Cricket Matters

How do you improve back foot contact? Start with the core. No bat, no ball in this one — when the hip muscles switch off, the back foot collapses. And they're usually not working because the core isn't firing first. So: band on, engage the core, stand on one leg. Harder than it sounds. It's a timing thing — core first, then the hips. If you're a fast bowler with a grumpy back, this one's especially for you. Give it a go and let me know how it goes.

How do you improve your bat path? Here's last week's side net drill in real life. Video one, no net: bat behind the head, no clean contact. Video two, net in: instantly better contact. No coaching cues from me — he self-corrected. The constraint does the coaching. Give it a try.

Young spinners, quick tip for more wickets. Watched it all weekend — variation after variation, drag downs, full tosses, batter off the hook. Club batters lose patience too: six dots in a row and out comes the panic slog. Be more patient than the batter. Save the tricks for when they're part of a plan.

Muscle cramps after cricket? Me too. Cramp isn't one thing — mostly it's tired muscles firing when they shouldn't, so food, water and salt come first. Then the two things in my kitchen: magnesium for twitchy tired muscles (levels drop as we get older), and creatine — the most researched supplement in sport — for strength, muscle and repeat efforts. Without them I cramp more and recover slower. Not sponsored, not affiliated.

Quick tip for every club cricketer playing today: drink more water. Cramp late in the day is usually a water problem. So is sloppy decision making. Fill the big bottle before you leave.

Fast bowler back pain — where it hurts usually isn't the problem. Wil's come off four days of Academy cricket and he likes to bowl rockets, so his lower back takes the strain. But the real story is the relationship: a grumpy QL on one side almost always pairs with an underactive glute med on the other. Treat the pair, not the sore spot. Prevention beats cure.

Tennis elbow treatment for cricketers, part two. This is Ali () — a coach who slings a lot of balls. In clinic I go for electro dry needling and hands-on therapy: get the twitch response, release the muscle, take the pressure off. The pain's usually lower down. The problem's usually higher up. The do-it-yourself version was last week's video.

A bat path drill I made up at a workshop today — and it actually worked. Loads of batters take the bat back behind their head, end up with a C-shaped swing, and get bowled or trapped LBW. Telling them "pick it up straight" rarely fixes it. A side net stood behind them fixed it in one session — if the bat goes back, they hit the net. Instant feedback, no coaching needed. Give it a go.

Tight low back after a weekend of cricket? Check the front first. Two or three days in the field loads up the hip flexors — the rec fem especially — and that can drag on your back. This is one of my favourite recovery tools for getting into it. Hurts a bit. Worth it. Not affiliated.

44 today, spending it playing at , my old club where it all started. I didn't play for over ten years — work, life, the usual reasons. Biggest sporting mistake I ever made. Whatever age you are, don't stop playing.