PitchVision Academy is delighted to present Kevin Pietersen as the man behind Keep Calm and Smash It, the online batting coaching course.

Revolution is an overused word but if one person personifies revolution it’s KP. And for the first time he is about to revolutionise the way you bat too.

Keep Calm and Smash It is the online batting guide from the England and Delhi Daredevils superstar. Direct from the man himself, you can discover how to emulate his stellar success with the bat.

Preparation for the bowlers at the start of the innings often relies on stretching and a few practise balls, with the marking of the run-up left to necessity at the last minute.

Something my team started to do was to get the whole bowling attack to mark their run-ups together from both ends.

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

We’re back! It’s an all new Cricket Show. New logo and new theme tune and the advice is just as good.

This week it’s all about preseason training.

Burners, Mark Garaway and David Hinchliffe are back together to discuss how preseason has changed and what the new IPL coaches will be getting up to as they gear up for the latest instalment of the tournament.

Plus we answer your questions on swing bowling when it’s not swinging and keeping focused through a long, and sometimes hard, preseason period.

Cricket is a game of passion. Darren Talbot has been playing for years. He noticed recently he might be getting a bit jaded. But he rekindled his love.

Here are his 7 warning signs, and one solution to the problem of falling out of love with playing cricket, especially as you enter the autumn of your career.

1. Praying for torrential rain on a Saturday morning

When you bake a cake you don’t wait until it’s in the oven before making it taste good. A good cake is all in the preparation.

Cricket is just the same. When you put in the work mixing the right ingredients, you know you will be proud of the results.

So, if the weeks before the season starts is the prep time of cricket, what are the ingredients?

Warming up is important, and there is never a more important time to warm up than in the cold of preseason training.

But we only have a short time at nets, so warm ups tend to get a lost or converted into slightly more gentle practice.

Both are a recipe for injury if unchecked, but we carry on anyway, so what’s the minimum we can get away with to stay on the park while not wasting precious deliberate practice time?

Preseason nets are looming and this year you are determined not to waste them. You want to take every last drop of improvement in time for that first game in the spring.

That means this year talking to the coach or captain and getting him to copy some of the practices of successful club, academy and school sides. As you already know, being an amateur player is no longer an excuse for amateur practice.

So let’s use some of that determination with these changes to nets:

When preseason starts we are all filled with hope and optimism for a stellar summer ahead.

Then life gets in the way, we lose motivation and fall back into old habits. The Grand Plan is lost for another season.

This preseason will be different because you will have followed the advice below and find yourself with a cast-iron will and brand new good habits that stick.

Be realistic

No one wants to be a fat cricketer or coach.

Sure, you point to the tubby players at the top level and try to fool yourself that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t work because deep down you know that being overweight just isn’t fun, especially if you want to do well on the pitch.

Losing weight and dieting and hitting the gym are even less fun than being fat.

Running on a treadmill isn’t anywhere near as exciting as scoring a hundred. Eating a cake at tea is plainly better than a protein shake and an apple.