• Aussie Leg Spinner Stuart MacGill on how much time a spinner should spend in the nets.
• Creative coaching from the ECB - England take this one step further and setup a game only for spinners.
• But sometimes you have to know when to take a rest from all this cricket lark.
• If you are having trouble sticking to your fitness and diet plans, take a look at FitDay and fitPod: A couple of tricks to help you motivate yourself, especially if you are a bit obessive about things (like I tend to be).

In the 5th Century BC, 2 Greek athletes gave up their usual vegetarian meals for meat to try and get stronger. It was the first recorded sport specific diet.

And it worked.

Ever since that day, our obsession with food has grown into a multi-billion pound diet industry with fads and fashions claiming instant fat loss, huge performance gains or massive muscle growth. As cricketers we can ignore the hype and head straight for the facts:

I’m having a few technical difficulties with email updates at the moment. This means you will not be getting email updates currently.

The fine people at feedburner are working on it for me though.

I’m hoping it will be sorted soon, but in the meantime why not subscribe to my fully operational death star RSS feed? It’s just as funky as email.

Cricket is a game that needs you to be fast and strong. If you have been following my pre-season training programme you will have been building up to this workout.

From time to time, guest posters will give you a slightly different take on cricket. Ian Canaway of CricketSecrets.com tells us about bat care.

With almost all new cricket bats, you need to spend some time conditioning it before using it in a competitive environment.

This is done by 'knocking the bat in'. Knocking in is the process of compressing and binding lose fibres in a new bat together to allow the bat to withstand the constant impact from the ball during your innings.

Kelvin is a club cricket all rounder. Like many other players he is motivated to take his game to the next level.

He sent me an email to ask my advice:

I'm 17 years old and 6'4. I'm considered an all-rounder and have played in the top Malaysian League. However, I still want to improvemy game as I know there are many things I can do better.

If you have ever bowled or captained, you are sure to have asked yourself: Where are we going to get 10 wickets from today?

It's rare in club cricket to have bowlers good enough to knock a side over one their own, so you have to use every trick in the book.

You already know the main ploy: Risk losing in order to win. Now you need to convert that to real life tactics:

So you are convinced SAQ is an essential part for your cricket training. But you havent bought the book yet.

Bob Willis is a great believer in long slow running to get fit for cricket.

Bob may have been a great bowler, and he sure knows more about the game than I ever will.

He doesnt know fitness for toffee though.

Cricket is a game based on explosive speed, quick feet and fast sprints not long, knee crushing endurance tests. Thats according to Alan Pearson the sports science mastermind behind the SAQ for Cricket book.

Fred Flintoff hooking a fast bowler into the stand, Adam Gilchrist taking a diving leg side catch or Steve Harmison exploding into his action.

All examples of the need for explosive power as a cricketer.

While much of this is natural talent, you can dramatically improve your power through training. Particularly pre-season.