ULTIMATE

Pace Secrets

By Ian Pont
The world’s best guide to being a better bowler
ULTIMATE
Pace Secrets

Ian Pont
ULTIMATE PACE SECRETS

Copyright © 2012 by Ian Pont

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 Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgement and Thanks
About The Author
Why This Book?
Introduction

1. Welcome To Russia
2. Small Keys Open Big Locks
3. Your Journey To Work
4. Jump To It
5. Technique Is Not The Most Important Thing. It’s the
ONLY Thing
6. The Four Tent Pegs
7. Drop Step & Front Foot Block
8. Not So Simple Forces At Play, Made Easy
9. Fast or Slow?
10. Statics, Walk-Throughs, Jog-Throughs, Run-Throughs
11. Isolation & Stripped-Out Drills
12. Cross Over Sessions
13. General Training For Optimal Results
14. Final Thoughts
 Dedication
This is my third book following on from The Fast Bowler’s Bible and Coaching
Youth Cricket. I want to dedicate this book to the memory of my father, Doug
Pont, who passed in 1990 but was a massive inspiration to me in terms of working
with junior players.

Whilst I worked with International cricketers my father had the passion for exclu-
sively coaching youth players and won an award for services to sport in 1976, as a
coach. He dedicated his coaching life to helping others. It made me understand
the importance of keeping things simple and getting to the truth.

I offer this book to every coach, fast bowling wannabe and parent as a way for-
ward.

And to all those who believe you shouldn’t prioritise technique, cannot coach
speed and avoid working too much on bowling actions – this book is written with
you in mind.

It is basic ignorance that has inspired me to pass on the truth about fast bowling
coaching.

And to try to be at least as good as my father.

Acknowledgements and Thanks

My special thanks to the following:

Ron Watson (contribution)

John Edge (contribution)
Catherine Dalton (model)
Frocester Cricket Club (venue)
Writtle Indoor Cricket Centre (venue)
Sports Training Advisor.com (contribution)
 About The Author, Ian Pont
Ian Pont is regarded as the world’s leading fast bowling coach for developing ac-
tions and increasing the pace of a bowler. He has worked with world-class interna-
tional fast bowlers, first-class cricketers, young emerging talent and junior players.

His private cricket coaching, Mavericks Cricket Institute (MCI), is open to all levels
of cricketer.

This is Ian’s third book following on from The Fast Bowler’s Bible in 2006 and
Coaching Youth Cricket in 2010.

Ian is a UKCC/ECB Level 3 Head Coach.

He was former ECB National Skills Set Coach for fast bowling and fast bowling
coach to both Essex CCC and Northamptonshire CCC and consultant to Ranji Tro-
phy team, Haryana. He has worked with Academy systems, EPP programmes, High
Performance Units and helped set up an International Pro Camp in Potchefstroom,
South Africa.

Ian is a three-time, ICC World Cup coach having been at the England camp in 2003
in South Africa, in the West Indies with The Netherlands in 2007, and with the host
nation Bangladesh at the 2011 World Cup.

Ian was Head Coach of the Dhaka Gladiators in 2012 that won the inaugural BPL
T20 competition.

He runs coach education courses and lectures on how to increase both speed &
accuracy in fast bowlers.

All coaching enquiries:

www.maverickscricket.com
 Why This Book?
Your Two and a Half Second Coach

It’s been frustrating to see the poor standard of fast bowling coaching globally.

Bowlers are often left alone to ‘fully develop’ according to so-called experts, yet
end up with injury-prone actions. And instead of making often quite simple (and
certainly obvious) changes those young quicks are grooving incorrect movements
and biomechanics that are inefficient.

This means that they have to compensate for problems and never quite fulfil their
speed potential or length of career. Worse still, we discover stress injuries of
spine, intercostal, knees and ankles as stresses are carried incorrectly through the
body.

It does partly explain why we have seen the plethora of Strength & Conditioning
coaches in cricket – to help make players ‘stronger’ (instead of better). Strength
and stability have tended to be used as watch words for avoiding teaching correct
actions in many cases. Yet the truth is Strength & Conditioning has a vital role to
play.

The secrets of coaching pace and accuracy have yet to be picked up by much of
the world. The plain truth is that basic knowledge of creating pace bowlers has
not been known. Fast bowling is a process and like all processes, it can be learned.

The book allows all coaches, all players and all those involved with cricket at all
levels to once and for all understand just how to achieve those ends.

The Fast Bowler’s Bible was ground breaking in 2006. This book finishes off what
that book started. This one has the drills to go with the interventions and tweaks.
If you choose to improve, this book will help you do exactly that.

The reason this book is your two and a half second coach is that it focuses on the
most important part of pace bowling – the part that takes around two and half
seconds. It starts as you approach the crease, includes your jump to the crease
and then your action through it.

Master those two and half seconds and you master speed and accuracy.

I share with you everything I know about pace and accuracy. I hope you enjoy it.
 Introduction
We stand on a breakthrough in fast bowling coaching. Whether it is viewed as that
remains to be seen. But the truth is, at last, you can discover exactly what you
need to do to bowl fast or coach others to bowl fast. This information in its com-
plete form, has never been written down in a book before and the facts about
generating speed and accuracy together are backed up with a lifetime’s work, plus
all the skill drills you need to go with them. The answers are now available to any-
one and it’s a revolution that you can take part in by learning exactly what you
need to do.

So let’s get this out there early. You can bowl fast and straight. The Fast Bowler’s
Bible should have shown you that is possible. This book does what The Fast
Bowler’s Bible didn’t do – it gives you the drills that go with each of the tweaks
that you want to make. However it goes far further than that. This is a blueprint
for pace and accuracy.

I wanted to write this book now because having travelled to many Test playing
countries and spoken to hundreds of high-level coaches, it is clear that there is no
consensus on how to bowl fast - even from them. It would be useful to have some
pace bowling guidelines with regarding to coaching, that everyone can use and
develop talent. What is evident is that nothing remotely useful is coming from
coach educators on this subject and thus the coaches themselves rely on urban
myths, wives tales and good old-fashioned incorrect information.

To those of you who have the incorrect belief that fast bowlers are born and not
made (which was covered in The Fast Bowler’s Bible) are doctors born? Are racing
drivers born, scientists, surgeons, dentists, architects or any other profession you
choose to mention? Clearly we know that fast bowling is a process and since hu-
mans are process-based learners, we can learn how to bowl fast.

It doesn’t mean that certain people aren’t pre-disposed with natural attributes
and some people, without the slightest coaching, can fling the cricket ball quickly.
In the same way people can run fast, or jump high, hit hard or swim quickly. But It
isn’t about genetics, height, diet or other factors, as all of the processes for im-
proving performance can be learned. Partly the problem exists because coaches
tell people they cannot bowl fast. The only reason you would do this, is if you
didn’t know how to coach it.

So I want to keep very complex information simple. I want everyone who reads
this to be able to understand the processes of pace bowling. And I want everyone
to be able to take this information and apply it. After all it is not knowledge that is
important but the use of knowledge that will make you a better coach or player.

It therefore comes in two parts to coach speed – understanding how it is gener-

ated, then being able to apply it to live bowlers.

What I have done is explain how to bowl fast, then break down the reasons why
that particular drill works and how you should go about training yourself to do it
‘naturally’. When you have adopted and adapted the new movements into your
action then you will feel they have been there all along. This book is a walk-
through guide to assist you if you seek ultimate pace.

What I wanted to also do is bust the many, many myths that surround fast bowl-
ing coaching. As you go through this book you will discover that there are some
things you thought about fast bowling that might be shown to be just plain
wrong. It stems from people never really questioning what they hear from others
and simply repeating it as fact. Sadly much of it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. So
we will show how pace is correctly generated and why the movements create
power in your body to accelerate the ball out of your hand.

Strength & Conditioning coaching (S&C) has an important role to play as a func-
tion of fast bowling but not instead of it.

Let me be blunt. You do not bowl faster because you are stronger. You cannot
‘muscle the ball” down to the batsman. Strength helps the body take the strain
and rigours of the stresses that apply within the action, but the size of the muscle
is not the deciding factor in generating speed in fast bowling.

I say this because teaching a bowler to compensate for problems of injury due to a
poor action is not eliminating the cause of any issue.

Understanding how to bowl fast and straight and having all the skill drills and cor-
rection techniques to go with it, can feel a little like being someone who knows
where all the gold is buried but has no road map. I wanted to chart that road map
so others could discover fast bowling ‘gold’. So this book is your guide if you
choose to follow it. It is a blueprint for producing fast bowlers - or at least those
who can maximise what natural attributes they already have.

The one thing you need as a coach is a receptive audience. Plus you need to have
full access to players and a large pool of them to have some success with. That is
why I hope coaches who are in charge of fast bowling development, at all levels
are open-minded to producing 100 mph fast bowlers regularly with the same
progress that other sports have made such as running, throwing and swimming.
It’s almost a ‘no-brainer’ to develop pace bowlers and we are already way behind
in technical terms. Other than simply relying on Strength & Conditioning to make
players fitter, the information is out there for improvement in actions that not
only help prevent injury but also increase speed and control.

Hats off to anyone who wants to start learning how to produce genuine pace
bowlers.

And one final thing before we start. If you stop for a second, that’s where you’ll
finish. What I mean by that is you can do it. You can change your action by apply-
ing the drills and knowledge contained in this book. The only person who can stop
you – is you.

Your challenge is in filtering the information you will be given based on anecdotal
evidence, stories, tips of what others used to do and good old fashioned myths
about speed.

Good luck with that and enjoy the journey.

 1. Welcome To Russia
We ought to start by taking you through how and why certain body parts help cre-
ate the overall speed of the ball and where it goes. Throughout this book we will
refer to the acronym RSSSA, or Russia. I want you to remember this because it will
help your understanding of what is important in delivering ultimate pace and con-
trol. What does RSSSA stand for?

R = RANGE of motion
S = SPEED of movement
S = SEQUENCING of muscles
S = SEPARATION of body parts
A = ALIGNMENT of the body position

You will need ALL FIVE components of RSSSA if you are to maximise your speed
and accuracy. Before I move off this point, there are very many international fast
bowlers who are missing parts of RSSSA. That doesn’t make them bad people. It
simply means they have developed an action without RSSSA in place in it’s entirety
and guess what? Had they developed an action with RSSSA they would have no
doubt maxmised their fullest potential.

We can never say in sport, particularly when it comes to fast bowling, that any one
thing is a definitive. We can only produce ‘guidelines’ that are a result of bench-
marking. But here’s the thing. In more than 20 years of working with ABSAT (Ad-
vanced Biomechanics Speed and Accuracy Techniques) that my own company
MCI, has been utilising, I have seen some dramatic and permanent increases in
both pace and control from bowlers I work with regularly.

There is proof positive that by putting the body into the ‘correct’ positions shown
in this book, that an uplift in skill levels and quality of bowling is possible. What’s
more, incidences of injuries have been dramatically reduced. I do not have any
bowlers who have back injuries or suffer from stress fractures due to the action.

So what is RSSSA? And how does it help you be faster and more accurate?

R = RANGE OF MOTION

The range of motion refers to the distance through which your body moves (and
ultimately the ball itself). This is defined by the positions you get into and how
flexible your body movements are.

In broad terms, the more distance you travel, the larger the leverage you can cre-

1
ate, the more you can ‘travel’ before letting the ball go, the ‘deeper’ you can
stretch your muscles to create speed and the bigger your arm can finally pull to re-
lease the ball. If you are making small movements they may not be as effective as
making LARGE ones – providing of course the speed of those movements is quick.
There is no point making long, S-L-O-W movements as this will negate the benefits
of increasing the range. This brings us onto:

S = SPEED OF MOVEMENT

I have heard some coaches state that ‘a short lever is faster than a long one’. This
is a very strange statement because if the levers move at the same speed then
that’s that, plus of course the longer lever gives you more force, as you may recall
from your basic physics at school. So now we have established (as in the Range Of
Motion) above, that the distance through which we move is a desirable thing to
focus on, it is the speed of movement that affects the pace you bowl.

When you make movements faster, you also create a chain of events in the body
that happens faster, too. And we all know that the faster the arm comes over the
faster the ball comes out. Therefore we seek those movements in the body to
happen quickly but clearly, in sequence.

S = SEQUENCING OF MUSCLES

The body delivers the ball with a complex series of muscle stretches and contrac-
tions. Effectively, the muscles are ‘elastic’ and like a bow and arrow you are at-
tempting to get the body in a chain reaction of stretching and contracting.

This sequence creates a ‘ripple effect’ through the body and this is the feeling of
rhythm or timing that a bowler sometimes feels. When you get the sequencing
right it feels great. Get it wrong and it feels like you have your feet in concrete.

It explains why some bowlers try to bowl ‘with their shoulder’ because the top
half happens last and if all else fails, they just want to hurl the ball down the other
end. We are looking to be smarter than that. And in this book you will find out that
the LAST thing you do is bowl the cricket ball – literally. Everything else moves be-
fore that happens.

S = SEPARATION OF BODY PARTS

I am not talking about being a serial killer here. Separation of body parts means
that the body acts like a five stage rocket. And like a five stage rocket the energy
in transferred to each section above, making that movement faster.

2
A bowler bowls first with their legs, then their hips, then their chest, then their
shoulders and finally their arm. The wrist also plays a role with the control of the
ball and it’s release, but it is the five stages before this that take the energy up the
body, accelerating the movement into the back of the ball. It is this series that dic-
tates how coordinated you are and how effective you are at using all your body to
bowl the ball.

We will refer to RSSSA through this book. If you are unsure what each part means
at that time you can easily refer to the simple explanations above for clarity.

The idea is to make this as easy to follow as possible and not to complicate mat-
ters. I have heard coaches talk about ‘eco-centric load ups’, ‘clear pathways’ and
‘energy leaks’ when referring to bowling actions with coaches and players. But we
want to lose this gobbledegook language and redefine the terminology that
makes understanding simpler, effective and more importantly, something a player
can actually go and put into practice.

A = ALIGNMENT OF THE BODY POSITION

If you run up straight, go through the crease straight and follow through straight,
there’s a very high chance the ball will go straight. In addition, we know that the
shortest distance between two points is a straight line. This covers accuracy and
speed TOGETHER. But alignment isn’t just about straight lines. It is also about put-
ting your body into the right positions to maximise what you have naturally.

So it should come as no surprise to learn that within the action itself, including all
the small movements as well as the big ones, movements affect the success of a
bowler. If you are going to make important stretches and contractions as well as
maintain an efficient human movement, then things like correct shoulders, hips,
feet, legs, chest, head and wrist alignment are hugely vital.

Keep an open mind to how you can become far better positioned in your action,
jump and run up to ensure you have a flow of power and energy going through
the back of the ball on release.

Coaching is not proving how smart a coach is, but how easy fast bowling improve-
ments are. This is why RSSSA will set you on the road to having a base understand-
ing of what works in the bowling action and potentially what should be worked
on.

Let me also say here that all the components of RSSSA are dependent upon each
other to be maximised. That is to say that they are far more effective as a team

3
than as individual components. Each part of RSSSA impacts positively on the
whole meaning that by tweaking or adjusting just ONE part of RSSSA can lead to
improvements in other areas.

That’s why learning and understanding what RSSSA is can be a vitally important
part of fast bowling development. It is a framework that can be adhered to so that
consistency and success become a natural part of someone’s evolution as a pace
bowler.

4
 2. Small Keys Open Big Locks
Even the smallest change can have a big impact. When you work on tweaking
something or changing it, how long should it take?

We have probably all heard the boffins in white coats with big foreheads say it
takes 10,000 repetitions to make a change. The change to which they refer is ‘mus-
cle memory’ or the body’s ability to do something without you giving it much
thought. But I don’t subscribe to that number or repetitions needed.

When I worked with Darren Gough for example, he made a change to his front
arm position in his hang time (or jump gather as some refer to it as) that took liter-
ally one ball. He tried it and decided that was an improvement he wanted to keep.
The change I believe, helped him to be more efficient and thus have an extended
career of four further seasons, culminating with a return to Yorkshire CCC as cap-
tain.

For Goughie, the small change opened a big door. Plus he bowled as well as he
had done since he was a young player coming into the England side.

Does the fact that Darren Gough made this change in one delivery, prove that
10,000 repetitions is wrong to make changes? No, it simply shows that everyone is
different, and we don’t all subscribe to the same ‘generic’ stereotypes where the
scientific community wants to put people into compartments. This is partly the
issue with ‘proving’ a theory. Unless you can show time after time it is repeatable,
it may not be seen ‘as fact’.

So I want you to think of this another way. We are humans and humans are falli-
ble. Some like to learn by listening. Some like to learn by watching. Some like to
learn by trying it. The truth is most of us are combinations of all three. And this
means we will absorb information in different ways and at different speeds. In ad-
dition, you will remember much faster and deeper if you consciously think about
what you are doing and why you are doing it. When you add emotion to a
thought, it becomes burned in your mind and it’s something you find hard to for-
get. The Four Tent Pegs, later on in this book, deals with this in far more detail.

Why am I saying all this?

Because expectation levels of how fast you can learn new things and how quickly
you can embed changes into an action change vary from player to player. So don’t
look at someone else and think you are not as smart as them if they get things
faster than you. You will work this at your own pace and you will find parts far eas-

5
ier to grasp than others.

How long should you expect to wait to see changes?

Again, every one of us is completely different. All I can say is that you will need to
work through any alterations you make and know that they happen slowly. It will
be like watering a plant. That plant may take a number of weeks to even show it is
growing. Keep watering the plant. Your changes will be similar to that in most
cases. Don’t worry. Keep working through your drills. They will look after you.

6
 3. Your Journey To Work
Ok. Let’s start off the whole concept of how to bowl fast and straight by dis-
cussing the run-up, which is effectively, your journey to work.

The length of your run up, it’s speed, intent and also the angle you come in at, is
very much a personal issue. What IS important is that your take off stride (jump
into your action if you need one – more on that in the next chapter) and the exit
stride (immediate follow through stride after you have let the ball go), is straight.
Let me be clear by what I mean by straight. I mean that you should be moving in
the same direction as the ball. If you are attempting to bowl ‘into the channel’ or
at off stump, then we are trying to ensure that is exactly where we are running.

You may have learned from The

Fast Bowler’s Bible that if you run
up straight, go through the crease
straight and follow through
straight, that the ball tends to
go… straight. If you retain this
premise, then as long as you are
hitting the crease moving at your
target then all of your energy is
going to be transported into the
action, or at least it will make you
as efficient as possible.

I have heard some other Interna-

tional coaches use the word “ag-
gression” when it comes to Make sure you are running down your own rail-
bowling. Usually, this is encour- way track towards the top of the batsman’s off
aged to start with the run up and stump
speed of it. But rather than use
the word “aggression”, I would rather you thought of the phrase “positive in-
tent”. The reason is, that being aggressive doesn’t always imply being controlled.
We definitely want you to be controlled in what you do. So if you choose a fast ap-
proach then ensure it is controlled so you do not hit the crease like a plane coming
in far too quickly to land.

Equally, a slow approach can also mean you then have to overuse the top half of
your body to try to generate the pace you wish, and you could ultimately lose the
shape of your action, plus create unnecessary stresses on shoulders, joints and
even your back. The incidences of back injuries appear to be the same, not de-

7
 creasing despite intervention and
bowling restrictions.

So the run up should be fast

enough for you to jump into your
action by taking off with a feeling
of JUMPING IN to the action. You
are not trying to do high jump, but
rather long jump if you want to get
a feeling of momentum. And
here’s really the key phrase for a
run-up.

Momentum is something you

should be taking in to your action
from your approach. You do not
When attacking the left hand batsman’s off
want to lean back when you run
stump, start your run up a little wider and run
in. You are driving your arms back-
at it in a straight line
wards and forwards, rather than
side to side. You should be running
with the left foot landing under the left hip and right foot under right hip. Some
people run by ‘crossing over’ their feet and this causes a misalignment as well as
an issue when taking off to bowl. So try to ensure you are moving down a railway
track with each foot so it lands under the correct side of your body.

With regard to different styles of bowling, it ought to be known that a front on

bowler (landing with back foot pointing straight down the pitch), will gain greater
overall pace of delivery when running in faster. The more sideways the bowler
(back foot landing parallel with the bowling crease), the less important the
ground speed compared to a front on bowler. Why? Because in the bowling ac-
tion, the HIPS become vitally important for generating speed. A front on bowler
has less hip rotation than a sideways bowler, so a sideways bowler will be able to
generate greater speed by this hip rotation.

We will discuss hip rotation in far greater detail further into the book because it
will explain in part, exactly why certain bowlers bowl at 85 mph and others at 75
mph.

And just a word here about bowling to a left or right hand batsman. If you accept
the idea that you should be running straight at the target (presumably towards
the top of off stump) then you will notice the slightly different line up for a right
hand bowler to a left hand batsman and vice versa. You can achieve this simply by
taking a step out at the end of your run up – to your left if you are a right handed

8
bowler – so that the angle you run from and to, is slightly changed.

If you are confused by angles just remember this: run directly at the target you are
trying to hit where possible. Take a point from the end of your run up to that tar-
get and run along that line.

We seek the ‘A’ of RSSSA, which is Alignment.

Whilst run ups are important, they do not account for the largest part of your
bowling speed. However, what they ARE important for is in getting you into the
right position to bowl effectively, with the right amount of ground speed to launch
an efficient and explosive action that generates high body speed.

9
 4. Jump To It
The take off into your bowling action is an important phase of bowling. Because it
is this ‘leap of faith’ that sets your bowling action ready for you to bowl. But it is
only a ‘phase’ or a transition from run up to action – nothing more.

Before we get into the technicalities of it too much, it is quite simple. If you jump
into your action in a balanced way, you will be doing yourself a great many
favours. If you jump up too high all your momentum will be going up and down. If
you jump to the off or to the leg side, then this is how you will be setting your base
to bowl and making it far harder to maximise your speed and alignment.

So what is the ideal jump into your

action?

Well contrary to public coaching

opinion, a jump at the crease isn’t
strictly necessary at all. The clos-
est power movement we have to
fast bowling is javelin throwing as
we know. Javelin throwers use a
simple ‘hop’ to transfer from the
run-up phase into the throwing
phase. This ‘bound’or jump is very
small.

Why their jump is small is that

technically, you slow down the
Make sure you are running down your own rail-
longer you are in the air. The
way track towards the top of the batsman’s off
higher you jump, the longer you
stump
spend in the air. So it is important
to understand why a jump at the
crease might be desirable for a fast bowler.

I have heard some well-known international coaches say that the jump into the
crease is the MOST important thing of all. However, if you understood how pace is
generated, how energy is transferred and how the body works to create an explo-
sive force, why would people say this about the jump into the action?

What’s clear is coaches are not sure why a jump is biomechanically important. But
due to the fact that all bowlers are taught to jump then it’s something a coach can
focus on without having to work on the bowling action itself perhaps. After all,

11
how hard can a jump be to under-
stand?

For those of you choosing to

‘gather’ yourself by ‘bounding’
then you will experience some
time in the air. There is a feel factor
at work here, in the sense that a
jump can help you ‘set’ your action.
The technical way to jump there-
fore is to create a momentary
‘hang time’ where you jump
through the movement. You will
experience a slight floating effect
and this is where you then set your
action. Many bowlers can rush
their action if they do not jump, or The gauge of a good attack into your action is a
at least feel as though they are great knee drive like this. With a neutral top
being rushed. half, the leading leg powers you up

There is a play off here between what feels right, what seems to be controlled and
balanced, smooth and rhythmical, compared to what is the most efficient biome-
chanically to create pace. It is, as always, a ‘style versus substance’ thing for
bowlers where looking good can count as much as being effective. The facts are
that this book is called Ultimate Pace Secrets for a reason. And that means you will
find all the most effective tech-
niques to develop your pace. Hav-
ing a large or small leap at the
crease depends on what you are
trying to achieve.

For me, it is simply to turn you

slightly side on (if that is your style
of bowling) – no more than that. In
other words, your transition be-
tween run up and action ought to
be as efficient as possible. It has to
suit the way YOU bowl. That
means you have to feel it is work-
able. There is little point scuttling
through the crease from a non-ex- A good ‘neutral’ top half is desirable here. Not
istent jump, if you cannot build leaning backwards or forwards in the jump,
that into allowing your body to just a drive to target with legs

12
 cope with it. You will hit the
crease faster and this affects your
biomechanics.

If we were building an action from

scratch, we would encourage a
low drive to the target rather than
a large leap, if at all.

A note here on javelin. The javelin

weighs 800 grams and is already
set back behind the thrower into
the crossover steps. A cricket ball
is 154 grams and is carried in front
of the bowler. So you may decide
You are looking for good ‘hang time’ where the you need time to set the ball back
top half ‘sets’ and the legs take you through behind you when you land on the
into your landing position back foot. If you recall Jeff Thom-
son from the 1970’s, this Aus-
tralian great fast bowler, and
probably one of the fastest of all time, had a javelin style move where he crossed
his feet over and left his bowling arm way back behind him into the crease.

This crossover move undoubtedly set him up for the pace he created and devel-
oped a huge range of motion (R) that fired the ball out at speeds around 100 mph
(160 kph) on a regular basis.

So my message to you here is if you are going to jump, make sure you are bal-
anced, moving towards the target and not leaping too high for your style of bowl-
ing.

13
 5. Technique Is Not The Most Important
Thing. It’s The ONLY Thing
One of the greatest thrills watching the London 2012 Olympics, apart from watch-
ing athletes at the peak of their careers, was discovering how they became the
champions they are.

When listening to interviews with coaches, athletes, former champions and com-
mentators, the overwhelming common denominator of their success was getting
the technical aspect of their sport right.

Whether rowing a boat, cycling on the track or running a race, the deciding factor
seemed to be HOW they rowed, cycled or ran that made the most difference. Peo-
ple constantly spoke about the technique of the athlete and how small tweaks
often made the biggest uplift in performance.

It brings me to the one thing that has always bothered me about cricket coaching.
It’s the fact that when it comes to coaching batting, coaches spend 99% of their
time teaching the technical aspects, yet on bowling coaching they spend none –
almost literally.

A coach in a net or session with a player will talk about “balance, head position,
body weight, alignment, foot positioning, shape of shots, moving feet, high el-
bows, etc., etc.,” as well as probably review video clips showing their technical
flaws and what’s needed to correct them.

When it comes to fast bowling there is virtually none. And what miniscule amount
of coaching technically there is doesn’t have much relevance to actually generat-
ing more speed. What the coaches all focus on instead is how the ball is held, the
wrist position and hitting the top of off stump. This is the athletics equivalent of
telling a sprinter to run fast in a straight line towards the finish.

Fast bowling seems to be treated as an ‘outcome-based’ coaching session and bat-

ting a ‘process-based’ coaching session. Yet humans are process-based learners. If
you coached batting like coaches coach bowling then all you would say to a bats-
man is’ “Hold the bat like this and hit it through there”. Interesting.

The truth is we all know exactly why fast bowling coaching is like it is. And let’s
face it. The quality of understanding on fast bowling coaching is probably the
worst in any major sport. To have such little knowledge on a highly specialised sub-
ject can only be gotten away with, if no one really understands it, including those
who coach the coaches. This is exactly what we have. And also explains why, to

15
comfort themselves, a coach will most likely say, “fast bowlers are born”. So this
further makes it less likely to want to find out how and why speed & accuracy are
created. I have even had conversations with coaches who have said to me, “speed
cannot be taught”. Worse still, those coaches then mistakenly think that building
muscles and strength in the gym alone is somehow going to create pace bowlers.

This is where the game of cricket has come to right now.

I speak to hundreds and hundreds of parents of young players involved with

teams at all levels and they say they cannot even find a bowling coach, let alone
many who know about pace. This is because the coaches themselves know very
little about coaching pace into bowlers, yet they know a huge amount about how
to coach pace OUT of them. “Slow down, bowl a line and length” is what most
say. “Get your arm as high as possible and brush your ear” is another. “Stand up
and bowl tall because you will get more bounce”, is the final one.

I will help you in this book dispel those myths and explain exactly why.

So if the coaches don’t know how to coach speed presumably it’s because they
have never been taught how to coach it. And those teaching the coaches there-
fore don’t know either. If you are a player or parent reading this book you will now
start to realise why fast bowling coaching is where it is and why there are virtually
no pace coaches around to help.

The correct information isn’t there to be taught or learned. It’s the one area of the
game that seems to mystify an entire cricket community. What is around are in-
jury prevention directives and complex biomechanical information on being safe in
the bowling action. This is an important factor, but what’s missed is that it can be
achieved by being efficient in the action, instead of piling on restrictions. Why stop
people bowling rather than getting them to be better in the first place? And subse-
quently we see a massive rise in strength & conditioning (S&C), with every team
seemingly having a coach for fitness as the answer. As I said in the introduction,
S&C is important, but only as a function of fast bowling, not as a replacement for it
skill wise or technically.

At this time of writing, I have heard that some youth representative sides are now
being selected on fitness rather than skill. I seriously had to ask the parents who
told me this to repeat that, as I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This sadly will
mean even LESS work being done on skills (as the time is being used up jumping
through rope ladders or hopping over small hurdles and jumping on mini trampo-
lines for ‘core stability’). So the speed, skill and technical part of fast bowling con-
tinues to be completely overlooked.

16
When you start from a place of lack and restriction, and only look at a narrow field,
you miss how to develop the bowling action to overcome those issues anyway. A
correct action technically gives you less stresses, strains and chances of being in-
jured, plus of course it makes you faster and more accurate.

When I started coaching I was desperate to try and simplify the overuse of techni-
cal jargon that some bowling coaches were starting to use. It led me to research-
ing 1000’s of bowling actions over a long period of time and look at common traits
that led to certain bowlers bowling fast whilst others bowled military medium.

I looked into my past as a baseball pitcher and looked at how power is generated
there. But the closest movement to pace bowling is a javelin throw and during the
past decade, I have been fortunate to work with some world experts in the power
generation systems in the body, required to project an object as far – and thus as
fast – as possible.

The work I had done started to galvanise my thoughts in new areas and away from
traditional fast bowling coaching of “standing tall” and also “brushing your ear”
when bowling. I began to work on a completely different level with new ideas and
concepts. Plus, the hardest part of all, I had to come up with skill drills to go with
those exciting discoveries about speed.

The point is it is no good being able to understand how to generate pace if you
cannot teach others how to do it themselves. What’s more, everyone’s action is
unique so we cannot exactly create a definitive here for pace bowling.

What we can do though is produce guidelines. And these guidelines offer any
bowler the framework for maximizing speed and accuracy. Those guidelines are
known as The Four Tent Pegs, which we detail later.

They came about from wishing to give my students the simplest ideas and posi-
tions they could apply to their own actions, to make themselves as efficient as pos-
sible. They had to be robust, repeatable, easy to learn but more than all this,
provable they would increase speed. The huge number of testimonials to speed in-
creases and improvements in accuracy are proof positive that we have indeed
found the key to speed & accuracy. For whilst RSSSA explains to us WHY the body
generates the speed it does, The Four Tent Pegs shows us HOW it’s done. The
great news is anyone can use them and anyone can learn them to become better
fast bowlers.

As I said above though, these are guidelines only. That’s because for every Brett
Lee action that’s full of wonderful, natural movements, there’s a Shaun Tait action
of simply raw power. For each Sohail Tanvir and Lasith Malinga, there’s an Allan

17
Donald. In other words, just because bowlers might not get into the four tent
pegs positions perfectly, doesn’t make them poor bowlers. Bowlers evolve with
an action unchecked and learn to adapt to it. This becomes their ‘natural’ bowling
action. But what exactly IS natural?

If you do something enough times it becomes natural. So if you were to learn the
‘correct’ way to increase your speed and trained that, then this would become
your ‘natural’ action.

That’s the great thing about humans and process-based learning - we all have the
capability to learn in our heads. If you can view fast bowling techniques as a
process, then you can learn it. The Four Tent Pegs highlight the four key positions
in the crease that you should try to get into when you bowl. The drills that go with
those positions help you learn the process to cement into your own action.

As we go through this process and the positions in turn, they will also pop up
many questions for us to answer. Some of this will lead to a complete overhaul of
current MIS-thinking about fast bowling and make much of what is being taught
by coaches and people who coach them, as redundant.

You must remember that through this book we are interested in being as fast and
as accurate as possible. The positive side-effects of utilising the drills is you will be
grooving a safe action, that is repeatable, powerful and give you huge consis-
tency.

It is the reason this book was written in the first place.

Why the tent peg positions are massively important though, is due to another fac-
tor about how you should learn or teach, technical information. And that is we
learn far more easily when we break down the vital movements into smaller, bite-
sized pieces. This is known as ‘chunking’ or practicing small ‘chunks’ of the bowl-
ing action so they can be mastered.

In truth, the fast bowling action isn’t one continuous movement. It is in fact a
highly complex and complicated series of small moves, or chunks, that are per-
formed one after another. It is only by identifying what these chunks are, that you
can then start to work on improving them.

The Four Tent Pegs are those chunks. They are the chunks of the bowling action
that lead to both speed and accuracy. They are the chunks that when performed
correctly, enable the body to be at it’s most efficient. And this means as stress-free
as possible due to being as efficient as possible. It means being repeatable. Above
all, it means being consistent.

18
You will not be able to make highly complex moves without first looking at the ac-
tion you want to have in its entirety and then going out and ‘drilling’ those individ-
ual parts that make up the action.

So how you do this, is to practice the Four Tent Pegs individually and then when
you have mastered each one, put the parts together. You will also have to do the
drills as low speeds to get the exact movements. You need to be able to feel each
position. Look in a mirror when you are doing them if you can or review a video
clip of yourself.

You will not need a cricket ball. The last thing you want is to hold a ball and run up
to bowl. You are trying to ‘overwrite’ an action to be able to change it. So repeat-
ing what you do normally will simply revert back to what is natural for you. This ex-
plains why coaches are rarely successful trying to make changes to bowlers in the
nets.

Instead, slow everything down, walk it through, make the moves from static posi-
tions – even do what I refer to as a MEGA drill.

This is where you go the other way with your speed and attempt to perform the
action chunks in SUPER SLOW MOTION. This is incredibly hard to do and it also
isn’t very comfortable. That’s a good thing. You want to be able to learn how the
muscles work and how it feels to be in those new positions. If you cannot do the
movements slowly, you will not do them fast. It is as this point we are working
with SEQUENCING and understanding what parts of the body works when.

You are trying to create precision when you do your drills. Pay attention to detail.
Don’t allow misalignments. If you start off with a poor foot position in a drill you
will start to engrain it. Make sure that everything you do is world-class. When you
do this then you give yourself the best chance of improving faster.

If you can get a sense of the mistakes you are making in drills then the improve-
ments can come faster. You should welcome difficulty and awkwardness as a sign
of change. Things are happening. If they feel easy then you are cruising along and
no one ever learns anything when they just cruise. So try to make your practices
and drills as intense and meaningful as possible. Don’t do them half-heartedly. Do
them with a passion to get them right. Each time you make a mistake it’s a step
closer to them being better.

Let’s discuss The Four Tent Pegs now and the positions you should get extra
friendly with.

19
 6. The Four Tent Pegs
Dare, Fail, Learn, Adapt, Succeed, Repeat
I want to give you an unfettered overview of the guideline positions you ought to
strive to achieve in your action. After this we will go into exactly how to drill each
one, the common mistakes bowlers make and the difficulties and challenges with
making corrections.

Before I do that though, here’s something you can ask any bowler to do so you
can see where they naturally strive to get their pace from. In a session, ask the
bowler to bowl as fast as possible. Really crank it up and bowl the fastest ball they
are capable of. Say to them not to care where it goes either.

What you are looking for is the length they bowl. This will tell you whether they
use their bottom half or top half to bowl.

If the top half is too active, too reliant on for generating pace then the bowler will
bowl short. This is because the release point changes to deliver the ball ‘later’ and
the bowler will not know why. All they are doing is releasing the ball with the
same timing of a normal paced delivery but of course the extra top half speed
means that release point is further advanced – hence a short ball. They simply
hang onto the ball too long. So the feet and hips have to ‘catch up’ to bowl a
length and thus effectively bowl even faster.

If the legs or base is too active (fast feet for example) then the bowler will tend to
bowl a full toss, maybe even a beamer. This is because the release point is now too
early for the timing of the bowler as the ground speed is higher. The top half has
to ‘catch up’ to bowl a length and thus bowl even faster.

A bowler bowling uphill or downhill temporarily feels this phenomenon. Some

bowlers cannot bowl down a slope. Others can only bowl up it and vice versa.

Why it is useful to know this as a coach or player, is that to alter the speed a
bowler bowls at, takes an understanding of what body parts move and when they
move. The timing and coordination of the movements is precise and happens in
microseconds. It explains why a bowler running in too fast or too slow can also
feel a complete lack of rhythm. And it also explains why we need at least a frame-
work to hang the action on in the first place.

Welcome to the Four Tent Pegs.

21
 TENT PEG ONE

The first tent peg is when you make your first commitment to actually bowl. This
happens as soon as your back foot hits the ground in your action. You have started
to think about bowling the ball at this point and you have set your action ready to
be unfolded in the correct sequence.

Tent Peg One for a sideways bowler

Your back foot impact position is all your own. By that I mean you should land it
where it feels most comfortable and you will then take your line up based on
where it points. This dictates what type of bowler you are: front on, midway/semi,
or sideways. These are the three main landing positions that the vast majority of
bowlers get into, or points in between.

Tent Peg One for a semi or midway bowler

22
 Tent Peg One for a front on bowler
In rough terms, a front on bowler’s foot will point straight down the pitch, a mid-
way bowler’s foot will point at around 45 degrees and the sideways bowler will
have a parallel to the crease position, or 90 degrees to front on.

None is better than any other, except for one thing. And that thing is Range of
Motion. If you are sideways you can move your hips through a fuller range of mo-
tion than a front on bowler. This has an impact on speed because as we will dis-
cover, an increase of hip speed (range of motion) creates an increase of bowling
shoulder speed and ultimately ball speed – if you have the correct sequencing.

In crude terms, and without complicating the issue, a sideways bowler pound for
pound will be faster than a front on bowler for pretty much this fact alone. That is
of course assuming a sideways bowler actually uses the hips correctly and doesn’t
waste it, which is a whole other issue. This is why ground speed for a front on
bowler is more important, as they cannot get as much hip turn so have to increase
hip speed from base speed levels (run up and speed through the crease).

The tent pegs will show how to fully utilise the hips and other positions in the
bowling action regardless of your current back foot impact position.

I want to just take a slight side road at this time because I have seen some coaches
teaching “hopping” on the back foot over plastic cones on the floor or over small
yellow hurdles. I have even seen coaches getting bowlers to jump from a bench
onto their back leg. Many will know exactly what I am referring to. This is not a
very good drill for pace bowling and I will tell you why. The LAST thing you want to
teach your body to do is stop on back foot impact in the bowling action. The back
foot impact is a ‘moving’ position where your core strength and stability help you
lift your front leg and drive it down so you can bowl.

23
If you consider this for a moment you will realise that ‘teaching’ your propriocep-
tion (the body's ability to sense movement within joints and joint position) to stop
on the back foot in this way simply makes the transfer of energy from your run up
even harder. Worse still, to balance, many people lean back in this position to try
to keep their balance instead of moving forward into the front foot block.

I first saw this drill in the mid-2000’s as the so-called answer to balancing and train-
ing the body for core stability. But what the coach educators have failed to under-
stand is that by isolating the movement in this way, you are teaching yourself to
be static and not learning about the movement through a RANGE of motion.
There are better exercises for training core stability that do not emulate the fast
bowling action (if that’s what this drill is meant to be about). Therefore you avoid
the coaching skills trap of learning a bad habit, which is what can happen when
you do it ‘in context’ (next to stumps or holding a ball in your hand).

So please understand you want to replicate what the bowling action actually does
in context and not training something that is a strength & conditioning issue dis-
guised as a bowling drill. Isolation drills are great provided you learn them as part
of a sequence.

The key for ensuring you are lined up correctly with your hips and shoulders is to
imagine there is a piece of string hanging down and linking your front knee and
your front elbow together, rather like a puppet string. This means that the elbow
and the knee will be lined up in the same plane, and thus your hips and shoulders.

The idea is to raise the front knee up to around waist level thus engaging the glute
muscles and the hip flexors to assist with generating some power into the front
foot impact that happens in tent peg 2.

In fact this line up is a 3 second fix for bowlers who have a mixed action (where
the hips and shoulders are misaligned). By simply ensuring the front elbow and
front knee are lined up underneath one another, you ensure your hips and shoul-
ders are too.

You should remember that it is always far harder to change the base of your ac-
tion than the top. Once your base is built, very much like the foundations of a
house, they are hard to dig up and reset. So if you have to make any adjustments
to alignment, try to make them based on the bottom half of your action if you can.
It is not impossible to alter the base work of any action, let’s be clear. And in many
cases you will have to simply alter something at the base. It is just far harder to do
that.

I want to mention something here about the back foot contact.

24
Should you wish to make the most of the back foot contact position with regard
to bowling fast, then you do not want to be landing very hard into this position.
What I mean by that is a jolting, harsh impact at this point will ultimately stop
much of your momentum. It isn’t on back foot contact that we seek to stop bowl-
ing. The momentum must continue to drive the bottom half through the action.
This explains why practicing the hopping exercise (as mentioned earlier) really
does us no favours whatsoever and in fact teaches the wrong ‘feeling’ for the
bowling action on back foot contact.

Instead, I want you to think of your back foot as being a ‘light touch’. Now clearly
all your body weight is going through this position and when you are landing from
your take off, you are going to be bringing all of that into your back foot contact.
But think of your weight registering ‘zero’ on a set of weighing scales. Imagine
that feeling for a moment if you will. You ‘touch down’ in your back foot contact
but it isn’t a heavy Jumbo Jet style landing. To achieve this you will probably want
to land on the ball of your back foot ready to move into the delivery stride itself
fairly quickly. Keep it light, keep it fast.

Remember, we do not wish to do anything that will take away ground speed and
transfer of energy into the front foot impact, which happens in tent peg 2.

At the moment we practice holding the key position of tent peg 1, we will clearly
be supporting our body weight on the back foot contact position and this is of
course necessary to establish how it looks (alignment). This position is just a frame
or two on a camera because we are moving THROUGH this position into the next
one. When you take snap shots like the 4 tent pegs, they merely serve as check-
points for your bowling action and not designed to be static in themselves.

25
MOST COMMON MISTAKES

Misalignment (mix)

Apart from having issues with your

back, the mixed action where your
top half misaligns with your bottom
half, can make your release point
harder to be consistent, as well as
reduce your speed. If you seek effi-
ciency then you will seek perfect
alignment going into your front
foot block – rather than make it
more difficult to do so.

You can see from the image that

the ball is also set off from under-
neath the wrong armpit, and this
will mean the bowling hand will go
back towards the umpire when the
bowler pulls their arm back, instead
of in a straight line towards the
sight screen.

Not being ‘neutral’ with top half

body weight

When the back foot impacts it is

ideal to have the top half not lean-
ing forwards or too far backwards.
The legs have to do their job first so
you should ideally maintain a non-
committed top half at this point.
The phrase ‘bend your back’ is a bad
one as it creates a thought of lean-
ing away from the direction of
movement. You also want to ‘sink’
into your second tent peg and the
top half position remains neutral to
make that possible.

27
Landing too hard on the back foot
(stopping momentum)

The LAST thing you want to do is

land hard on your back foot and
lose all your momentum. This is a
huge mistake because your run up
speed is stopped before you bowl.
Landing hard or stiff legged reduces
your speed and means you are likely
to push your top half too far ahead
of using the legs instead of creating
a ‘ground upwards’ domino effect.

28
 TENT PEG TWO

This is the front foot impact position. It is effectively half way through the bowling
action and is the position from where you generate your pace and accuracy.

Tent Peg Two

In basic terms, if you think of the body as a 5-point star (head, both feet and both
hands) at this time then you will have it right. This is also the biggest STRETCH in
the body and your hands ought to be as far away from one another as possible on
opposite sides.

To get the timing of this you will note that as your front foot lands your front hand
will ‘grab at the batsman’s collar’. Most fast bowlers ‘lose’ their front arm at this
time and the hand is down by their side. But this is incorrect timing because you
require a stable base (front foot impact) to have something to pull against. If your
front arm drops down before your front foot impact then you have pulled it
against fresh air instead of a solid position. It is hard to estimate just how much
lost speed happens if you lose the front arm but if we conservatively said 5-8 mph
then you can see just how important it is.

We will come on to the front arm pull in tent peg 3 but from a range of motion, se-
quencing and alignment viewpoint, getting the front arm s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out to
target on impact is highly desirable.

The bowling hand at the same time, should be pointing directly back to the
sightscreen. In a dead straight line behind you. This will give you the longest
stretch through the back of the ball when you bowl. It will also help you line up to
the target correctly for accuracy as well as maximise your length of lever.

29
So many bowlers do not come straight back to the sightscreen as they pull their
arm back into tent peg 2 and so misalign the upswing of their bowling arm. This
means they can bowl “in to out” and push the ball from the wrong side of their
body when they release the ball in tent peg 3.

The bottom half of the body must also align correctly, too. The front foot should
line up so it supports the front bowling shoulder. The landing of this foot ought to
be in line with your front hip directly aiming at the batsman’s off stump. To help
you further with this line-up, if you were to slide your foot back underneath your
body so you are standing normally, it will be directly under your hip as would hap-
pen when you are standing normally.

I have to comment on what I have heard as landing your feet in a straight line (as if
you are on a tightrope) and this is called landing in the corridor. Please do not do
this. If you have ever tried to stand with your feet in a dead straight line (as on a
tightrope) you will know how unbalanced this is. Your front foot impact MUST
support your non-bowling side so when you pull against it, it is stable and your
front hip can lock. You will see why in Tent Peg 3.

This front foot landing is known as the ‘plant’ into the ground or ‘block’ and is
your second commitment to bowl. Once that foot is planted into the ground you
cannot move it. So you will want to ensure it is as strong and as stable as possible.
Up to six times your body weight can go through the front leg when bowling so
this plant is vital to establishing the platform to drive hard against and be as effi-
cient as possible in transferring energy towards the batsman.

Sadly, I see very many fast bowlers ‘shutting off’ their feet by planting the front
foot a little across their body so it is going towards the leg side as they bowl. This
means they will have to bowl AROUND their front leg and most likely, not be using
it correctly as a stable column to pull against. Additionally, many bowlers who
bowl this way also collapse their front leg and thus lose a huge amount of ground
speed momentum. We will cover this more fully in tent peg 3 but if the front leg
‘eases off’ by bending, or worse still dramatically collapses then the power of the
hips can also be lost.

30
 MOST COMMON MISTAKES

Bending the front leg

The bending of the front knee is the

most common mistake as it is hard
to straighten the front leg, once it
has landed bent. This knee may
have bent on impact and it is that
loss of the braking force in the front
leg that leaks all the energy away,
instead of using the reactional force
of your leg impacting the turf and
staying locked.

Not being fully stretched

If you are not grabbing the

sightscreen from behind and the
batsman’s collar from the front,
then you are not fully stretched.
Imagine an elastic band and you will
appreciate how vital that stretch is
in making a powerful release. The
bigger the stretch, the more range
of motion you get, and stretch re-
flex. By shortening your arms you
do not maximise your speed and
are likely to release the ball as a
‘flick’ rather than a powerful pull.
Not having top half ‘neutral’

When the front foot impacts the

top half should not lean forwards.
The reason is that the legs ‘go first’
by transferring the ground speed
into the top half through the hips. If
the top half is already engaged
when the front foot hits, it means
the hip power and core speed can-
not be used sequentially. The bot-
tom half is followed by the top half
– not the other way round.

31
Throwing the front arm away

This is a true sign the top half of the

action is ahead in timing of the bot-
tom half and the bowling and non-
bowling sides of the action do not
work with each other. The position
is often created because a bowler
throws both hands forward in the
action in tent peg 1. On heel strike,
the front arm is ready to be pulled
but by throwing away the front arm
too early a bowler can lose up to 5-8
mph.

Head falling to off side - Lateral

Flexion

Many things can cause lateral flex-

ion – a high bowling hip, no drop
step, misaligned feet or just a good
old-fashioned head fall. The result
might not only be an ugly action
but one that could lead to back is-
sues. Intercostal injuries as well as
stress fractures are common com-
plaints when the spine has lateral
flexion. In addition, speeds drop
and the release point is badly af-
fected. The ball is thus being
‘pushed’ in towards the batsman
generally.

32
Crossing The Feet Over

Ideally, we seek the front foot sup-

porting the front knee, hip and
shoulder in a column. Here we see
that with the foot crossed over, the
energy is ‘shut off’ and the bowler
cannot fully use their hips.

This position can lead to knee issues

too, with a twisting or rotational
force going through the joints and
ligaments. In addition, a bowler can
have back issues over time. With
the feet going one way and the top
half the other, a misalignment of
energy and pull through is created.

33
 7. Drop Step & Front Foot Block
I’m giving this a whole chapter to itself. That’s because I feel the Drop Step and
Front Foot Block, really identify what pace bowling coaching should all be about.

Technically speaking, the drop step happens when you move from tent peg 1 into
tent peg 2. The front foot block is where your front leg lands straight and stays
straight, so you can bowl AGAINST it, not over it. This is why it’s called a block.

As a fast bowler, your power should come from your legs and specifically your
hips. The ‘drop step, front-foot block' movement is a power/speed generator that
Javelin throwers use. This is a technique that fast bowlers can learn from.

DROP STEP

What it is

A ‘drop step, front foot block' is simpler than maybe it sounds. It means that in
your bowling stride, your front leg is straight, while your back leg is bent as you
drag your back foot through the crease and bowl. You drag the back foot to keep
your hip flexors fully engaged and the power switched on.

You're also trying to create a shoulder-hip separation. This is where your shoulders
and your hips are some way apart from each other. Reaching that position, with
your arm out behind you, you create a ‘stretch reflex’ where your arm will be pro-
pelled forwards as your body naturally, instinctively moves your shoulders back to
facing forwards, in alignment with your hips. That stretch reflex movement cre-
ates power from the core of the body.

A new way of thinking

This technique isn't what most cricket coaches will tell you: they'll tell you not to
bend your back leg at any cost. They believe you shouldn't ‘collapse' your back leg
in your bowling stride because you'll end up delivering the ball from a lower posi-
tion.

But the simple fact is that everybody collapses their back leg to a greater or lesser
degree, as they drive through the crease. Rather than trying to coach fast bowlers
to avoid doing it, I want to make them aware that, in fact, this is where a lot of
their speed can come from.

The idea that a snapshot of a bowler at point of delivery will show the body stand-

35
ing straight and tall like a column,
the ball 12 inches above the
bowler's full height is simply
wrong. At point of delivery, the
body shape is more or less a
‘V'shape: the legs and the top
body make a right angle.

When Brett Lee's front foot lands,

his hips are set back at about 45
degrees from his foot. His top half
is thrown forward, 45 degrees
from his hips, creating a ‘V' shape.
Lee's head is probably at chest-
height to the non-striking bats-
man. Lee is around 6'1" but when Land ‘soft’ on the ball of the back foot. slightly
he delivers the ball his head is at flexing the back leg
around 5'4". This comes from hav-
ing a large drop step, or bend from the back knee.

You can use a door frame, or any fixed point to practice keeping your arm back and
turning your hips forward. This shoulder/hip separation drill helps you understand
how the hips engage first and the shoulder and arm drive second

36
 Your back leg will come through
bent anyway. What I want to do is
show you why consciously work-
ing on bending your back leg in
the right way will make you a
faster.

Why it works

Imagine running across the road

and tripping over the kerb. When
you hit the kerb, your foot stops
and your top half is thrown for-
ward. And the same principle ap-
plies in fast bowling but in a more
The back foot should be pointing forward as controlled way.
the knee ‘drops’ into the block (hence the name
drop step). The hips and body will ‘sink’ into the Once you "block' your front foot,
front foot impact by creating a solid base as an an-
chor to your action, the top half of
your body and ultimately your bowling arm shoot forward.

You're looking to take advantage

of your shoulder-hip separation,
by creating a stretch reflex where
your arm is out behind you, mean-
ing your hips and shoulders are
apart from each other. If it is cor-
rect it will be automatically
snapped forwards as your hips
and shoulders snap back into
alignment.

People often describe this as a

‘slingshot' effect but that's con-
fusing because it makes it sound
like you are a "slinger' and implies
that only the likes of Malinga or
The front leg locks out or ‘blocks’ and rapidly Shoaib Akhtar achieve speed in
decelerates all the forward ground speed. This this way. In fact, every fast bowler
transfers into the top half. Back foot will start uses this stretch reflex to a certain
to drag from here with back knee under the extent.
back hip, until the knees close up on ball release
in tent peg 3

37
Who does the drop step?

Every fast bowler should do it, but doesn’t. However, look in particular at Shoaib
Akhtar, Mitchell Johnson and Brett Lee. Akthar at times got his trailing knee very
low. Lee had his about 6 inches from the turf. Lee’s ‘drop-step front-foot block' is
porbably the best I have seen. But all use the technique of hip-shoulder separation
to power their action, with Akhtar’s being especially good and partly explaining
why he could bowl and maintain such high speeds.

Shoaib Akhtar, for example, did not always have a fully straight front leg when he
bowled but his use of the hip-shoulder separation and the resulting stretch reflex
is about the best there is: he gets his bowling arm right behind his head and as his
front foot lands, his body and his bowling arm are driven forwards with great
power.

What to do

Land softly with your back foot - not hard as most coaches tell you: you don't
want to stop dead and lose the momentum of your run-up. You are then looking
to drag your back foot through the crease for as long as you can through your ac-
tion. Keep your front leg straight, so that it hits the ground quite hard. Just before
it does, bend your back knee. As your back leg comes through, with your back foot
dragging along the ground, your knees will come level with each other and your
hips will shoot forward.

Walking it through

You can walk this though now, at home. With your standing back leg (foot point-
ing forward ) step with your front foot (straight leg) and start to bend your back
knee. As your front foot hits the floor, drag your back foot on your toes and even-
tually your knees will be level with each other: your bent back leg is pulled
through, as your bowling arm comes over. Your knees will be level as your arm
comes over, meaning your hips are now facing forwards. Instead of thinking of an
(unrealistically) ‘high' action, you are creating extra power from this consciously
lower position as you bend forward at the hips.

In Practice

Javelin throwers throw with their legs. And a big part of my coaching is to encour-
age bowlers to do the same when they bowl because that is where the power will
come from. Javelin throwing is all about maximising power through technique.
The last thing a javelin thrower does is throw the javelin and the last thing a fast
bowler does is bowl the ball: everything else has to be in place first.

38
The vast majority of fast bowlers who come to me, especially young fast bowlers,
have concentrated on their upper-body and on getting speed from their shoulders
and arms. This means they are missing out on all the extra power that can be
achieved by making sure feet, knees and hips are providing the right base for the
action.

The principles for the drop-step front-foot block are the same as in javelin: the
only difference is that a javelin thrower is looking to launch it over 80-90m into the
air whereas a cricketer has to land the ball within 20m. And, after working on the
drop step, you may find yourself bowling a very full length with your extra power
at first. Those who try to get extra pace purely from their arm often end up bowl-
ing too short.

It is highly desirable to collapse your back leg after impact so you can drive all your
energy into your block. If you land hard on back foot impact you will lose much of
your ground speed and begin to ‘push’ your top half forward too soon to actually
bowl. So you want to have a very soft step or ‘drop step’ where all your weight
transfers efficiently into your block.

The secret is to keep your back knee immediately below your back hip through
your action and this is done by having a feeling of stepping down. If you get the
drop step correct, you will discover that your knee is only just above your ankle (in
an ‘L’ shape) as your bowling arm comes over to bowl. You will find that it is easi-
est to do this when you keep your back foot fully on the floor (dragging) right up
until release of the ball.

Again, it is important that you keep your knee low (drop step) and back foot drag-
ging to ensure your hips are level into the bowling action and provide a stable
base. The foot dragging helps keep the hip flexors engaged into the block and
stops you bowling of one leg like you are doing the highland fling. The only
bowlers who lift their back foot before releasing the ball should be spinners.

Watch a javelin thrower, baseball pitcher, boxer throw a punch, or other power
generation sports and you will see the back foot is in contact right up to release of
that power. You wouldn’t throw a ball off one leg, play a cover drive off one leg or
punch off one leg. Don’t bowl off one leg either. Learn how to keep your hip flexor
engaged by dragging the foot and driving the hips hard to target. It feels like tak-
ing a penalty kick in rugby or free kick in football, but not lifting the kicking foot.

39
 FRONT FOOT BLOCK

The bottom line is if you bend your front leg when you bowl, you will lose the abil-
ity to transfer all your base energy into your top half. The idea is you want to de-
celerate your bottom half to accelerate your top half.

The front leg will be locked out so the hip on your bowling side can rotate against
the front hip. Your front leg and hip thus act somewhat like the hinges on a door –
creating a solid position for the bowling side to drive hard against. And you want
this straight leg to be angled back against your hips. You don’t want to be stand-
ing up tall. In fact I want you to think the opposite. Your leg will be angle back
against your legs so that when you bowl with your chest driven forward, there is a
90 degree bend at the waist. This is known as the power blast.

Imagine being in a car without seatbelts travelling at speed. If you hit a wall, the
car stops but you keep going. You want to hit the brakes hard with your front foot
block to achieve this. Come to a sudden stop with the front leg angled back so
your hips can be driven hard
against it.

The tendency for many people is

to roll forward before the hips
have rotated and to finish with
their weight on your front foot.
This sliding forward of the hips
robs you of power. The hips don’t
rotate the way they should to free
up your bowling arm. They can’t
as they’re too busy sliding for-
ward and then get stuck support-
ing all of your weight on top of
your front leg – it’s really hard for
your hips to rotate if that’s going Against a blocked, straight front leg, you can
on. rotate your hips and drive your knee so that on
release of the ball, your knees will close. The
In a similar way, the potential en- back foot remains in contact until you let the
ergy you have generated, plus the ball go
ground speed of your run up into
your front foot block, adds to the rotational force of your hips driving and front
arm pulling against the locked front leg. You can begin to see where the ball speed
is now coming from. And all of this is happening ahead of the last thing you do
when you bowl – actually let the ball go.

40
You are looking to create angles so you transfer the power up the body – from the
ground, into your legs, through your hips, into your chest, then shoulders, into
your bowling arm and finally into the ball.

It works like a 5 stage rocket. A rocket moves in stages with each stage accelerat-
ing the next one and so on until maximum speed is achieved. You will use all the
forces in your body to ‘ripple’ the power by the muscle sequencing, so the ball can
be delivered at full pace.

STRETCH REFLEX

It is at this point I want to mention the stretch reflex (arm pull) of the bowling
arm.

By delaying the arm pull or at least having a feeling of a ‘slingshot’ you create max-
imum range of motion. Think about something for a moment. When you bowl a
cricket ball you move your arm from behind you to in front of you, through a
range of less than two metres. Yet in that range, you accelerate a ball up to 70, 80
or even 90 mph. It happens in fractions of seconds. There is no car on the planet
can do that or move that fast. And all the time you are holding onto the ball it is
accelerating. Because the instant
you let it go, it is slowing down.
Gravity and wind resistance slow
the ball as it leaves your hand. It
makes sense then to hang onto
the ball as long as possible. Or in
other words, increase your range
of motion. The shorter your arm
pull, the smaller the range of mo-
tion.

The other thing that happens

when you ‘delay’ the bowling arm
slightly is you create hip drive
through something called shoul-
This is the start of the Stretch Reflex and drop der hip separation. This is where
step. By taking the arm fully backwards as the the hips lead the upswing of the
body moves forwards, a hip/shoulder separa- arm and you get a catapult effect.
tion is caused that accelerates the bowling arm Hips create the extra ‘oomph’ you
in a ‘reflex’ of the muscles rapidly contracting seek. This is done in conjunction
when the front foot blocks. The hips lead the with the front arm pull.
shoulders through as the top stays ‘neutral’
The big muscles, your hips and

41
the core of your torso do all the work here. The arm is just along for the ride, for
the most part. After a fast bowling session, if you end up with sore muscles, you
are likely to be sore in your hips and obliques (outside stomach muscles). If you
are experiencing soreness in your shoulder and triceps, you are most likely not
using enough big muscles or you are trying too hard with your arm. It doesn’t
help. Good strong, fast arm movement is a key portion of the technique, so it’s not
totally without effort, it is just that tons of effort should not be placed there – too
much arm is a problem.

You will understand now that your hips are the most important part of your body
when generating speed. There is something in the human body called the hidden
force multiplier. Simply put it shows that by increasing hip rotation speed, you can
increase your arm speed up to ten times. That means, 1 mph on the hips can equal
up to 10 mph on the arm speed. In the same way you make a toy propeller fly by
turning the shaft and not the blade, you can accelerate your bowling arm speed by
increasing the movement, range and speed of your hips.

This is done by rotating the hips so that when the ball is released from your hand,
you are facing totally front on. You will have discovered in The Fast Bowler’s Bible
that every bowler is front on when they release a cricket ball. It means that if you
land sideways in tent peg 1 then your bowling hip will rotate 90 degrees (range of
motion), compared to a midway bowler (45 degrees) or a front on bowler (already
hips facing forward).

This goes some way to explaining why a side on version of a bowler, compared to
a front on version of a bowler, will be faster. This is assuming everything else
worked correctly in sequence. And we know from the hidden force multiplier that
having highly active hips that move through a large range of motion at great
speed, will generate a huge amount of pace.

42
 TENT PEG THREE

I personally feel this is the most important position in the bowling action and one
that is vital to maintaining maximum speed from the body. Tent Peg 3 happens on
the instant of release of the cricket ball from a bowler’s hand. This is also where
we use the front foot plant mentioned in tent peg 2 to it’s fullest.
How you let the cricket ball go affects how the ball behaves. Whether it is wrist
postion, arm height or speed, the position at release of the ball is key.

Tent Peg Three

You will see from the images above how the perfect tent peg 3 position should
look. And there are various factors at play to achieve it.

Against a braced front leg you will find that the top half of the body flexes forward
and the bowling hand delivers the ball from above the bowling shoulder and bowl-
ing hip. Your chest is facing the batsman, your hips are too. From the stretch reflex
position, the shoulder catches the hips up to make an accelerated release of the
ball like a catapult. You will see that even though this is a power blast position, the
body is very balanced.

43
The release of the ball itself happens above or ahead of the front foot. This is
highly desirable. That’s because the longer you hold on to the cricket ball, the
more it is accelerating. For every split second you are powering the ball forwards,
it is accelerating. This is why it makes sense to hang on to the cricket ball for as
long as possible. The moment you release the ball, it starts to slow down.

To get this you will need to be in an advanced shoulder position, fully extended,
and driven towards your target. Don’t let the ball go until you have maximised
your power arm stretch reflex.

Your shoulders (and left and right hand sides) will be fully synchronised by utilising
the front arm pull correctly, which I will outline in more detail in a moment.

MYTH BUSTER – “STAND UP AND GET MORE BOUNCE”

This is still very popular with coaches I am sad to say. Getting a few centimetres
‘taller’ in the action does not make the difference to the bounce of a cricket ball.

If you imagine the angle of trajectory and pitching of a cricket ball, then you will
know that what makes a ball bounce higher is the SPEED at which it hits the turf. A
ball fired in from a bowling machine or fast bowler at 95 mph will bounce signifi-
cantly more compared to a ball bowled at 60 mph - a ball bowled from either
1.88m compared to 1.92m, really will not. However, if it was bowled from 2.92m I
would agree, but we are not talking about an extra metre here. A tall bowler can
get more bounce than a short bowler, but standing taller does not make a signifi-
cant difference.

The second thing that is wrong about ‘standing tall’ when you bowl is you lose the
power positions described here in tent peg 3, which are the keys to bowling faster
and straighter.

So not only is it completely the wrong advice to get a bowler to stand up to get
more bounce, it actually makes them slower, which of course gives them less
bounce. Lack of speed (not bowler height) is why a spinner’s short delivery is not a
bouncer.

FRONT ARM PULL

The front arm here is also important. That’s because the front arm and the bowl-
ing arm are connected through the shoulders and by rotating the shoulders fully
at the right time, we can add some MPH to the ball.

44
Grab the batsman’s collar and pull it towards you, so your elbow drives hard behind
you. This move accelerates your bowling shoulder and also helps you to line your
shoulders correctly for the release of the ball
You will recall in tent peg 2 that your front arm was s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out to grab the
batsman’s collar. As soon as you feel the front foot plant, this is your cue to pull
hard against your braced front leg. You should not be pulling your front arm too
early (without front foot impacted) because you need the ground to pull against.
The front leg braced provides this. You can spot an inefficient front arm position
by looking at a sideways image of front foot impact on a fast bowler and seeing if
the bowling arm is still above the waist or not. Above the waist or close to it and
the pull is happening at the correct time – below the waist or straight down and
the arm has been pulled against fresh air (no base). This is known as ‘losing the
front arm’ and the vast majority of bowlers do it.

It doesn’t make you a poor bowler if you do this. It simply means you haven’t used
the full rotational power pull in your front arm at the right time.

So we can see the timing of this is important. What is also important is how you
pull it.

MYTH BUSTER – “PULL YOUR FRONT ARM DOWN LIKE A TOILET CHAIN”

I want to address something about the front arm that I hear perpetuated by some
coaches. And that is “pull your front arm down like a toilet chain”. There are many
issues with this move:

1. Your shorten your arm too early

2. You drive downwards with your non-bowling shoulder
3. You put a great deal of ‘crunching’ down into your intercostals
4. Your bowling shoulder doesn’t move forwards

45
Sit there for a moment as you read this and lift your non bowling arm high and
then drive your elbow down like you are pulling a toilet chain from above your
head. Now see if your other shoulder moves at all. Nothing, nada, zilch.

Now reach your non bowling arm out straight (like you are patting someone on
the head) and pull your elbow back behind you (as if you are elbowing someone).
Now see if your other shoulder moves at all. Yep, you cannot HELP but have some
forward rotation of the bowling shoulder.

So we can easily show that the CORRECT movement for Range of motion, Separa-
tion, Speed, Sequencing and Alignment (RSSSA), is to ‘throw’ the non bowling
hand at the batsman then pull it hard from in front of you, by then elbowing be-
hind you - and NOT up to down, as with a toilet chain.

It is important to bear in mind that things happen in fractions of seconds and get-
ting a feel for them is extremely difficult. But understanding what is working and
when can give you a huge advantage when it comes to training and practice.

As you pull your elbow back against a braced front leg, you will also drive your
chest towards the batsman. This ‘chest drive’ almost comes naturally because
when you plant your front foot into the ground you are rapidly decelerating your
bottom half, and that energy has to go somewhere. You want it to be transferred
into your top half. The sensation is as if someone has literally shoved you in the
back. And there would be good reason for that.

It is a series of movements, highly efficient and complex, that multiply your speed
sequentially, to create maximum arm speed so you can bowl the ball quickly.

MYTH BUSTER – “BRUSH YOUR EAR”

When it comes to the height of the bowling arm, as I said in The Fast Bowler’s
Bible, “you can bowl any hour before 12, but not a minute past”. If you put your
bowling arm up above you so it is comfortable, you will find that far from ‘brush-
ing your ear’ it is likely to be above the end of your shoulder. This gives you a be-
tween 11 and 12 o’clock release position and that is perfectly natural. Two reasons
why brushing your ear is just really appalling advice to any fast bowler. Firstly, it
easily tips you past the wrong side of your body and you can start your upswing of
your bowling arm outside your body width. This is bowling ‘in to out’ and if you
track the ball in your hand it ‘loops’. Secondly, your wrist position is likely to be
completely wrong because you will feel as if you are pushing the ball at the bats-
man, rather than pulling it. If you recall that all fast bowlers are front on when
they bowl, just have a think as you sit there, which side of your body your bowling
hand is? That’s the side you should bowl from. Keep it natural, normal, and simple.

46
MOST COMMON MISTAKES
Lifting the back foot off the
ground

Great for spinners, rubbish for fast

bowlers. If you want to feel what
it’s like to lose power, stand in
front of a wall with your legs split
and push against it then lift your
back foot off the ground. Fast
bowlers want to keep their back
foot in contact into the release of
the ball (by dragging) and main-
taining a hip flexor drive of the hip.
The foot remains engaged and only
lifts into tent peg four after you
have let go of the ball. To use the
front foot block, get low into it and
bowl against the front leg, not over
it. The top half of the body makes a
90 degree angle against the locked
out front leg. To “stand up and
bowl tall” loses all that transferred
energy. ‘Hit’ the block hard and
drive the hips like a door shutting
fast against a door hinge.
Having bowling hip higher than
non bowling hip

The idea is to have a stable hip posi-

tion on release of the ball and this
means trying to maintain a level
line between the bowling hip and
the non-bowling hip. If a bowler
has a good drop step like Brett Lee
for example, they will have stable
hips and be able to use the hip
drive correctly into the front foot
block. As with lateral flexion (lean
away) this position tilts the body
offline. It’s a sign of little or no drop
step in the action.

47
Releasing the ball over wrong hip
or ‘past midnight’

The golden rule is “any hour before

midnight but not a minute past”
when it comes to releasing the ball
relative to the perpendicular. The
resultant lean creates a difficult
wrist position and a feel of pushing
the cricket ball. Many bowlers who
are called for throwing all seem to
get into this position.

Apart from creating a lateral flexion

that can have injury issues in the
back or side, a bowler can have real
difficulties swinging the ball away.
A severe lateral flexion is one of the
problems associated with stress
fractures of the spine and ideally
should be corrected as a soon as
possible.

Splayed front foot

Apart from being somewhat un-

comfortable, this position can cre-
ate injuries in the knee and
ligaments. Some of the typical
problems can also occur around the
ankle area and achilles, too. The
misalignment of the foot means
that the angle of the base of the ac-
tion is compromised. A bowler can
often follow the foot angle on their
follow through and finish with a
shoulder rotation towards second
slip. If you remember your feet are
your ‘tyres’ then you would ideally
want those to be travelling towards
the target and not away from it.

48
Bending the front leg

The front leg ‘ram rod’ is the princi-

ple of taking ground speed and
transferring it into the top half of
the action so the ball can be deliv-
ered quickly. Should a bowler’s
front leg buckle then the energy
will stop at the knee and travel no
further. We wish to create a
straight leg so energy can ripple
like a domino effect through the
hips and into the ball.

Not closing up the knees

One of the most important things

in creating pace is hip drive and ro-
tation. If the knees are left open
like this they still have some way to
drive before the ball is bowled. The
knees should pass each other at the
exact point of release showing the
top and bottom half of the action is
totally synchronized. A bowler who
doesn’t use their legs correctly is re-
lying on the top half to bowl – thus
missing a large part of what creates
speed.

49
 TENT PEG FOUR

If you have ensured the previous tent pegs are all in place, it is almost inevitable
that tent peg four will be correct. That’s because the finishing position of the
bowling action is a consequence of what has gone before. The follow through is a
reaction to what has preceded it. And you can learn a great deal from a follow
through.

As you go through into tent peg four, your exit stride from the crease, you are at-
tempting to maintain all of your forward momentum towards the target. This is
where your shoulders have fully rotated, your arms have pulled through hard and
your back leg drives upwards at the knee to keep your base moving in a straight
line.

The issue for many bowlers’ transition from tent peg three at release of the ball, is
they feel their job is done. However, it is by developing a DEEP chest drive, where
the back levels out like a surf board, and a strong knee drive, that we ensure the
top and bottom half of the body COMPLETES the action, or ‘finishes off’.

Starting with the bowling hand first to give you an idea, it is best to try to have this
hand go past the top of your front leg sock. When you are in that sort of exten-

Tent Peg Four

sion through the action you will find your back will be close to parallel to the floor.
This hand then finishes up under your non-bowling armpit, which also guarantees
you have a full bowling shoulder rotation.

What will assist you in this finish is the non-bowling arm being released from tent
peg three (pulled in to your side), being released upwards so the finger tips of that
hand ‘touch the sky’ up behind you.

51
The two hands effectively then both finish pointing or at least driving, upwards to-
wards the sky from a level back.

Your head will follow the ball down and so therefore take your bodyweight di-
rectly towards off stump. If you feel you are grabbing onto the side netting in a
practice session, or running towards cover point on your follow through, the
chances are your head is going that way as you come out of the crease.

52
MOST COMMON MISTAKES
Not completing shoulder rotation

Both hands should finish high and

pointing upwards. To achieve this a
bowler will have a full shoulder ro-
tation with the bowling shoulder
driving down into the floor in front
of the bowler. The image is a sign
that the bowler hasn’t ‘completed’
the bowling action with a strong
chest drive. The top half of the
body would be parallel to the
ground like a surf board and the
head would be at hip level.

Not holding a strong finish (swim-

ming)

When your non-bowling arm com-

pletes, it shouldn’t come forward
again as if you are swimming. This
is because you want to fully ‘finish’
the shoulders off and the act of
‘swimming’ means you have not
completed correctly. Your bowling
shoulder should be driving down
into the ground and turned to-
wards the batter - not upright and
coming out of your action.

Bowling knee not driving out

straight

This is a sign that either the knee

has over rotated or the back foot is
coming around the front leg. It can
affect the power out of the action
and also create issues in a bowler’s
knee if the twisting occurs at that
part.The top half has to work very
hard to keep the action aligned.

53
Pivoting on the front foot like a
spinner

The problem here is evident as the

feet are effectively the tyres of the
body and show exactly where the
energy is going. It is more than
likely created by a bowler who
‘crosses‘ their feet over (front foot
across the body compared to back
foot) and could lead to a loss of
pace as well as additional stress.
This looks more like a spinner bowl-
ing than a pace bowler.

Not driving top half through

straight

This is a clear sign that a bowler’s

energy is not going towards the
target.

The top half of the action dictates

where the ball is trying to go so any
movement not directly at the top
of off stump from the base can af-
fect the accuracy of the ball re-
lease. Often a player will ‘twist’ the
top half as they bowl around their
body and this can misalign the re-
lease meaning that a bowler will
have to compensate somewhere
else in the action.

54
 8. Not So Simple Forces At Play, Made Easy
I want to get way less technical than I should. That’s because when you bowl
there are things like inertia, force, mass, acceleration, equal reactive forces, poten-
tial and kinetic energy plus a whole bunch of overly technical phraseology that
very few of us need to understand. And whilst it gets the boffins excited, it
doesn’t help us as bowlers or coaches to know this stuff, trust me.

We don’t need to get into applied biomechanics too deeply to explain it.

But it’s also why, when anyone asks “why do some people bowl fast and others
don’t?” it cannot be answered by the ridiculous statement ‘fast bowlers are born”.
Or suggesting it is all about diet, pitch conditions, genetics or other factors that
are socio-economical.

All you need to understand is why things work and what you can do about making
them better. When you appreciate there is a process to fast bowling and we can
learn it, then you will start to understand that those who claim they can coach fast
bowling because they used to play at such and such a level, are misguided. Gen-
uine face palm moments.

So when it comes to how the body generates speed, we need to take a simplistic
look at the forces at play so you can get an understanding of how to and why you
bowl the speed you do. This will have the experts crying into their legumes.

To keep it very simple, and use my own terminology there are three main forces:
rotational, linear and reactive. You use all three to bowl with.

ROTATIONAL
Rotational force is the force created by joints rotating and moving so that energy
can be transferred. If you swing your arm around for example, you will appreciate
you can bowl a ball by simply sitting down. Ankles, knees, hips, shoulders and a
whole host of other body parts, move in synchronization to generate force.

LINEAR
This is force created by movement along a linear path such as run up, arm pull,
chest drive and knee drive for example. Moving along the line (or against it to cre-
ate a stretch) uses your energy and creates a force, through a range of motion.

REACTIVE
This force is created by moving against the ground or your own body to generate
a force to propel the cricket ball. As an example, the front foot block makes the

55
most of this in particular and the resultant feeling is a ‘jolt’ through the top half.

If we take you all the way back to RSSSA at the beginning you will start to appreci-
ate what body parts are moving to apply the forces to the best effect.

It is from this knowledge base that the book was written. That’s why the success-
ful transformation from the skill drills, go with making the speed and accuracy of
the bowlers as efficient as possible.

So how exactly should you do the skill drills?

56
 9. Fast or Slow?
There is a fundamental rule of fast bowling coaching. You do not have a snowball
in the desert’s chance of making changes to your action when bowling to batsmen
in nets, or from a full run up with a ball in your hand.

I have seen countless coaches attempt to offer advice to fast bowlers when they
are ‘under pressure’ in nets or when thinking about where the ball goes (out-
comes). You cannot begin to change a small part of your bowling action (align-
ment and sequencing) if you are worried where the ball is going. It’s simple
common sense.

The ONLY way you can work through your action is to do isolation drills and break
apart the movements to look at them.

But more than this for accelerated learning, you will understand the movements if
you do them in SUPER slow motion. When you go through the movements as
slowly as you can you begin to feel what muscles are working and when. I can only
recommend that you move through the positions you wish to get into, without a
ball in your hand and also by looking in a mirror when you do them. You will start
to see and feel the changes you want to make by literally feeling the motions you
are making.

What you then do is build those movements up so they happen slightly faster.
Over time, you then increase those speeds to get closer to a bowling speed.

Later on in this book, we will explain exactly how that is done and what you need
to think about when drilling. Because ultimately, it will be both the quality of your
drills plus how you understand what you are doing, that will lead to solid changes
and improvements in your skill levels.

Get rid of the ball from your hand before you attempt to overwrite your muscle
memory. Your brain will try to resist by implementing what it knows to be natural.
You need to be able to overlay new information in a precise way and doing it
slowly, without the hinderence of cricket, is the starting point for change.

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 10. Statics, Walk-Throughs,
Jog-Throughs, Run-Throughs
Change takes time.

Like expecting a plant to grow, you wouldn’t constantly be looking to see if there
is any difference after just a short while. Your action is like that plant. It takes
many ‘waterings’ and little change before you begin to even notice something is
happening. And the change might be extremely small. So you need to show some
tremendous patience. But the good news is you can do correction drills and
tweaks to your action at any time of the year. You don’t have to wait for the sea-
son to end, or to be injured, or wait for the ‘right time’. Your optimum time for
making improvements is NOW.

The mistake coaches often make is to say that a bowler shouldn’t be ‘messing
around’ with their bowling action during the season.

This is wrong on two levels. Firstly, making positive tweaks and corrections, isn’t
‘messing around’. Batsmen constantly review their batting and if any technical
changes need to be worked on, a coach will often do that. Secondly, if you were
on the wrong road driving, you wouldn’t just carry on - you would make adjust-
ments to reach your destination. So simply leaving something alone to reinforce
mistakes that go unchecked is clearly madness.

Your practices and down time from matches are the times to work on any techni-
cal changes. Once the matches resume, you just carry on bowling as normal. This
is the trick. You simply cannot be thinking technically when you are playing cricket,
because matches are ONLY about outcomes. The scorebook shows runs, maidens,
overs and wickets - there is no column that says ‘how good is my action’. That’s
why we work technically hard AWAY from matches, not IN them. And for good
reason, too. Your technique is your servant and when you cross the white line to
play your match, you want your servant to be with you, looking after you, helping
you to be fast and accurate under pressure. You don’t want to feel all alone, with
little or no idea what you are doing.

Great technique gives you supreme confidence. The one thing most players report
after working on their action is they feel so much more confident in what they are
doing when it counts. Results improve. Stats get better. People start to notice
things about you. And this is a huge win-win because you start then to up-skill
yourself as a bowler and become far more consistent.

If you plan to change anything, take it in bite-sized pieces. As we found in the

59
“chunking” part of the technical aspects of coaching, it is only by experiencing
changes in small movements through isolating them, that we will be able to get a
feel for what is actually going on. You cannot feel anything at high speed because
the movements are way too fast and complex to truly appreciate what is going
on, and possibly going wrong.

To start off, place yourself into the correct positions you want to achieve and sim-
ply get a feel for those positions. You are trying to fast track those positions into
your brain and you have to focus on understanding what the kinesthetics of each
movement you make, is like.

It would make sense if you have access to a video camera at this point to keep a
record of what you are doing and to see yourself in review. If you want to start off
by filming your existing bowling action and then possibly going through it in slow
motion. You will see very many things lost when you view it at normal speed. You
can then at a later date, compare and contrast your ‘new’ action and changes you
are practicing.

You need to get extremely fussy with those positions, too. Because the truth is if
you cannot get into the right action when you are static, you have little chance at
full speed, off your full run, with a ball in your hand and a batter waiting. So take
your time. Be precise. Don’t accept less than 100%. And do not do any of the drills
at this stage with a cricket ball. You don’t need a cricket ball. You are merely
grooving your muscle memory to ultimately ‘recall’ the positions without you hav-
ing to consciously think about them.

I suggest you try to further detach yourself from the memory of bowling by doing
the initial drills ‘out of context’. This means not using a crease, lines, stumps or
anything else that can hijack your system into thinking you are bowling.

Instead, we wish to create an environment that your mind cannot object to and
this can be done by working in any area other than a crease. To simulate a bowling
action so we can CHANGE it, we seek to fool the mind into accepting the new
movements as non-threatening to your existing action. So as you do your static
drills, ensure you are feeling like it’s a new sport you are learning. This will help.

Just HOLDING the key positions will help you balance correctly and maintain an
even position. When it comes to simulating the 4 tent pegs for instance, this is ex-
actly the way to start off. Once you master each position you then move on to
joining movements together.

How you join those movements is your style or your own way of doing it. Everyone
will have a different way. How you move through each phase of your action is the

60
style - and the content of the technique is the substance. There is always a trade-
off between style and substance. A bowler’s action can often ‘look nice’ because it
is flowing yet is riddled with technical flaws that stop that bowler from becoming
a top class cricketer. Another bowler might have a ‘jerky’ or ‘awkward’ looking ac-
tion yet that masks some tremendous biomechanics that create express pace,
power and control.

The truth is everyone has their own way of bowling dependent upon back foot po-
sition right through to the finish of the action. The idea is to identify clearly what
aspects you wish to alter and then build those in - very slowly.

As you get more confident and comfortable with what you are doing you move
into a walk-through drill. This is as it sounds, a drill where you walk up into the ac-
tion and then put all your positions together into one, flowing movement. But
here’s the problem:

1. When you walk-through it feels weird

2. You cannot focus on all the positions simultaneously
3. You can be off balance
4. Your back foot often lands in the wrong position

Don’t worry about any of this. The entire point of you building any drill up is to
start making changes and changes begin the moment you think about them. The
secret is to start feeling what’s right and wrong. You are about to become your
own coach and as well as be the eyes & ears of what you are doing, you also need
to instantly feedback to yourself so you can continually adjust.

The golden rule is, if the action starts to break down or fall apart, or you start to
lose the key positions, then GO BACK TO THE POINT WHERE IT WAS PERFECT and
start again from there.

This is true for any level of drill you do, and for all disciplines.

The walk through gives you a fraction more ground speed, which will enable your
bottom half to drive a bit faster. This engages the hips and legs better, plus syn-
chronises the overall movement. The faster you move in your approach, the more
ground speed you have to transfer into the speed of the ball.

Now when you move on to a jog-through where you take a very light jog, you will
start to jump at the crease a small amount and your foot patterning will change.
That’s because your feet move quicker and with a small jump, you start to initiate
hang time. This will give a slight delay as you would get when you bowl. Bear this
in mind.

61
A run through drill will be the closest drill you have to bowling but not actually
doing so. You can and should still try to be aware of the technical parts in a way
that you cannot when you are bowling for real. It does feel mighty odd to bowl
without a ball from virtually a full run up. That’s because you are probably thinking
about the tent pegs yet have other issues like take-off, hang time and run-up to
contend with.

Don’t worry about those at this stage. The only purpose of run through drills is to
create additional ground speed to synchronise the top and bottom half of your
bowling action. As we discovered earlier, if you tend to bowl short in a match it
usually means your top half is too active and if you bowl too full, your legs are
moving too fast for your top half. So bowling without a ball allows you the latitude
to play around with the timings so that you feel a co-ordinated release.

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 11. Isolation & Stripped-Out Drills
The great thing about doing isolation drills is you can do them for any and all parts
of your bowling. You can make up your own effectively. That’s because you are
trying to replicate what you want to do, in an isolated way.

For example, if you wish to practice your take off from your run up into your ac-
tion, then just run and drill that particular part until it is exactly what you want.
You would run, jump and then just ‘bail out’ of your action. What I mean by that is
you don’t bother actually bowling because you are simply working the jumping
part of your bowling.

The same goes for run-up, load-up, hand positions, foot positions - in fact all parts
of your cricket can be isolated, stripped out and then worked on. That is the
beauty of doing this type of drill.

You have to remember though that it does feel very different when you complete
movements at slower speeds and it will make you extremely aware of those
movements, too.

When you are working on your tent peg positions, you should get comfortable
with each of them in turn before attempting to link them together. If you want to
know if you have that linking correct, attempt them in a reverse order. Should you
be able to go backwards and forwards in your action and STILL understand what
you are doing then you will have truly worked out the mechanics of your move-
ments in the crease.

Often the changes are so small as to almost be unnoticable. But they sometimes
feel very big. Whenever you make a change, because that change may be com-
pletely different to the way you have done it before, it feels different. Others
might look at it and think it looks exactly the same. So there is a trade-off between
what it feels like and what it looks like. The bigger the changes, clearly the bigger
the visual differences you will see. This is why you should recall that small keys
open big locks.

The other thing about stripped out drills is by isolating the upper body and the
lower body in your foundational power bowling drills, you can really develop the
performance of these parts of your body.

The near impossible challenge you face when trying to assemble all of the pieces
at once becomes much easier when you reduce the criteria and focus on one thing
at a time. The whole body is moving: hands, arms, feet, legs, hips, torso, shoul-

63
ders, and everything in between. These pieces of your body work in concert, and
in order to work in concert, they must also function solo.

That is the key to making any drills you do, work.

It is important to note that bowling fast is not a single day lesson. It takes several
sessions to learn the techniques and several to start applying them. You have to
choose your battles while learning and teaching it. Go for simple wins first, the
things you find easiest to master.

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 12. Cross Over Sessions
After doing a huge amount of drills, changes, tweaks and other things to change
your muscle memory, there comes a time when you have to put it all together,
with a ball in your hand, and then deliver it. Up until now though, you have learned
not to worry about anything except your body positions.

This is exactly correct. But you are about to enter a world of confusion and dread-
ful outcomes as you start to ‘bowl’ again whilst being conscious of what you are
doing. This is known as a ‘cross over’ session, where you cross over from technical
(action) to tactical (outcomes) but still think about the technical.

Now I can assure you this is a truly horrible session. You will feel everything that is
happening and you will feel it is wrong most likely. That’s because you are engag-
ing BOTH the conscious and sub-conscious parts of your brain when you only do
the conscious in drills and subconscious in matches/outcomes.

By waking both parts of the brain, you are now going to bash them into one an-
other with the resultant experience being one of confusion and downright weird-
ness. This is a necessary step.

You want to adjust to crossing over so your subconscious takes charge of your ac-
tion, as it does in a match. Before it can take charge, you have to hold its hand by
telling it what you want to happen and you do this by still thinking about your
technique.

The best way to run a session like this is to have a target set up, preferably on the
top of off stump, and look at that with the aim of hitting it, whilst being extremely
aware of the action. You now have to balance whether it is more important to be
able to hit the target or more important to have your technical aspect hold up. Be-
fore you hand the baton over to your subconscious and just let it take over, you
must try to keep the integrity of the action as a priority.

You should film this session and then review the footage.

The first cross over session is the worst. The next time you revisit it you will find it
is somewhat easier. And the more you are able to put this type of session to-
gether, the better your action will ‘feel’. Once you have experienced it you will
know exactly what I am talking about.

When you get to the point you can pretty much maintain the correct positions and
still hit the areas you want, it is time to pass the whole thing across to outcomes

65
and simply bowl. This is the moment your action will have changed.

Please understand that anything can be changed at any time. It is only by serious
repetitions that we alter those things that feel natural to us.

If you feel parts of your bowling need work you can go back to tent pegs or other
isolation and stripped out drills any time you wish to tidy them up.

66
 13. General Training For Optimal Results
8 Principles You Need To Know
This section is for those of you with a more than keen interest in overall fitness
training and how to make the very best of your physical attributes. Only read this
if you wish to understand the PRINCIPLES behind the training as it doesn’t include
the actual training exercises itself for very good reasons; everyone is different, I
don’t know how old you are and I don’t know what fitness level you are already at.

That’s why I don’t wish to get massively technical here. But I do want to get you
thinking about what you can do to help yourself (or those you coach) to become a
far better fast bowler. Because the truth is, unless you are part of a world-class
training programme, the chances are you will have to do much of the work your-
self to support your own physical development.

Also a list of ‘ideal, simple exercises’ was covered somewhat in The Fast Bowler’s
Bible. Instead, I am going to get you to think and consider “how can I help my-
self?” and “what should I be looking at?’ when it comes to making yourself as
ready as possible. I urge you to research and discover for yourself what’s out
there.

So here I am going to talk about 8 principles, either for you or the players you
work with:

The Overload Principle

The Balance Principle

The Individualisation Principle

The Transfer Principle

The Specifics Principle

The Recovery Principle

The Reversibility Principle

The Variation Principle

These are principles that will help you to understand training, and the importance
strength & conditioning plays in making you a better cricketer. Read this if you

67
wish to get a deeper knowledge in this area, but use it purely as a guide and not a
definitive answer.
THE OVERLOAD PRINCIPLE

The Overload Principle is a basic sports fitness training concept. It means that in
order to improve, fast bowlers must continually work harder as their bodies adjust
to existing workouts. Overloading also plays a role in skill learning.

Improving cardiovascular fitness involves keeping moderate activities for ex-

tended periods of time. Increasing strength requires lifing increasingly heavier
weight loads. The principle applies to length and amount of training, as well.

For example, if your goal is to improve upper body strength, you would continue
to increase training weight loads until your goal was achieved.

If the training load was not increased to push you to higher levels of strength, you
would show little improvement. To improve your cricket by increased upper body
strength for example, must be merged into whole body execution of game skills.

Overload and Cricket Skill Learning

Cricket skills are learned through a variety of techniques and concepts. It is the
quality of practice that counts, rather than quantity and intensity.

Learning movements correctly the first time is ideal. But when learned skills re-
quire substantial corrections, overlearning helps.

Overlearning means repeatedly practicing a skill beyond what is required to per-

form it. Simply, it is a method where quality and quantity are used to overcome er-
rors. Normally, skills are best learned when fatigue does not affect the cricketer’s
ability to correctly pattern movements.

Tips on Applying the Overload Principle

The following advice is commonly accepted and practiced:

1. Increase loads gradually and progressively. Training loads should become more
intense over a period of time, not increased too abruptly or with too much inten-
sity.

2. Test maximums. Through testing, even if the test comes in the form of competi-
tion, training loads usually vary between 60-85% of maximum efforts.

68
3. Avoid muscular failure. It is not necessary to train until muscles fail or the player
collapses.

4. Allow ample recovery time. Too little recovery over time can cause an over-
training effect. Too much recovery time can cause a detraining effect.

5. Plan and monitor training loads. Design long-range, periodised training pro-
grammes, test players, and evaluate their progress to guide training decisions
about overload.

6. Monitor team and individual progress. Identify general areas where there are
common deficits compared to other fitness components and skill qualities. If play-
ers "run out of gas", for example, training can be overloaded to improve skilled
performances when fatigued.

7. Alternate activities. Organise workouts to allow recovery on some aspects of

training while increasing intensity on others. Use periodised planning to link into
weekly and daily activities.

8. Coordinate all training activities and schedules. Fitness training loads should be
adjusted for technical and tactical activities, travel, competitions, and other fac-
tors that could influence how overloading should occur. This would include ‘taper-
ing’ that refers to the practice of reducing exercise in the days just before an
important competition.

9. Focus on skill work first. Practice skills that require greater coordination prior
to intense fitness training if both are performed in the same workout session. For
example, complete Olympic lifting before weight training activities of lesser com-
plexity.

The Overload Principle must work in concert with other Sports Training Principles:

THE BALANCE PRINCIPLE

The Balance Principle dictates that all training must be properly proportioned in
order to achieve best results. This broad principle operates at many levels of
human performance. All things in moderation applies to sports training as well as
life, in general.

This principle suggests the right mix of training activities, diet, and healthy lifestyle
habits. Going to extremes can result in poor performance, illness, and injury.

69
Coaching Tips to Promote an Optimal Training Balance

1. Training Activities. Design your total training programme to include the proper
proportions of activities and time allocated to develop them. This is a basic goal of
the annual programme plan.

2. Training Intensity. “More is better” style of thinking may not produce the best
results. Then again, undertraining will not promote adequate progress. Find the
best balance of intensity and recovery. Be sensitive to signs of overtraining in your
players.

3. Muscle Balancing. Opposing muscle strength should fall within certain ranges.
Not all muscles should be worked the same. For example, hamstrings should be
60-75% of the strength of the quadriceps. The very nature of sport movements can
promote imbalances. Training should include flexibility, muscle testing, and balanc-
ing to prevent injuries.

4. Body Composition. Achieving the best balance of body fat vs. lean body mass is
important. Monitoring body mass index can help guide dietary and training deci-
sions.

5. Nutrition. Players' diets must include essential nutrients in proper proportions

that may shift depending upon physical demands. Lack of proper nutrients (e.g.,
iron, protein) can slow progress. Monitoring food intake and supplements can
help players achieve best results.

6. Evaluation. Evaluating various aspects of players' health and performance can

assist in identifying areas where imbalances may occur and what is needed to cor-
rect them.

THE INDIVIDUALISATION PRINCIPLE

The Individualisation Principle dictates that training should be adjusted according

to each cricketer's needs, such as age, gender, rate of progress, and previous ex-
perience. The goal of individualisation is to capitalise on each cricketer's strengths
and minimise the effects of their shortcomings.

Training programme revisions for individual players can come in many forms. Ad-
justments can be made for skill level, size, medical conditions, injuries, motiva-
tional level, or other natural assets. While personal attention is time consuming, it
can speed up a player's training progress.

Coaching Tips for Applying the Individualisation Principle

70
1. Set Clear Goals. Goals set for team results can be personalised according to posi-
tion and players' abilities.

2. Test. Getting your baseline measurements and evaluation of results is the most
precise way to apply this principle. In addition to fitness and skill testing, health-re-
lated tests performed by trainers and other professionals offer implications for
how training can be adjusted.

3. Optimise Shortcomings. Devise ways to overcome weaknesses as much as pos-

sible. For example, for players with low motivation, set specific goals and reward
progress. For example, those who naturally move slowly for whatever reasons,
overload speed-related activities.

4. Gender Differences. Be sensitive to physical as well as cultural differences.

Women have wider hips, a lower center of gravity, and carry more fat in certain
areas than do men. Training tasks may need to be adjusted for these physical dif-
ferences. Encourage and support girls and women equally with boys and men, par-
ticularly where a sport may be more accepted for one gender.

5. Positive-negative-positive. When offering coaching feedback, reinforce the

good points, and also point out areas for improvement. This is especially helpful
when a player has difficulty, whether on a given day or consistently due to per-
sonal weaknesses, positive reinforcement encourages him/her to persist.

6. Senior Cricketers. Older adults may need specific attention compared to

younger players. Coaches should be sensitive to decreased flexibility, postural de-
viations, body composition, and other orthopedically-related factors. Adults prefer
to be active participants in developing training programmes.

7. Youth Cricketers. Competitive youth cricket subjects children to many opportu-

nities, as well as many physical and psychological vulnerabilities. Positive early ex-
periences marked with success can lead the way to healthy lifetime habits.
Coaches and parents should accommodate such factors as; stage of learning, level
of perceptual-motor development, and fitness level and capabilities. Children need
acceptance and encouragement whether they win or lose.

THE TRANSFER PRINCIPLE

The Transfer Principle suggests that learning and performing one activity affects
the performance of related skills and activities. This principle is essential for de-
signing practice strategies that have the greatest positive impact on competitive

71
performance. Correctly applying this principle saves valuable training time while
accelerating results.

Coaching Tips for Applying the Transfer Principle

1. Identify similarities between previously learned skills and new skills.

2. Maximise the similarity between training activities and competitive conditions.

Simulate various elements of competition (e.g. arousal level, game intensity, spec-
tator noise) occasionally during training sessions, particularly during the in-season.

3. Provide adequate experience with fundamental skills before advancing to more

complex skills. Well learned lead-up skills can positively influence a cricketer's per-
formance in more demanding conditions at the next level of play (e.g., nets to cen-
tre wicket practice).

4. Develop more general capabilities, such as critical gross motor skills, that are
adaptable to a variety of sport tasks. For example, in basketball, the vertical jump
is a key element of rebounding and blocking shots.

5. Point out to the player how training activities will improve sport performance.
For example, call attention to the balance, the hip drive and rotation, and the
body movement in certain positions when teaching the bowling action.

THE SPECIFICS PRINCIPLE

The Specifics Principle is key to developing effective fitness training programs for
cricket. Specifics also underlies how fast bowlers learn skills. However, the princi-
ple is sometimes misinterpreted.

Specifics and Sports Fitness

Specifics refers to the type of changes the body makes in response to training.
Very simply - what you do is what you get.

When a fast bowler trains, he or she repeatedly performs activities to prepare for
the exact requirements of bowling fast. In time, the bowler's body becomes bet-
ter able to meet the demands of bowling fast as it adapts to the training regimen.

Adaptations to training are most evident in elite fast bowlers. For example, the ef-
fects of years of rigorous training clearly distinguish the bodies of distance runners

72
from fast bowlers, as a comparison.

For distance runners, major adaptations from the demands of sustained running
include a larger, stronger heart and increased blood vessels to supply oxygen to
the specific muscles involved in running. In contrast, adaptations to training for
fast bowlers include increased size and thickness of specific muscles of the body
that are trained to improve explosive power.

This principle applied to fitness training means that the overall energy demands of
fast bowling determine which fitness components (e.g., strength, power, en-
durance) should be developed so that the requirements of the sport are matched.

For example, basketball fitness training should include some distance work with
intermittent speed and agility training. In contrast, golfers would require little dis-
tance work, but train for power and flexibility. Fast bowlers require speed, power,
balance, explosive energy, flexibility and endurance to enhance their technical
skills and tactical expertise.

Specifics and Cricket Skill Learning

Skills are unique to each sport. Cricket requires fast bowlers to command an arse-
nal of options for executing skills so that they can make split-second adjustments
in a variety of competitive situations.

Specifics for learning fast bowling skills involves performing a variety of closely re-
lated movements. Rather than practicing and perfecting any single skill or move-
ment only, specifics of skill learning means that fast bowlers must develop
variations of skills so that they can quickly adapt to the different conditions they
will encounter in game play.

Early in learning, a bowler will tend to benefit from practicing skills with little varia-
tion because they are just beginning to understand what the skill requires. This is
called the cognitive or mental stage. However, as learners progress, adding varia-
tion to practice better matches the specific demands of competition.

THE RECOVERY PRINCIPLE

The Recovery Principle dictates that fast bowlers need adequate time to recuper-
ate from training and competition. Many believe that a fast bowler's ability to re-
cover from workouts is just as important as the workout itself.

It is during rest periods that a fast bowler’s body adapts to the stress placed upon

73
it during intense workout sessions and competitions. Rest also provides time for a
mental preparation and reflection.

The Recovery Principle applies both to immediate rest needed between bouts of
exercise, as well as to longer time intervals of several hours to about two days.

When you sprint as fast as possible or lift heavy weights, you will notice that your
heart still pumps hard and you breathe heavy for a while after you stop. The term
"metabolic recovery" describes what takes place after you exercise, and it in-
volves the post-exercise elevation of your metabolic rate or oxygen consumption.

Exercise intensity more profoundly affects recovery than does the duration of ex-
ercise. Maximising the recovery processes after interval training, weight training,
or repeated sprint work is important.

Actively cooling down by jogging or walking immediately after intense exercise

prevents the potential for venous pooling. Rhythmic exercise increases blood flow
through the veins and heart during recovery, speeding up lactate removal from
the blood.

Active recovery consisting of light-to-moderate cardio activity decreases blood lac-

tic acid significantly faster than complete rest or passive recovery. Whether cycling
or running, activities should remain at about 30-60% of the lactic threshold level.

Activity during recovery also maintains circulation to the heart, liver, and inactive
muscles that are able to use lactic acid to synthesise glycogen.

Sleep, proper nutrition, and healthy lifestyle habits after intensive training periods
are critical if an athlete is to recuperate.

Recovery can also be facilitated by stretching after workouts. Whirlpools and mas-
sage can also help muscles rest and rebuild more quickly while minimising muscle
soreness. Upright activity in water also assists with recovery.

THE REVERSIBILITY PRINCIPLE

The Reversibility Principle dictates that you will lose the effects of training when
you stop working out. Conversely, it also means that detraining effects can be re-
versed when you resume training. In short, If you don't use it, you lose it.

While rest periods are necessary for recovery, extended rest intervals reduce
physical fitness. The physiological effects of fitness training diminish over time,

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causing the body to revert back to its pretraining condition.

Detraining occurs within a relatively short time period after an athlete ceases to
train. Only about 10% of strength is lost 8 weeks after training stops, but 30-40% of
muscular endurance is lost during the same time period.

While studies report statistically significant losses of fitness, a fast bowler can usu-
ally feel the effects of missing workouts in a shorter period of time. Generally, they
notice losses in endurance and conditioning more quickly than strength.

The Reversibility Principle Does Not Apply to Retaining Skills

Sport skills are retained for much longer periods of time. A skill once learned is
never forgotten, especially if well learned.

Coordination appears to store in long-term motor memory and remains nearly per-
fect for decades, particularly for continuous skills (e.g., cycling, swimming). Over
time, strength, endurance, and flexibility are lost, but fast bowlers remember how
to execute sport skills and strategies.

The challenge often concerns regaining precise timing after detraining. In other
words, the motor skill programs remain intact but the body's physical tools for ex-
ecuting the programmes become rusty and must be resharpened.

Coaching Tips on Applying the Reversibility Principle

1. Conditioning. After long rest intervals, begin a conditioning programme to re-

build cricket fitness. After several weeks of detraining due to illness or for other
reasons, a cricketer may need to increase training volume and reduce intensity to
regain general conditioning.

2. Active Rests. During the off season, active participation in other sports or ac-
tivities minimises detraining effects and can even facilitate skill learning. Avoid
long rest periods with complete inactivity.

3. Retraining. Increase exercise gradually and progressively after long periods of

inactivity. Fast bowlers should avoid performing intense work without first recon-
ditioning. (See the Overload Principle )

4. Avoid Maximum Attempts. A fast bowler should not attempt to lift single maxi-
mum weight loads early in conditioning. They will remember how to properly exe-
cute the lifts, but may sustain an injury if they overestimate how much weight
they can lift compared to their peak performance.

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5. Flexibility. Emphasise stretching exercises to regain joint flexibility. This is partic-
ularly important for older adults who participate in senior cricket.

THE VARIATION PRINCIPLE

The Variation Principle suggests that minor changes in training regimens yield
more consistent gains in sport performance. Training programs for virtually every
sport include variations in intensity, duration, volume, and other important as-
pects of practice.

The most well known method of practice variability concerns training in phases.
Typically, an annual cricket training programme includes phases of training for
conditioning, intensive sport-specific work, in-season maintenance, and an off-sea-
son regimen. Training in phases, or periods, is called periodisation.

Periodisation was used by Eastern Europeans for about 50 years. Macrocycles (a

year), mesocycles (about a month), and microcycles (a week) include planned
changes in exercises, intensity, volume, and other training variables that target
the athlete's goals for peaking during the competitive season.

Adjustments in training are very effective when used for skill learning, as well as
for fitness training.

This principle does not conflict with the Specifics and Overload Principles. Specifics
is about how the fast bowler's body adapts to the type of training program used,
and training should be similar to the demands of bowling fast. Practice variability
simply suggests that players should not perform exactly the same regimen each
day. It supports specifics because competitive conditions present different situa-
tions that demand slightly different responses. The Overload Principle implies that
gradual and progressive changes in training must occur in order for improvement
to take place.

Training Tips for Applying the Variation Principle

1. Set up an annual sports training plan using phases, each with a specific purpose.

2. Plan how all cricket training activities can cohesively build to a training peak
during the competitive season.

3. In each week of each training phase, coordinate the intensity of fitness training
activities with technical and tactical work to allow ample recovery.

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4. For weight training, adjust exercises, sets, reps, rest, and volume within a range
that fits the training cycle.

5. For aerobic training, adjust distance, speed, duration, recovery, and volume
within the training cycle.

6. When signs of overtraining occur, change workouts by reducing intensity and

allowing longer recovery time.

CONCLUSION

I hope the above helps. The bottom line is you are completely responsible for your
own career and pathway. And it is for you to seek the answers you want by find-
ing out the right information. Do not look at what someone else does and try to
copy them in training. That’s because they might be fitter/better/younger than you
or on a completely different training pathway. It is always best to seek the advice
of a trusted health care professional before you embark on any training regime
and I would strongly advise you work with an expert in Strength & Conditioning
who can guide you safely to where you want to go.

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 Final Thoughts
There are further developments in pace bowling coaching I am not able to share
with you at this time because they are being worked on (trial & error, evidential
proof) and are yet to be finalised. But rest-assured that there is some more good
coaching stuff to come and improvements to coaching generically cannot be too
far away one hopes, as fast bowling coaching catches up to the information that is
available.

Simple things like training with a weighted cricket ball to help increase your arm
speed, for instance, may become popular at some stage. I had some weighted
balls specially made a few years ago and used them for those relevant muscle
groups. Whilst you have to be careful not to alter your muscle memory and se-
quencing, they can work. Knowing what to do and what weight to use, is key.

One of the most important things for any cricketer, is to remain open-minded and
inquisitive. The moment you stop questioning or thinking there might be some-
thing better to help you, is the time you cease to have the right mindset to stay
ahead of the game.

Whatever level you play, you always want to be better and it is this approach to
cricket that will look after you. The same is true for coaches who wish to improve
their own knowledge regardless of the level they work at.

Be patient. Ask questions. Work hard. That ethos won’t take you far wrong.

Finally, good luck. You can only control what is in your power and the rest is down
to good fortune. So just make sure the part you can control is as good as you can
make it.

Enjoy the ride.

79
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