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The Great India Fielding Hoax

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

India has many great cricketers, but fielding has always been the weakest area for the team. Like a club side, the attitude is that fielding comes last. It's not as important as batting or bowling so you can afford standards to drop, as long as your main skill is in form.

That's a pure hoax.

Cricket Show 181: Bowling the Carrom Ball

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The Boss comes off the bench to replace Burners on the show for another week, but the podcast is still packed with practical cricket coaching advice.

We discuss the resurgence of Harbhajan Singh, bowling with personality bowling the carrom ball and how to dive in the field.

4 Twenty20 Batting Tactics from the World T20 That You Can Coach

Never has a format of cricket provided more opportunity for tactical debate than Twenty20.

I love tactical thinking and these are a few batting tactics that play a part in this T20 World Cup.

The Harbajan Method: How to Bowl Off Spin in Twenty20

Harbhajan Singh returned to International stardom with 4-12 against England. He was supposed to be a fill-in bowler but he bamboozled English batters.

How did he do it?

He took two cricket clichés and turned them on their heads, using the mantras of accuracy and variety in 24 balls.

Harbhajan spent his time away from the India squad rebuilding his confidence in county cicket, and it showed. He was out of the spotlight and returned to his successful method.

Quick Tip: How do I Form a Trigger Move

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Here is a question I got from Ashish:

"How do I form the trigger movement that suits me?"

When batting, trigger moves are a hot topic, but the fact is that it doesn't matter as much as you think.

If You Want to Be A 'Mystery' Spinner You Have to Be From India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka


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

Spinners that fit into the "successful and unorthodox" or mystery spinner category are from countries who do not have much formalised coaching for juniors; India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Players like Murali are left to themselves in their junior years, untouched by sustained structured coaching, to develop their skills in combination with their weird action.

That's why England or Australia will never produce a Mendis.

Cricket Show 180: Competition Winner

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

The winning question was:

"I followed with interest the articles and discussion on range / target hitting, and also did a session with our seniors who thoroughly enjoyed it. But, having watched a T20 on TV, the lack of boundaries, let alone 6s, made me wonder why professionals practise target / range hitting of 'length' balls, when they rarely, or as in last night’s game, never, face that delivery in the competitive environment. Much is made of purposeful practise and transferring match skills to practise and vice versa, yet I find this somewhat contradicts this, especially at international level. Surely there should be more emphasis on hitting the back of a length, slower ball variations and other deliveries likely to be faced in match situation?"

Listen to the panel’s 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.

3 Twenty20 Tactics You Should be Coaching

With the World Twenty20 in full swing, I look at some new tactics that will be used in the tournament, and how you can copy them in your games.

1. Spinners in the powerplay

The difference in short format cricket now is the specific use of spin.

The IPL is the perfect example of spin being used as an economical and wicket-taking tactic.

Cricket Show 180: India's World Twenty20 Hopes

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Burners is working in India, so coach and cricketer Nikhil Sharma direct from Haryana has his first full appearance on the show. We talk about India's chances in the World Twenty20, profiling, power hitting and playing spin bowling.

The Tailender is "going deep". Listen to the end to find out more.

Throw Away the Textbook: How Batsmen Really Develop Technique

Psychologist columnist Karl Stevenson tells us why it's time to forget about the textbook when it comes to batting.

Here is an over-rated phrase:

"That shot is straight out of the textbook!"

The truth is that in the modern era of cricket we hear it less and less. It's no longer relevant, if it ever was.

My problem with the textbook starts with three simple questions; if we look at these questions, we uncover the fundamentals of how batsmen really develop a successful technique.