Someone has a big challenge to overcome, so they emailed in,

"I've got some cricket championships coming up, they're 50 over games played over 5 days. I'm a batting all-rounder, and I bowl leg-spin and batting around 5. What is the best way for me to play hard, but also conserve my energy for the week?"

This is a guest article from coach and PhD candidate Adam Kelly

Everyone says you should train hard but sometimes it's good to step back and ask a bigger question of ourselves.

What is the purpose of training?

We spend hours and hours in nets and on the field looking to enhance our performance. Drills are designed to improve our skills.

Logically we should train recognise which skill to execute and when to execute said skill.

What would a year on PitchVision Academy be without a good old-fashioned review of the year?

And where better to focus that review than on the cricketing super-power that is India? With the world's most populous and passionate cricket fans the premier domestic T20 tournament in the IPL, 2012 is another notch on the belt of India as the cricket superpower.

How did we see it on PitchVision Academy?

Menno Gazendam is author of Spin Bowling Project. Get your free 8 week spin bowling course here.

Spin bowling challenges a batsman's skills in a way that medium and fast bowling does not.

This week's winner of the Cricket Show podcast question competition is James. He wins a free coaching course from PitchVision Academy.

The winning question was:

"I have recently been working on my batting and have discovered that I am very flat footed and struggle to move my feet. I have a tendency to always push on to the front foot which means when the ball is back of a length I struggle to deal with it, often popping the ball up straight back to the bowler. Have tried to develop a trigger movement to keep me on my toes but it feels very manufactured. How can I improve my footwork at the crease?"

Listen to the panels answer to his question here.

To enter your own question for the chance to win your choice of online coaching course send your questions in here.

Mark Garaway gives us a whistle stop tour through some of his articles as we discuss bowling boots, hitting the ball into the ground and vision training. Meanwhile Burners chips in with some notes on conditioning fast bowlers and a new tag line for PitchVision (maybe).

Plus we discuss the problem of poor footwork in batting and try to find as many words for 'stumps' as we can.

Next week's show is the last before the end of year break, so phone in today!

In the world of analysts, TV replays, team meetings and data mining it is easy to forget the value of instinctive tactical thinking.

As an analyst in a previous life, it was my job to come up with the plans for our bowling attack that maximises the impact against any given batsmen or batting line up.

Bonga is 12 years old and a friend of the site with a problem,

"I have a problem. I like bowling pace. My average speed is 90kph. My best bowling figures are 4-22 bowling pace and 2-20 bowling spin. What should I bowl?"

If Bonga can hit 56mph then that is a decent lick and it sounds like he can bowl well with either skill.

So what should he do?

Menno Gazendam is author of Spin Bowling Project. Get your free 8 week spin bowling course here.

When a spin bowler bowls outside of leg stump commentators always call it a negative line. While this is the case most of the times, it is not always so.

There is no such thing as a defensive line just outside leg stump. It only becomes defensive if,

Sam Perry of The Public Apology takes a wry look at playing Australian grade cricket in the guest article. Catch up with them on facebook and twitter

Let’s take a quick cultural glance at your typical grade cricket club, and have a look at how one might climb its ranks.

Firstly, any attempt to analyse grade cricket theatre calls for a glimpse at a player’s emotional cycle at season’s end. Typically, his relationship to the game will undergo a self-sabotaging appropriation of the seven stages of grieving: hate, relief, peace, restlessness, hope, optimism, love. This happens over a period of roughly four months. Once complete, he is ready for further pain.