Imagine the scene, you turn up at nets. The bowler's bowl and the batsmen bat. Sometimes they swap places. It's all pretty typical.

The guy is just expected to never make a mistake, even when all the work he gets involves taking throws from fielding practice.

The problem of coaching a specialist

After a handful of IPL 3 games the Royals had yet to register a win and were already written off as failures for another year.

After 7 games they had jumped to third in the table and looked unstoppable, despite not having the huge names of other teams.

Can your team copy the Royals method if your own season starts badly?

The show has had a spring clean and we unveil the new name and logo. But business continues as usual.

Gary Palmer gives us another detailed batting tip and we get back to your questions.

Critics had wondered why older players with Test pedigrees like Kallis, Vaas and Tendulkar were even bothering with the IPL. Maybe for the money, because their games are not built for the crash bang format.

It's a situation many older club players can relate to as well.

This article is part two of a series from Laurie Ward of the Complete Cricketer Academy. To go to part one click here.

In the last article we looked at head position in bowling and fielding. Today we look at head position in batting.

Arguably the most important area of the game to be aware of your head positioning and balance is batting.

In part 1 of this series we looked at why middle practice is so important and how to deal with the problems of running a middle practice session. Today we are looking at what types of scenarios you can set up, and how to keep them interesting to everybody, even the guy stuck at third man.

69. Watch the ball hard so that you can read the ball in flight. Learn to be able to immediately classify and react to what type of ball has been delivered by watching the ball intently in flight – read the spin, watch the seam. (One way to practice this is to bat against someone bowling a variety of deliveries over a sheet or some sort of barrier that prevents the batsmen seeing the bowler’s action.)

Middle practice is a far better way to improve your tactics and game plans than nets will ever be.

That's because nets lack context. There is no pressure of the game or fielders.

But to learn how to play under pressure you have to practice under pressure. And middle practice does exactly that.

There will be no official cricket show this week, but we do have a little something for you.

Although we recorded as normal, there was a problem with the recording and the show was lost to the world.

Only Kevin and I know how brilliant it was (and it was brilliant).

But how could I leave you with nothing to listen to?

I'm not that cruel and I would feel far too guilty.

This article is part one of a series from Laurie Ward of The Complete Cricketer Academy.

This series of articles isn't about what you think.

Reading a title like this you will think of mental toughness, tactical awareness and the psychological side of the game.

But today we are going to talk about your head has a key role in the techniques of cricket.