Unless you are a professional or academy cricketer, there is noone responsible for improving your strength and conditioning. And that's hurting your game.

But fear not, there is a man on a mission to help solve this problem for you and for millions of players who don't get access to good training. That man is Ross Dewar.

Ross is S&C man at Worcestershire. His job is to get the professionals as strong and fit as possible. He also runs the Cricket Strength website with Steffan Jones to help guys lower down the ladder. When I spoke with him earlier this week, he was quick to point out the issues at club and school level.

Ross told me that the structure of the game is based on cricket skills. Coaches are taught to coach batting, bowling and fielding. To fill in the fitness gaps players go to gyms that are based around bodybuilding or general weight loss.

These forms of fitness don't translate to the pitch in any meaningful way.

That means players are weaker and more prone to injury. They can't bowl fast and struggle to play a long innings or hit the ball with power. These are goals that cricketers have when trying to get fit, but it just isn't working.

So I asked Ross, what do we do?

Taking personal responsibility

His answer was simple: It's up to players and coaches to gain an understanding of the basics of strength and conditioning for cricket. That way, you can take personal responsibility for your fitness: One of the core elements of becoming a cricketer.

WHen you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Cricket clubs can't afford a specialist coach for fitness. Governing bodies, who issue coaching certficates - want to get as many coaches into grass-roots cricket as possible and there is no time to teach S&C on courses.

In short, every player and coach needs to take responsibility for learning how to get fit for cricket.

The good news is that Ross was quick to tell me that this is much easier than it sounds.

Fitness skills for cricketers

Ross runs seminars to develop players who are not yet in the professional setup, and he teaches some simple, basic fitness tricks that anyone can put into action right away.

First, learn some basic movements using simple bodyweight exercises:

• Squat
• Lunge
• Push Up
• Pull Up/Inverted Row
• Hip hinge

With the addition of some extra weight (a kettlebell, bands or dumbbells) you can also teach yourself rows and overhead pressing.

These movements will build strength, mobility and stability quickly, and you don't need a sports science degree to get started learning and doing them.

Just doing this alone will put you ahead of every player who thinks fitness is doing laps or working the machines at the gym.

Next, from this base you can build up speed and power by progressing the exercises. You can add more weight if you have access to a gym. You can turn them into power exercises by doing jump squats and power press ups. Everything has a logical, simple progression.

There's plenty more places to go after this from periodisation through to med ball throwing but if you want to stop at the basics you will be miles ahead already.

Managing your own workload

One of the problems with self-training is that it's hard to know when you are doing too much. That's a big fear for most coaches and players because if something breaks you only have yourself to blame.

Rather than do nothing - or train with "safe" methods that are the equivalent of doing nothing - you can train hard and monitor how your workload is affecting you.

You do this with one simple test.

The grip test (buy one of these to test) should be roughly the same over a year. Any large fluctuations, especially downwards, are a proven sign on fatigue. In short, if your numbers are dropping, you need to rest up, get some sleep, drink some water and recover.

This is the exact test (along with a few others like body mass changes and ankle mobility changes) that Ross Dewar uses with the professional players in his care. If it's good enough for Ross, it's a no-brainer for you.

As you can see, fitness for cricket doesn't have to be feared. Simply by understanding the basics you can be safer and more effective as a player or a coach. It takes very little time to learn and the payback far outweighs the time and effort.

Like Ross hopes, it's time everyone in the game took responsibility for cricket fitness rather than skills alone.