The conductor. The sergeant-major. The cheerleader. The Drummer. What is a 'keeper?

England and Kent coach Paul Farbrace tells us wicketkeeper is the drummer in the band: Keeping the beat of the fielding side with tidy glove work and unobtrusive, focused encouragement. Insightful, canny and reliable.

I love it when a new coach comes onto my team, it means that I can start stealing his coaching drills!

I’m a huge fan of rebound nets for self reliant individual or paired practice when working with keepers and fielders. The Crazy Catch helps sharpen reactions, builds technique and can be used to unlock movement patterns.

Following on from the positive feedback on the standing back keeping drill using the multi-stumps I thought I would follow up with another keeping drill that was given to me recently by one of our International players here at Millfield School.

Tom has developed this drill with Iain Brunnschweiler in a recent England tour to the UAE.

You'll need a Katchet Ramp, multistump, Bat or Skyer and some cricket balls.

The aim is to simulate standing up to the stumps to both medium pacers and spinners, focussing on areas such as posture, hip and shoulder turn, catching area, and the ability to react to significant deflections from a realistic "nick-distance". In other words, to push back the boundaries of what is possible when standing up to the stumps.

“Stay down!”

It’s the age old call of the coach; often used as a go-to phrase when something has gone wrong and they’re not entirely sure what.

Maintaining a body position that keeps the keepers head close to the height and line of the ball is important, so how can we help?

When I first started to take wicketkeeping seriously, I started to study and copy all the greats of the game. The likes of Alan Knott, Bob Taylor, Jeff Dujon, Rod Marsh and more contemporary at the time, Jack Russell.

In a few short months during the summer of 1988 I went from being a 5 foot 5 inch aspiring club standard fast bowler to playing U15 International cricket as a wicket keeper. This came about through a combination of a number of factors.

How big are your players catching areas?

Super slow motion cameras are great for noting the size of catching areas in both keepers and fielders. Often, we see that catchers line the ball up with one open hand and more closed one, this is great if judgement is spot on or if the ball does not dip or deviate in the air.

This is a guest article from Iain Brunnschweiler.

There is more than one way to perform a high-class leg side take. Which method works best for you?

Inspired by Mark Garaway's standing up drills, I did some work with some wicketkeepers on standing up to seamers.

We duly set up a drill with a bowling machine to work on leg side takes.

The machine was previously set up for right arm over, pitching on off stump, so rather than adjust the machine we: