What do you see when watching a batter in a net or out in the middle?

What do you notice?

These are the key questions that I ask of myself when working with any player for the first time.

I received a cry for help on Facebook the other night from a dear friend of mine who plays village cricket in the heart of Somerset.

What is the purpose of the follow-through?

I ask it a lot, particularly from a batting perspective. Some of the answers are brilliantly inaccurate but tell me that we, as coaches, have done a poor job of explaining the follow through despite the frequency of use in coaching dialogue.

So let’s put this into a front foot drive context. What explanations do I hear on a day to day basis?

The use of weighted balls in power hitting and pitching in baseball is not a new thing, but it’s so brilliant that even us traditional cricket coaches are now cottoning on to the merits.

We had a great question come in on the Cricket Show from Basit, who talked about his lack of confidence to get behind the ball when it's aimed short pitched and at the body. He felt that he was taking too many balls on the body. This often comes from a lack of confidence through a player believing that they have not got the skills to attack or cope with the incoming delivery.

It is then the coaches' responsibility to build both confidence and competence through a series of drills.

One early season challenge is the adaptation from indoor surfaces to slow and two paced grass pitches.

I love working with lower order players. To me they are still ‘run getters’ and ‘partnership builders’ irrespective of their less extensive batting experience and limited practice hours.

Duncan Fletcher had lots of “Fletchisms”. One of my favourite Fletcherisms is “train the brain!”.

At Millfield this winter most players have increased their bat speed by about 15mph in a month.

Adaptability is a tough skill to coach. Here's a simple way to change nets to coach your players to become adaptable to different conditions.