Hi,

With the cricket starting in the Southern and Subcontinental parts of the world, we continue to improve your game with cutting edge tips.

This week we look at spin bowling ends, player profiling, power hitting and gym training. It's all well proven methods that are designed for you to use practically right away; wherever you are in the universe.

Have a great weekend,

David Hinchliffe

Profiling: The Start Point for Your Winning Cricket Season

Preseason is an exciting time of year as cricket is just around the corner.

It's a great time to put some profiling into place to help us design an strategy or coaching programme that supports your players through the season.

Technical Profiling

This is not as complex or as difficult as it sounds!

Profiling is as simple as choosing your skills - or Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) - for each discipline and assessing the players ability against each KPI.

Marks run from 0-10 with 10 being perfect performance.

Quickly a picture will form around each player. This leads to better development programming, more effective deployment of your players within your team and - most importantly - brings you and your player together to focus on their own game.

A couple of Technical Profile KPI examples that I presently use:

Stance and grip
Front foot on-side
Back foot onside
Reading spinners
Backing up
Involvement/encouragement
Underarm flicks

These are just some examples I use. It is always preferable to design your own technical KPI's that best support your own coaching principles, philosophies and practice.

Bringing your flat-data to life

You have produced some great flat-data from this process which is great news as it is motivational, promotes solid conversation between players and focussed minds.

The 'boffins' amongst you will then covert this data into a Web-chart which allows the data to be presented visually.

It's interesting to see the comparison between the player and the coaches view.

This promotes stimulating conversation and graphically illustrates some development areas that can be programmed into the season.

It also confirms each players super-strengths which is good for boosting both confidence and self-awareness as you head into competition.

As well as profiling your players, It's also a good way of presenting the areas of the game that you hold dear and focuses the players minds ahead of each session or match.

When to profile

Profile a player at 3 points within a competitive phase. Pre-season, Midpoint of the season and in review which can identify areas for off-season developmental focus.

Have a go, develop your own 'Technical Profiler' and start having great player development meetings with your athletes that builds the foundation to their future successes.

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Good Spinners Are Happy to Bowl from Either End

Menno Gazendam is author of Spin Bowling Project. Get your free 8 week spin bowling course here.

For spinners, the end you bowl from is more important than what the pitch does. Bowling into the wind is what you want to do. It helps with your dip and flight.

So if your captain ask you which end do you prefer, you do not say; "against the wind or I do not bowl". You say: "I will bowl from any end: across the wicket if you want me to, but if I have to answer you then I would prefer against the wind."

You see, captains do not always know best when it comes to spin. But the average school and club bowlers have to deal with the captain first before they can get a bowl.

Aand getting a bowl is better than not bowling at all.

So, be eager and don't be picky because the situation is "not suited to my bowling". Just getting a bowl is usually the first struggle for most spin bowlers these days.

Show you are eager and you will make it easier for the captain to put you on.

If that is with the wind, then so be it. I'd much rather bowl with the wind than have the captain say: "Stay warm mate, going to bring you on soon", only never to actually give me a bowl.

Working with seamers

Quick bowlers all want to bowl with the wind.

Even the medium swing bowlers (although they really should be bowling against the wind as well). So, that leaves an end open for the eager spinner to grab.

Forget about difficult footing and run-ups. Once you play Test cricket you can go complain to the groundsmen. Until then, keep quiet and just be happy to bowl from any end.

Only through bowling a lot in the games will you become better.

There really is no point in being precious and never getting a bowl. You will learn more from an imperfect spell that you ever would from ideal conditions.

For more detailed spin bowling advice, tips, tricks, tactics and training drill for spinners, get the Spin Bowling Project free 8 week email coaching course.

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Cricket Show 178: Challenger Trophy Lessons and Fast Bowling Biomechanics

The Challenger Trophy in India gets us talking about the importance of power hitting in the modern game, and why it's more important than touch play even for young cricketers.

Plus we delve into the world of fast bowling biomechanics with Mark King of Loughborough University in the UK.

And what show would be complete without your questions? This week we examine leg spin bowling and adjusting your game to bad wickets.

How to Send in Your Questions

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Indian Cricket Fitness Gym Workout

This series is part of the Cricket Fitness Workouts monthly series. For the full list, click here.

Everyone knows how important it is to be fit as a cricketer. Modern Indian professionals now train in the gym 3-4 times a week regularly. Even the old school stalwart Rahul Dravid once said "It's important to stay and look fit to be able to play for the country."

And The Wall is absolutely right.

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