As a new event, the World Twenty20 in South Africa has shown us how international players can score at 8-10 an over. I reckon club batsmen take a leaf out of the top guys book by watching the way Pietersen, Hayden and Smith bat.

One of the key aspects I have noticed while watching the games is the adaptability of the top order players. They are able to play more than one shot to different deliveries and work the ball around for singles when they are not hitting boundaries.

Certainly the former is a departure from the way club players bat. We are all taught from an early age to play straight early on and widen the arc as we get set. Pulling and cutting is only for long hops and creative shots like reverse sweeps, slog sweeps and playing across the line is frowned upon.

Club batsmen are not as talented as the pros, so often this advice is perfectly sensible. However, coaches and players alike are starting to change their attitude.

Scoring areas, scoring attitudes

Modern batting is about good technique, as it always has been. But it's also about finding places to score runs where fielders are not. It's about being able to put a delivery somewhere that the copy book and life members might disagree with.

The first step is to adopt a scoring attitude. In longer club games you might have more time than in a Twenty20, but you can still look to score off every ball you face. A long time ago Michael Slater, the aggressive Aussie opener, said his attitude was to try and hit a boundary first and if not score runs and only defend as a last resort. If you only take this attitude with you to the crease and change nothing else your strike rate will improve.

This attitude does not mean you need to take stupid risks, but if you are always looking to hit the gaps, run hard and think more like Viv Richards than Geoff Boycott you are in the right place.

Secondly, your practice needs to teach you to hit the ball to new places as well as old. It was always Michael Vaughan's problem in ODI cricket that he could not adapt his technique and ended up playing technically perfect drives straight to mid off.

Quickfire Cricket

A great way to practice this is to play a small sided game developed by PE teacher and former first class player Carl Crowe. You can play the game with 8-12 players of any age or skill level. Technique is paramount as always, but shot selection become more impportant with this game. 'Quickfire Cricket' works like this:

Set out cones in three or four coloured zones around the pitch. Soft balls are used for speed of changing batsmen around. The ball is fed by a coach to a single batsman who play balls fed quickly to keep the tempo up. Other players field while waiting to bat. The ball is not fed to any particular line or length because the idea is to encourage hitting areas rather than the 'right' shot.

Score can be kept a number of ways.

• Points for hitting a target area.
• Points for defending good balls.
• Points for going over the top.
• Lose points for getting out.

You can also make this more difficult in a number of ways:

• Use multi coloured balls. Players have different areas to score depending on what colour ball is bowled. A certain colour can also be used as a ball to leave/defend.
• Use a thin bat.
• Bowl two balls at the same time, the batsman must only hit one.

The fast tempo of the game adds to the pressure and keeps the game fun and interesting. It's a great way to finish a training session for any age.

Twenty20 has changed the way we think about cricket. Use training methods and change attitudes to learn a few Twenty20 methods in your own games.