With well sharpened pencils and unflinching concentration, the scorer is a cornerstone of cricket. What would we do without them?

Yet these days, a cricket team bent on success needs more than a tidy book.

Top club sides are looking increasingly professional: They have a coach who put them through sessions a couple of times a week. They have agreements with local gyms to handle cricket-specific strength and conditioning programmes. Pre-season training includes weeks of nets and several warm up matches.

Alongside this is the growing trend for analysis to aid with coaching and developing players. The old fashioned scorebook is no longer enough. We now not only want to know what happened, but how it happened.

Was that fifty a technical masterpiece against great bowling are a dirty across the line hacking display?

Did the spinner bowl well but all those drops prevented a five-fer?

How good was the keeper?

It's possible to record all this and much more so you have a total picture and a way to work on things at the training ground.

Record the match

Naturally, you still need to score the game, so add a task for someone to video the game alongside each ball. If your team has a coach, they are ideally placed to do it. But the scorer can also take charge.

Cameras are easy to obtain these days and there are even apps that tie each delivery video so you can easily check back.

The benefits of this simple change are huge.

Let me give you some examples:

• Strike rotation: The scorecard shows you lot of runs in boundaries but also face a lot of dots. This is especially true in the first 20 overs. You set a target of more singles in the first 120 balls.
• Control: Watch back the video to find out how many times those dots were good solid defence compared to playing and missing. For players who play and miss a lot, get into the nets to work on the type of bowling and shots that cause issues.
• Shot average: Batsmen know their averages, but do they know their shot averages? How many runs per wicket do you get with a drive compared to a cut or pull? Can you work on weaker shots or build stronger shots into super-strengths?
• Bowling technique: Does bowling technique change during a spell as the bowler gets tired? If so, does accuracy decline with it? You can find out by watching the video back then helping the bowling improve their fitness levels to reduce the chance of technical breakdown.

Imagine how much more effective you can be with this kind of focused analysis.

A few years ago this would have been impossible. Today it's affordable and simple. However, with clubs and schools still catching on to the power of match analysis, now is the time to get the edge your team needs to iron out problems and improve strengths to make your championship run a realistic aim.