photo credit: xgretsch

Today's coaching tip is from guest poster Matt Homes.

Currently I am coaching a lad of county age group standard who you would say is primarily a bowling all rounder. He has good hand/eye co-ordination and general tactical awareness.

Even at his young age he has been through a number of development and county age group courses during winter programmes and therefore would have been drilled technically in many areas of the game.

My initial observation during our first session was that he had a big bottom hand grip which wrapped too far around the handle and meant at the point of contact the bat face was pointing somewhere between mid-on and mid-wicket. His front shoulder and knees were tense in the setup and his bottom hand grip did not initially allow him to break his wrists in the follow through.

Over a number of weeks we agreed to work on these elements of his basic setup.

With minimal input the outcome of set up correction created drives hit in a much straighter direction and the overall confidence of his batting improved!

He looked more natural as a batter and the strain was off his wrists preventing future injury.

It mad me think how many coaches fall into the trap of coaching boys and girls through a particular batting shot without discussing the set up?

By set up I obviously mean the grip, stance and backswing all of which are so important to produce the correct outcome of any shot. I have previously been neglectful in this area however I see many coaches at work leading sessions in all types of environments, jumping straight into the nuts and bolts of the technical aspects of a shot, without even a brief discussion on the set up.

No two players are the same in technique. As you have to be aware that you should stick to what is effective for any one individual. However consider the benefits of a few simple aspects of batting and think if intervention will help like it did the the county boy.

I am not advocating going out there and changing every players set up, however if you get the basics right then you can move on and develop much quicker.

The older you get, the harder these things become to rectify!

Matt Homes is an ECB Level 3 Head Coach and Advanced SAQ Trainer who runs In-Touch Cricket Coaching in and around Surrey. Please contact Matt if you are interested in improving your cricket ability, whatever your level.