Anyone can improve his or her catching.

Catching is one of the least technical aspects of cricket, so it's all down to practice. But limited time means you still have to be smart if you want to improve.

Professional can practice catching every day and it shows. If Monty Panesar can turn himself into a safe pair of hands from the bumbling fool he was then anyone can.

What about the rest of us though? We have jobs and families and a small time window every week to practice our batting, bowling and fielding. T

Research into top batsmen has show they can predict a delivery from tiny clues in a bowler's run up and action. They can read his mind.

I'm pretty sure this ability has been around forever, but in these days of limited overs and Twenty20 cricket, the ability to do so quickly is even more relevant, even for club players.

• Club cricket stories on the corridor
• Making fast bowling more scientific
• Why you are fielding all wrong
• Being a good cricketer starts off the field
• How much should you drink during exercise?
• "No matter how strong you think you are there's a little Chinese girl warming up with your max"
• Think cricket shots are technical? How's your squat?

Can you call something a trend when you see it twice? If so there is a trend in top-flight cricket at the moment for fitness boot camps.

But are they any good?

What with Pakistan joining Australia as the latest International side to turn to the Army for fitness advice, can clubs learn from this too? (Thanks to Scott for sending me the news item)

It's not often you see something truly innovative in cricket, but Darren Talbot bucks the trend. Darren is a professional coach who doesn't work with county or elite players.

I had to talk to Darren to find out his secrets.

So how does Darren make a living from cricket?

As you probably already know, paid coaching positions have traditionally been filled by ex-professionals working in the elite system at a county clubs or private schools. Some club professionals coach on the side too. Both require a certain amount of cricketing talent and luck to get a break.

To celebrate/complain about the start of the Twenty20 season in county and club cricket I'm putting together a carnival of links about the new format.

To participate all you need to do is write a blog post about twenty over cricket and email me the link.

The post can be anything to do with the format - love, hate, funny stories, international, club level, tips, rants or insight. The idea is to get as wide a range of comments and views as possible.

This post is by by Dr John M Berardi, CSCS

Nowadays there are a lot of misconceptions with respect to protein intake. Should one take in 1 gram of protein per lb of body weight? Or is it 1 gram per kilogram? And, to the non-scientist, just how much is that?

Well, before discussing this issue, I think it's important to explore the difference between protein need and protein optimization. When someone asks the question – how much protein should I eat – they are usually trying to figure out how much protein they need to optimize body composition and performance. But the question, "How much protein does an athlete need?" is a very different one from "How much protein should an athlete consume to improve body composition and athletic performance?"

Wouldn't it be nice if someone could cut through the mist of fitness training to give you a simple template to follow for all your workouts?

That's exactly what Alwyn Cosgrove has done over at EliteFTS, and it works perfectly for cricket training too.

There are two kinds of club cricketers, traditionalists and innovators. In my view, those who innovate are doing far more to improve their cricket than the ones who stick with tradition.

Look at the praise heaped on modern innovative coaches like Peter Moores and the late Bob Woolmer. The ability to innovate is seen as a sign of a success coach at the top level.

This is cricket fitness myth #3, to go back to the list of cricket fitness myths click here.

It's often assumed that because of the long lasting nature of cricket, you need to run long distances to prepare your body. This is often called the 'aerobic base'

But if you study what a cricketer actually does on the field during a match you soon find out this aerobic base is totally irrelevant to game performance.