skills on show.

Duncan Fletcher had lots of “Fletchisms”. One of my favourite Fletcherisms is “train the brain!”.

The second ball throwing drill in this series is the med ball push. Catch up with previous articles on throwing drills here and here.

This is drill to the drills often used by fast bowling coaches. Yet it used used to develop an understanding of how the body generates speed through the body and into our hands for many of the other disciplines.

Part two of the “warm up to throw” programme is weighted ball work.