Purpose: A general team warm up that works on picking up and throwing in a competitive situation.

Description: The game is played with a tennis or cricket ball. Players are split into 2 teams with the aim of scoring by rolling the ball into the opposition’s goal (marked by cones 4m apart on a pitch 30-50m long).

This article is part of the “How to use fitness training to make better young cricketers” series. Click here to go to part 1.

Coaching kids under 9 is no different to herding unruly sheep. But a conscientious coach is laying important ground work that is about more than babysitting in a tracksuit.

This edition of Laws of Cricket, in association with the International Institute of Cricket Umpiring and Scoring, covers some more tricky questions of the Laws.

This is part of the specialist fielding series of articles, for the full list of fielding positions covered click here

The mid on and mid off are the least glamorous pair of the inner fielding ring. You rarely see great fielders there and often find lesser talents trying to hide.

So can you really be a specialist mid off or mid on?

Local cricketers got a taste of rock n roll cricket as revolutionary coaching roadshow “PitchVision Academy Live!” rocked the Old Trafford cricket ground.

Featuring cricket, music, plasma screens, high energy and intense competition, this was the rock concert of cricket coaching.

A bad butcher with a sharp knife is still a bad butcher.

And for cricket coaches, technology is the same: A shiny tool can make you feel like you are going to make a difference to players. But in reality the best thing technology can do is add to good coaching, not make bad coaches better.

And at worst, technology can become a distraction from the coaching process. You can spend so much time tinkering that you get less done than you would have if you had just set up some cones and balls.

Sometimes you just have to practice alone.

There is no one around to train with but you are eager improve your skills. A bowler can go to a net with a box of balls and practice hitting a target. Batsmen are not as lucky because they need someone or something to feed a ball.

It’s a natural reaction to the unknown and a way of protecting yourself. But as a coach your job isn’t to live in fear of negative results, it’s to get best from your players.

And that means learning how to train your players in more than cricket, even if they are very young.

Fitness training for teenagers or younger though? Surely that doesn’t feel right?

Purpose: To practice stopping and throwing at a stump in a competitive situation

Description: Players are split into teams of roughly 3 a side. The first player throws the ball at the stump in the middle. He or she then moves to the back of the queue. The player on the opposite side fields the ball and also aims at the stump before moving to the back of the queue.

You know all good leg spinners have a well disguised googly; the one that goes the other way.

So you practice hard in the nets, trying to get the perfect ball.

So hard in fact, that somehow you forget how to bowl a normal leg break. You are stuck in the hell of only bowling wrong ‘uns.

Are you destined to become a googly bowler for the rest of your life?