If you have ever kept wicket then you will know that most of the balls that disappear past you for byes end up going under the line of your gloves, and most balls that you drop hit the end of your fingers rather than smacking securely into the palm of your hand.

"Stay Down! I’ve told you before, stay down!"

How many times have I heard this coaching input?

The answer is too many. The statement doesn't help at all. So what should we do as a keeper or advise as a coach?

The keeper needs some options that leads to her to stay down longer and ultimately, to help her to come up with the bounce of the ball.

We can take a technical approach, an intention based approach or a combination of the two to get the desired effect.

Ruin your keeping gloves

When I played, I went through a stage of dragging my hands along the floor when standing up to the stumps in particular. This helped me to stay down in a good posture for longer and delayed my gloves coming up from the floor and getting above the bounce of the ball.

I started to present a bigger catching area to the incoming ball. My fingers were pointing down and thumbs spread outwards. This made the ball look small in my expectant catching area.

I had to replace the leather on the back of my fingers quite a lot, but the technique worked for me.

However, many keepers - such as Matt Prior - have their hands slightly above the ground in their "Z position" in anticipation of the ball. This method would not work with these guys.

Raise that butt

The motion of raising the backside as the ball is released and on its initial part of the journey is something that many keepers do to help their hands to stay low ahead of ball bounce.

Ex-England Keeper, Paul Nixon did this brilliantly. Nico would have a great posture ahead of ball release. He would then pick up the early visual cues that told him that the ball was likely to be full and his backside would raise.

This method is rather like a seesaw. The backside raises and the other side (the gloves) lowers. The gloves can then rise with the bounce of the ball. It worked brilliantly for Nico, why not give it a go?

Coach the intention: Bounce, catch

Tim Gallwey is a brilliant coach, fantastic coach-educator and multi award winning author. His book Inner Game of Tennis is a must read for anyone interested in raising their coaching game to the next level.

"Bounce, Hit" was Tim's way of helping people move and strike the ball more naturally and more effectively when playing Tennis. Tim would ask his charges to let the ball bounces and say "bounce" aloud to themselves. And whenever they or their opponent hits the ball, say "hit" aloud as well.

I often ask keepers to say "Bounce" when the ball hits the ground and then initiate movement out of their posture at that point. The hands stay low and the gloves are perfectly positioned to take the incoming ball, irrespective of length. As a result, many keepers report that they have a simple mental swing thought of "Bounce" when keeping up to the stumps in games.

The body self-organises around these simple verbal and mental instructions and the take becomes more natural rather than forced through technical intervention.

Here is a video of a U14 keeper playing "bounce, catch" in a session yesterday at school:

So hopefully, you are now armed with some strategies for dealing with a common keeping problem.