Today's guest article from Darren Talbot; Professional coach, Managing Director of Darren Talbot Cricket Coaching and founder committee member of the Surrey ECB Coaches Association.

I keep hearing from clubs they are doing off season "nets" for their juniors (and seniors, more of which later).

Many of the leading Cricket nations now use "Talent Testing" for 13 and upwards as a part of their talent identification process. I want to show you how to use some of these tests in your coaching.

Here is the first of the talent test drills that you can use to test players and then provide feedback that improves performance. What's not to love?

Becoming the Ranji Trophy’s highest ever run scorer takes relentless patience. You learn to bat the opposition out of the game by waiting and picking off the weak bowling.

Amol Muzumdar, who is in a see-saw competition with Wasim Jaffer to finish with the highest run tally, knows his game in this way. He has a strategy and he sticks to it.

But what if you are just starting out as a batter; how do you learn to play your own way and emulate this success in professional cricket?

Online coaching is what we do here at PitchVision Academy, which is why this week we are delighted to welcome Serious Cricket and their world-class coaches to the platform.

As you know, we are constantly seeking out talented players and coaches to give you the highest quality cricket coaching advice in the courses section.

Serious Cricket are in the same game and have gathered together 4 top coaches who we are adding to the fold here.

Cricket is a game, but to do well you need to get serious. So who better to help you on your journey than the coaches at Serious Cricket?

To celebrate the arrival of Serious Cricket on PitchVision Academy You can get a free 10 week email-based coaching course that covers batting, fast bowling, spin bowling and wicketkeeping exclusively from the Serious Cricket coaches. Just enter your email below to get the goods.

As part of our Twenty20 series to line up with the ICC World Twenty20, we take a video look at how to make the most of a T20 tournament as a young player.

In this video, I catch up with Gary Palmer as he coaches his Under 14 Academy players at a week-long tournament with up to 2 games a day.

This summer at Millfield School we ran an experiment in improving the power hitting of the 1st XI players.

It was a new concept to us, and I wanted to see how well it would work. Here is what we did; and what we found out on the way.

We introduced “Back-loading” and played around with shifting weight in the set up as a batter waits for the bowler to release the ball.

The no ball is the bane of the fast bowler. Just ask Sreesanth, who is infamous for overstepping.

You charge in, trying to exert every last ounce of pace onto the ball, finally get the edge you want into the keeper's gloves.

And the umpire calls the dread two words; "no ball!"

The worst part of it is that although you only have yourself to blame, you have no idea how it happened.

It's a terrible habit, but like all habits it can be broken.

Here is a drill that provides huge gains in distance, power, placement and tactical awareness for all of your batters.

The inspiration comes from the golf driving range. It got me thinking about how we could apply a similar concept to the practice of batting skills.

Here is the range driving drill.

This is a guest article from Iain Brunnschweiler, former professional player and a coach at Hampshire and England’s Development Programme.

How many times are you involved in a session which is just 'a hit in the nets', or 'taking a few high catches?