The IPL is here. Cricket is big money. It's a new world and it’s time we as club cricketers responded to the challenge.

Modern cricket is built on excitement: Power, speed, athleticism and light speed tactical thinking. The whole game is changing thanks to the 20 over format.

Whatever length game you play it's time to consider some new ways of playing.

To become successful you need to change your thinking to match. Here are the new facts:

• Line and length isn't enough. Every club has seamers who have traded on putting the ball on the spot all afternoon. Now they will get punished for predictable bowling. Great batsmen use every trick in the book to score runs and knowing where the ball is going to be makes their job ten times easier. That means bowling fuller than usual, using the crease and having a couple of variations. Anything that stops the batsman from knowing what comes next.
• There is nowhere to hide. Fielding restrictions and unorthodox batting means you can't hide bad fielders anymore. Bad fielders need to work on their drills until it hurts (think Monty Panesar for an example). Good fielders need to be moved around key positions for individual batsmen. By the way, third man is almost as important as the covers now.
• Hit the ball in the air. We love Robert Croft: Canny off spin bowler, useful batsman and originator of the idea that there are no fielders in the air. Attacking cricket is all about sixes and you can't be out if you clear the boundary. Go for it.
• It takes practice. The biggest gap between the professional and amateur games is the amount of practice. Any club who can increase the amount of practice they do will automatically be better. It has to be the right practice though: Cricket specific fitness training, drills under pressure situations and even practice matches that reflect game situations are all crucial to success over any length of time.
• Always run on a misfield. There are always more runs than you think. Use practice to improve your judgement between the wickets and training time to improve your sprinting speed. More often than not a slight misfield on the boundary can add an extra run if you are sharp.
• Spin wins matches. Ask the counties who the most effective middle overs bowlers are. Spinners and medium pacers make the ball much harder to hit, especially with accurate bowling and cunning field placing. The more decent spinners you have to call on the better position you will be in.
• Wickets are your containment. When limited over cricket first began it was all about containment rather than wickets. But nothing is more effective at slowing the rate than having new batsmen arriving at the crease regularly. Take wickets instead: All new batsmen need a little time to get going and while wickets fall the pressure mounts.
• Innovate. The revolution is just starting. Think how much 50 over cricket has developed and how important doing something new has been to International teams in winning trophies (Sri Lanka's invention of the pinch hitter for example). That means you can work on a hunch like never before. In fact, once you are in the middle often a hunch is all you will have time to work on. There is no clever winkling batsman out in this game. Hit hard, hit fast and do stuff in fresh ways. It might just work.

The prize awaits the teams and players who can pick these up the fastest and get them ingrained on their minds when they are out in the middle. Fast thinking is the difference between winning and losing.

Photo credit: steve-chippy