Club Training Drills

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bitsandpieces

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Club Training Drills

Hi,

I help run training sessions for my university cricket club, but until we start our winter net sessions all we have to work with is a sports hall and some bats/tennis balls once a week.

Can anybody recommend some good bowling drills that are doable in this environment? Cricket Snooker is already on my list :D

I really want to give the club members something that helps them improve their game and keeps them interested so they feel it's worth turning up at 10am on a cold sunday morning.

Thanks!
 
Re: Club Training Drills

Welcome to the board!

I'm sure we can rustle up some drills for you, is there anything in particular you'd like to work on?

Also, have you had a look in the fielding forum, there are some great drills in there which can be used as a warm up and to get you in the mood for cricket.
 
Re: Club Training Drills

Thanks!

I've got 7 or so good fielding drills from the fielding forum that will work well in a sports hall, but I'm very short on bowling drills. We usually have a very mixed ability group at training, ranging from some who have only just taken up the sport, to some very talented cricketers who just need a bit of technical work.

I'm really looking for bowling drills along the lines of cricket snooker, which will improve accuracy and consistency, rather than just having some of the players erratically hurling the ball as fast as possible in games! Any other drills which will help a bowler improve their game would be really helpful :)
 
Re: Club Training Drills

There is also the target game, which I believe is in there somewhere (I'll edit this post and put a link to it).

I'll also post up some other drills this afternoon, need to dig out my books.

EDIT:

As promised the grid game - can be found here.

Others to follow shortly.
 
Re: Club Training Drills

This drills helps to add a bit of direction and focus to bowling, instead of just running up and bowling it anywhere, it also enables the wk to get involved. If you only have the space for one set of stumps, then just use the one set.

Line up two sets of stumps and wk next to each other (wk at opposite ends), then line up your players (bowlers) in 2 groups, one behind each set of stumps.

The idea is to then set a particular line or length for each set of stumps, so for example, set 1 may be on Yorker length, set 2 will be aiming for middle.

After each player has had their turn they move to the back of the other group.

Change the targets regularly and even get players to bowl from a standing start or with eyes closed to make it a bit more interesting.
You can turn it into a contest by giving points for players hitting the targets etc.
 
Re: Club Training Drills

A really simple drill is just have a bowl off!

Set up 2 wickets and split your group into even numbers (with one keeper to fetch and return the ball) with the simple aim of hitting the stumps as many times as they can in, say 50 balls.

A good simple drill, which is fun and has an element of competitiveness! Plus you get to work the keepers as well.
 
Re: Club Training Drills

I don't know if this is of any help.... But if you're doing the snooker thing or the target thing with the bowling and there's no batsman involved you might want to try using hockey balls instead of tennis balls? Surely if you're using tennis balls the weight is nothing like that of a cricket ball and neither is the size, whereas your hockey ball is 5.5oz and the same size as a cricket ball, has a similar bounce to it on concrete and the dimpled type ones give you enough grip to put spin on the ball if you've got spin bowlers. Finally they're plastic and unlike the real thing don't get damaged used on concrete.
 
Re: Club Training Drills

This is all fantastic advice, thanks everyone! :D

Almost_Austwick -I used some of the drills you suggested in last sunday's training session, and some of them went down really well. The rest I will integrate into this coming sunday's training session, and I'll let you know the results.

The exercise involving 2 groups attempting to bowl a specific line and length (the examples you gave were 'yorker' and 'middle') was very helpful (although we have one bowler who insists on bowling with his arm out at an angle malinga style, with mixed results, as he likes to bowl fast and wont listen to anyone else..) Anyway, I plan to use this exercise for 15 mins once every week.

One issue that did arise during the bowling drills, were 2 common technical errors with a number of the bowlers, one that their bowling arm wasn't anywhere near close enough to the side of their head before the release, and two that they were collapsing during delivery steve harmison-like. We're now working on ironing out these problems. Any extra advice on these issues would be greatly appreciated, though.

As for hockey balls -much better for cricket, but as we're in a sports hall they will mark the wooden floor. When the club kit arrives we should get some better training balls, just as long as we don't end up with those pathetic 'skills balls' .. monty panesar's spin wizard ball -don't make me laugh! :p
 
Re: Club Training Drills

bitsandpieces said:
those pathetic 'skills balls' .. monty panesar's spin wizard ball -don't make me laugh! :p
Click to expand...

Hey hey hey, thats too far, if my friend heard you say that, he'd go mental. Its the only way he can move the ball off the deck! ;)
 
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