You have heard the advice about how to become a cricketer: Get into a good Academy and the top quality coaching will send your game to the next level.

Whether you are in Delhi, Manchester or Sydney, the word “Academy” is shorthand for “excellence” and “success”. So, how do you get in there in the first place?

In my first few years as a coach I used to go along to coaching presentations and hear about the benefit of reflection and review.

Having been bought up in a “beer and chat” environment as a player, all this was a bit lost on me: A bit of utopian and conceptual thinking rather than real coaching practice that I could use with teams and cricketers.

Then I met Ricky Ponting!

Be it praise or criticism, tip or coaching, useful or useless; there are always people who want to give you cricket advice.

How do you sort the good from the bad?

In a world of many different and successful ways of playing cricket, how can we know what is good technique?

You love your phone. You can't possibly be parted from it. The problem is that Coach has banned phones from the nets.

What do you do?

We stood in silence. Blinking at each other.

It’s time to recognise the hard work of your coach. Nominate them for Coach of the Month!

At PitchVision we are all about coaching. We love to help players directly. We love to be involved in educating coaches. We also want to recognise the best coaches.

That’s where you come in.

Julian Wood is the PitchVision Coach of the Month.

He was chosen from dozens of nominations across the cricket world for his innovative work with attacking batting and power hitting.

Wood is a former Hampshire cricketer who moved into coaching after he retired. That’s not especially unusual, but he had an experience in America that changed everything.

Sam Lavery, Head of Portsmouth Grammar School Cricket Academy, talks about bowling fast.

Over the past couple of months the fast bowling squad at The Portsmouth Grammar School have been considering how they can improve their speed.