In my roles with Hampshire, Somerset, Ireland and now Millfield School I have seen a significant number of talented 12 and 13 year old cricketers. There has only ever been 1 player who I predicted would play International cricket from all those promising players.

His name is Jos Buttler.

One of the young coaches in my coaching team, Matt Thompson, recently recounted a coaching session with one of the International players at the school.

Matt and Tom had a range hitting session and it was clear Tom was inconsistent.

Matt's solution was to get back to basics.

Kumar Sangakkara signed off his Twenty20 career with a Man of the Match performance steering Sri Lanka to World glory.

Yet entering final Sunday, Kumar was experiencing something every batsman feels: hideous batting form.

Sri Lanka had progressed to the final of the tournament despite Sangakkara scoring 19 runs at an average of 4.75. He was horribly out of form and couldn't buy a run.

We all know that feeling!

For most players, the downward spiral tends to continue, our scores remain low, our confidence is eroded on a daily basis and our emotions shift between dejection and desperation.

But this cycle did not happen to Kumar Sangakkara.

I love it when a spin bowler comes along with something different.

And not just for the reasons you think.

One of the spinners at Millfield School has gained so much confidence from his winters practice sessions that he felt it was time to bowl his "doosra" against batters in the nets for the first time.

The young lad has been working on developing his own version of the ball in his technical sessions, and also down the corridors of his house. He has been delivering tennis balls into an upturned bucket in order to master the release position and now is letting the delivery go in nets.

I have known, worked with and admired Graeme Smith for many years. Over the years he taught me some valuable coaching lessons.

I first met "Biff" when he was a 18 year old lad straight out of school. He played some club cricket in the UK and was in my Hampshire Board XI for a few games. I was impressed with his maturity and sense of fun; less impressed with his "grubby" technique.

The key lessons that I learnt from the great man are:

I'm working this week with an incredible tutor group on the ECB Level IV Batting module at the National Cricket Performance Centre. Matthew Maynard, Tony Middleton (the Hampshire CCC Batting coach) and myself are heading up the course.

Have you ever said to a batter "you have 6 balls left!", then they change their mode and just slog?

The damage that this does is immeasurable.

Any progress from the session is diluted or reduced. The batting shapes and thought processes evaporate.

Arguments ensue about whether it was 4, 6 or caught at deep mid on

The batter starts the next opportunity to bat with this poor experience running through their veins.

It's one of my biggest bug bears, and for years I have been trying to figure out a way around this.

How many times have we walked back to the pavilion asking "what on earth happened there?"

I know I have on numerous occasions.

As you read last week, England and Somerset batsman Nick Compton popped in to run a Batting Masterclass at Millfield School.

This week, we had a batting masterclass from Somerset and England's Nick Compton.

Nick is someone who I have watched and admired for a number of years and a few weeks back he agreed to come in and work with our cricketers. His story reminded me of the session that we did with Kevin Pietersen. Their batting style of play may be different, yet their approaches to challenge, their drive, their hard work, honesty and willingness to share information with others was identical.

Here is what we learned from that masterclass.

Last week I talked about the missing two thirds of batting and focused on helping batters pick up visual cues. The next phase of the batting process is to build up our decision making capacity.

One of the ways that works for me is to build up the number of resources available to the individual: That is to say which options can be used.

I then to test which ones are most effective in a variety of scenarios and match conditions. This way, the player starts to decide for themselves.

I ran a session based on this today around playing spin using the Merlyn spin bowling machine variation mode which subtly shifts lengths by 10% either way.

The session went a little bit like this: