How to Become an All-Rounder in Cricket
What do Jacques Kallis, Andrew Flintoff, Kapil Dev, Shaun Pollock and Sanath Jaysurya have in common? The answer: they were all cricketers and also the best all-rounders of their time. An all-rounder is not only excellent at batting, bowling and fielding; they are also capable of inspiring their team and other budding cricketers throughout the world.
However, just wanting to be an all-rounder won’t help you become one. Someone who aspires to be such a player must have the ambition, but also the talent and especially the dedication and hard work. Keep reading this oneHOWTO article to find out how to become an all-rounder in cricket.
Contents
Improve your overall fitness
To become an all-rounder in cricket, work out and exercise every day in order to become stronger while staying healthy. We recommend exercising under professional guidance, at a gym or with a personal trainer, in order to avoid injuries. If you are already in a cricket team, ask your coach for specific exercises and tips.
Work on each part of your body besides doing integral workouts. For instance, you can use dumbbells to build the muscles on your chest and arms and to perform squats to build the muscles of your legs. Having broad shoulders helps to generate a greater amount of pace: bench presses will be useful.
Of course, you must not forget to warm up before exercising and to stretch afterwards to prevent injuries and strains, which would shorten your cricket career even before starting.
Practice batting
If you want to become an all-rounder cricketer, you must increase your ability to bat for long periods. In order to bat at top performance, you will have to work on your front and back foot defensive play.
When it comes to batting in cricket, take example of Shane Warne, who was primarily known as a bowler. He could rotate the ball in a move called legspin, which makes it very hard to hit the ball for the batsman and often causes them to get bowled.
In order to prevent that, you must strengthen your defensive game. For this, drop the ball in front of you on the off and on side while working it into space. If you want more tips, take a look at how to practice cricket batting by yourself.
Practice bowling
Once you're an excellent batsman, you can become an all-rounder by practicing bowling. To become a fast bowler you must master the technique of swinging or cutting the ball many times. After the ball bounces, the cut surprises the batsman. This is a very effective technique for a bowler.
A bowler should always be mentally strong and should never lose their cool. In the game of cricket, a bowler might make a hat trick - dismiss three consecutive batsmen - or give many boundaries, which always lowers morale. Each of these actions will bring different changes in mood. The best bowler is calm and observant: they're the ones who neither let a hat trick get over their head nor the boundaries break their spirit.
Studying the batsman is an integral part of bowling. If you can understand the mentality of the batsman, you have already won half the game and are on your way to becoming an all-rounder cricketer.
Keep practicing!
Just having talent won’t help any budding cricketer to become an all-rounder player. You must team it up with extreme dedication and hard work.
To be an all-rounder in cricket, you need to put more hours of practice every day, more than anyone else. Take a day rest in a week and show up for practice diligently 5 to 6 times a week. Last but not the least, never lose focus of your goal.
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