It’s really cold outside so we are confined to the cricket bubble for the winter. We have reached the stage of the batting programme where we are developing our back foot options vs pace.

Do batter and bowlers arguments happen every week in your net sessions?

That’s the modus-operandi for many club and school net sessions, isn’t it?

It can be no different here at Millfield at times and as a result, our coaching group aim to come up with net formats to facilitate as much “bang for our buck” in our competitive net sessions as we possibly can.

Millfield head to India on Saturday with 30 boys and 15 girls to play in 15 limited over games over 11 days.

Sure, there is going to be a lot of learning about how to play spin but I’m also interested in how our seamers fare in a new cricketing environment.

“The Magnificent Seven” is a drill that you can do with a variety of feed options dependent on the level of experience and skill of the cricketer that you are working with at the time.

Have you ever wondered how the best players of spin seem to score off almost every ball that they face?

Players such as AB DeVilliers, Virat Kohli and Hashim Amla rarely face two balls in a row unless they score a boundary. The board keeps ticking over with little or no risk.

Ask most people about opening the batting and they will tell you about batsmen who can block. Occasionally you get a big hitter. But, what really makes a good opening batsman?

We often talk about "training hard and playing easy" on the Pitchvision Cricket Show. It’s a principle that you hear banded around all over the place within high performance sport.

Are you all "hot air" or do you actually "walk the walk"?

I ran a batting session the other day. We focused on how to use multiple shot options against spinners.

We had a net and a bucket of cricket balls. We also used cones for marking areas or fielders and a whiteboard for scoring progress. Tom was the batter. Garas was the coach!

Picture the scene: We had a brilliant centre wicket practice the other day ahead of a Regional T20 finals day. I was keen to take full advantage of the time that we had available to us ahead of the big day.

That morning, I had a number of emails about various school events in what is always an incredibly busy last week of term. The upshot? Where we once had 15 players; we now had 10.

And it got worse. Both keepers were at school play rehearsal. The forecast said that rain was due at 1700; our practice was due to start at 1545. My best laid plans for a middle practice were in tatters.

What can we do to make this session as good as could be?

This is a cracking drill for wicket keepers standing back using equipment that is becoming commonplace within coaching kitbags around the world.

We are presently in a "specific preparation phase" of the programme, so much of the aim of our sessions are build volume into both keepers "catch" and to free up the movement patterns to both right and left handed batters.

The session was for two keepers. They swapped every six balls to simulate overs. We ran the session in a confined net area so I ensured that we maximised the width of the area so the keepers could move freely for offside takes and for simulated outside edges. It's just as easy to run outdoors or in the open, or both.

You can use a Sidearm, bowling machine or bowlers for the drill.

You'll also need Fusion Multi-stumps