Every team has one.

The staunch one. The guy who says bowlers should always bowl at batsmen in nets. It more realistic and anyway, nets are more for batsman than for bowlers.

This is frustrating. You know how it goes. The batter who is timid in the middle feels like KP in the safety of the net. There are wild swings, switch hits and all manner of unreal shots. You know they would never be played in a match.

Your practice is wasted.

Worse; there is nothing you can do about it while the staunch one looms over you telling you to pitch it up and give the batsman a chance to work on driving.

And besides, you want to give your team some batting practice too. It's not like you are totally selfish.

Do you fight hard against the staunch one to get time to bowl at a target, or do you give up an resign yourself to being a bowling machine?

In fact, you can keep everyone happy quite easily with a simple trick.

It's called warming up.

The bowling warm up space

Everyone knows that bowlers need to warm up. Even the old school guy does a few arm circles and says he needs to "get loose" after his first couple of balls are shockers.

So, use this to your advantage.

Get the coach or captain to agree to a bowling warm up area. Nobody can disagree with this because no batsman wants to waste net time on slow, inaccurate bowling.

The ideal space is a net - without a batsman of course - where you can target bowl and track your accuracy for a bit. Make it look good by doing some warm up exercises between balls. It's just about the perfect excuse to have 20 minutes bowling away from that disgusting slogger.

If you can't find a spare net, any space big enough for 22 yards plus run up will do.

If it's early in the session and all the bowlers are warming up then this is a great chance for batsmen to work on technical things with some throwdowns to each other. They do need technical work, right?

Don't avoid the batsman forever

Of course, we are not looking to keep away from batsmen the whole session. This is because you have to bowl at batsmen in games. Target practice is great for technical work and getting "overs in the legs" but it's terrible for tactical and mental skills.

(In fact, many bowlers subtly change even technique under the pressure of a batsman so it's good for technique to put a guy in there too.)

So, after you have done your warm up get into the net and start bowling to the batsman. It's good for your game and it's doing your duty to develop the batsman.

Keep it as mindful as you can: Define what you are doing, consider keeping score and keep tracking your accuracy and pace.

If you feel the need, and have an understanding coach, sneak back into the warm up area to hit a few more targets. The batsman will be OK with it if you come back more accurate.

Using this method, you can both bowl at a batsman and still get your target practice in too. Everyone wins.