A really common question we get asked is…”What can I do at home to improve my batting.”
With the Christmas break just around the corner we thought it’d be a great time to put together our top 8 things you can do at home to improve your batting.
Bat Tapping
Bat tapping drills are a great way to improve your hand eye coordination and also your control of the bat.
Make sure you have both hands on the handle, we often see players have one hand on the handle and one on the blade.
You can start really simple and scale it up to your ability.
A really common question we get asked is…”What can I do at home to improve my batting.”
Here’s 5 bat tapping drills you can do:
- Keep It Up – See how many times you can tap the ball on the bat in a row
- Face To Edge – 3 taps on the face, 1 on the edge, then go back to 3 on the face, 1 on the other edge.
- Walk The Tight Rope – While tapping the ball on the bat, walk in a straight line
- Tap & Catch – Tap your ball on the bat 3 times and then try to catch the ball on the 4th go on the full!
- Stall & Flick – Tap the ball and try to stop the ball on the face of the bat. If you do this, flick it back up and try to start tapping again!
Visualisation
Find a quiet place, close your eyes and picture yourself in different situations.
Scoring a hundred, getting through a tough patch of bowling, getting the best batsman out…
Try to make it feel as real as possible, what does it look, feel, sound like? What are you feeling?
Science has proven that the brain doesn’t know the difference between a real memory and a made up one so by visualising yourself doing well in certain scenarios – next time you’re actually in the situation you’ll feel like you’ve ‘been there, done that’.
Back Yard Cricket
Get stuck in to some unstructured back yard cricket!
Tape up a tennis ball, put some rough on the pitch, play on grass so it turns.
Back yard cricket is a great way to develop certain skills while having fun.
Not enough back yard cricket happening around Aus!
Hand Eye Coordination Drills
Grab a couple of balls (tennis, bouncy, golf) and do some hand eye/focus drills.
There are a heap of little drills you can do so I’m not going to go through them all but here’s a couple…
- Bouncing each ball on the ground alternately with one hand while walking.
- Bounce the balls on a wall and catch alternately
- Bounce the balls on a single focus point on the ground
I’m sure you can use your imagination and come up with some challenging hand eye drills.
They’re also a great warm up for batsmen.
Watch Cricket
How easy!
But when you watch cricket this summer, actively watch it.
Think “what would I do in that situation?”
“Why did they do that?”
Learn from the best players in the world, watch their technique, watch how they warm up, watch their game plans.
You can learn so much from them!
Shadow Batting
Go through your range of shots with some shadow batting.
Either do it in front of a mirror or get someone to film you and check out your technique.
Great way to get visual feedback and also develop muscle memory.
Develop Batting Plans
You should have a clear batting plan for every type off bowler you might face.
Spend some time developing your plans and putting them down on paper.
One of the sessions we do with our academy players is getting them to draw a field and draw in their Go Zones (strengths, low risk shots) and No Go Zones (weaknesses, high risk shots) for every type of bowler.
Think about which way the ball is swinging/spinning, is it bouncing, what shots do the bowlers want you to play?
Strengthen Your Forearms
Strengthening any part of your body is going to help but there are some more important areas for batsmen and your forearms his one of them!
A simple exercise you can do to strengthen them is…
- Lay a towel flat on the ground
- Put your palms down on the end of the towel
- Keeping your palms on the ground, scrunch the towel towards you using only your fingers
- Scrunch the whole towel then repeat!
Get stuck in and improve your batting over the break!
