You may recall the excellent “King Power Hitting Drill” which was posted a couple of years ago.

That was a self feed drill which lobbed a tennis ball up the the air, it would bounce and then the batter would strike the ball aiming to develop some excellent lower body mechanics to initiate a kinetic chain.

The net result is the hands and bat travelling quickly through the ball.

The King Drill is a static one, a fantastic starting point in the development of power Hitting skills.

The next step is to face an incoming ball. The challenge with that is that you need someone else to feed the ball to you.

Until now!

The Fungo Pocket Drill

This drill uses a rebound net. The batter can then feed the ball into the net and receive the incoming ball just as they would if they were facing a bowler. This drill can be set up in the middle of a ground or inside an enclosed net area.

You need,

• A bag of balls
• A Wildchild Rebound Net from Crazy Catch

In the drill on the video, I set up the net at an angle that provides a flat return to the batter. This simulates the trajectory of a incoming ball.- I placed the Wildchild Rebound Net 2.5 metres from the crease. This provides enough time for a batter to feed an underarm ball and then set themselves up to hit the incoming delivery.

#1 Hit the leg side pocket

World Cup Winner, Tammy Beaumont is working through this progression on the video. The aim is to hit the ball into the leg side “pocket” over the top of straight mid wicket.

This space is regularly unguarded vs spin and seam. If you can get good then it will start raining 6’s and 4’s.

The 2005 Somerset T20 Cup winning team led by Graeme Smith were awesome at hitting this pocket and Tammy also accessed this area brilliantly both in the sessions we did together and also on her way to the ICC World Cup Player of the Tournament award.

Notice that the rebound net gives a number of different returning heights for Tammy to hit.

Tammy adapts wonderfully to the lower height balls by dropping her centre of gravity through bending her knees and increasing the width of her base.

Equally, when the ball springs back at a higher height, Tammy extends her legs, rotates her hips, then her shoulders to smash the ball into the pocket from chest height.

It was this well practiced adaptability that helped Tammy to score 410 runs at an average of 45.55 in the recent ICC World Cup.

#2 Hit the offside pocket

The offside pocket is located over the top of extra cover. Again, this is an incredibly difficult area for opposition captains to defend so if become proficient at hitting the ball you will see captains tearing their hair out and end up looking like me!

Matthew Wood (Somerset/Nottinghamshire) was fantastic at hitting this area for my Somerset team in the mid 2000’s and now works with players such as Alex Hales and Samit Patel as a batting coach at Trent Bridge.

Both are excellent exponents of the offside pocket.

Matthew, Alex Hales and South Africa’s AB de Villers shift their feet to align themselves either before release or as the ball travels into the hitting zone. This alignment will allow for a direct bat swing through the incoming ball.

The mistake that many players make when trying to hit the offside pocket is that they lose their front side too early by trying to manipulate the ball into that area with their body shape. The hips open too early and there isn’t the “snap” that you want at ball strike as the hip and shoulder rotation is not working in a synchronised fashion.

When the hips and shoulders synchronise, the hands come through the ball quicker (result of torque) and the bat face can travel through, rather than slice across the line of the incoming ball.

In the old days (2005) players such as Matthew used to use this shot to hit one bounce 4’s.

AB, Alex Hales and Jos Buttler are now hitting massive 6’s by using this method.

So now you can practice their skills independently using a bag of balls and a Wildchild Rebound net! How cool.

#3 Hit both pockets

If you are working independently then challenge yourself to hit both pockets in alternate fashion and see how many perfect pairs you can do in succession.

A perfect pair is a ball hit over straight mid wicket into the leg side followed by a ball hit over extra cover.

If you want to get really precise then cone off some target areas.

If you can link a number of perfect pairs, I reckon you are ready to take your newly developed skills into Match Day.

So, the "Fungo Pocket" Drill can help you to hit balls like Tammy Beaumont, Jos Buttler, Alex Hales and AB de Villiers.

That can’t be bad!