Yorkers are the fast bowler’s most powerful weapon. You feel like you have got one over on the batsman when you duck one in onto his toes in front of middle stump. Even when it doesn’t get the wicket, it’s impossible to score.

But the yorker target area is small and even a slight error makes your toe-crusher an easy full-toss or half-volley.

You have to practice smart.

Accuracy gets wickets: Glenn McGrath, Zaheer Khan, Veron Philander and many others at the highest level have proven the method.

Alongside pace, there is nothing more important to the quick bowler.

But accuracy is difficult. You have to run up and hit a very small target area time and time again. Any weakness in your action is revealed by poor balls that take the pressure off the batsman. You end up frustrated by a good over that is ruined by a wide half volley then a leg stump long hop as you try and compensate.

This article has been written by the contributions of the community (and edited by the Director of Coaching). My thanks go out to Munwar Hussain, Rutej Mehta, Tev, AB, Kerron Ryan, TonyM, nurav_cool, shivbaba,  AjayBP, Coxy, Robin Collins and Paul Williams for their contributions.

In cricket we are obliged to give it our best in the field for a full innings, which is significantly more time than we spend bowling and almost always more than we spend batting. We can approach fielding from several angles.

We have covered some standing up to the stumps drills in recent weeks and now we turn our attention to standing back drills.

Basic Hitting Drill

Variation of drill is one of the big challenges for a coach working with keepers. As we discussed last week, we should always remember that we need to keep the practice relevant to the match as possible.

It’s a mantra as old as overarm bowling: Put the ball on a good length for long enough and you will get your rewards. But in a world of slower balls, bouncers and inswinging yorkers, it’s an ideal we have forgotten.

Take Stuart Broad as an example. The England bowler spent a long time trying to work out what kind of role he had. Was he the enforcer; there to bowl bouncers and scare batsmen? Was he a line and length man; using swing and seam movement? How did this role change between formats, if at all?

The great thing about standing up sessions is that they should never be dull: you can create lots of distraction, different spins and bounce types with the overall aim to be to overload the keeper so that the practice is tougher than the actual match.

We still need to keep the drills relative and functional to match play, yet feel free to let that imagination run wild.

Imagine opening the batting for Kings XI Punjab in Mohali. The opposition is Deccan Chargers and standing at the end of his run is no less that Dale Steyn; one of the world’s most destructive pacemen.

It’s fair to say your heart would be racing. That’s a situation experienced by 20 year old Punjab opener Mandeep Singh. Yet despite the pressure, the pace and fear he is flourishing. Many critics have him on the fast-track to becoming India’s next big thing.

The more you practice, the better you get. That idea is well established: but many bowlers with ambitions of bowling fast fail even when they do practice hard.

The problem is you are doing the wrong kind of practice. You turn up to nets and bowl. The coach offers useful advice while the batsmen go about their business at the other end. You finish with a vague sensation of having done well or badly, but you don’t know exactly why.

Scoring a hundred in Twenty20 is a rare skill. So how did Ajinkya Rahane -  the latest ton-up hero of the IPL - practice to make sure he could nail three figures in 60 balls in Bangalore?

The truth is that there is no magic to practice for any format.