-1st Batting Tip - Keep your eyes level, it's been shown that having your eyes level helps speed up your reaction time. It makes it easier for your brain to process incoming information if your eyes are level when ball is delivered.

-2nd Batting Tip - Your first movement should be from shoulders towards line of ball. The rest of your body will follow naturally and will help ensure you get correctly inline with ball.

-3rd Batting Tip - Play delivery based on its length, if it's short; even if it's in line with wickets it should be 'tonked away', Andy Flintoff style, to boundary. The same principle applies with full deliveries and half volleys.

Ideally you should knock in any new cricket bat for at least six hours, yes it's a lot but it will help condition your bat for heavy usage without damaging it.

You should also knock-in your new cricket bat even if it comes advertised as 'ready to play', as it still won't be ready for full force of a hard new cricket ball, especially if you catch an edge or ball hits toe.

I've seen players go out on to square with a brand new cricket bat, which hadn't been knocked in. In first over he dug out a Yorker, which resulted in a 'fatal' crack in toe of bat. If it had been knocked in properly it's unlikely this would have ever happened. If you don't knock in your bat you could literally be 'throwing £200 down pan'.

To knock in your bat I highly recommend you use an old high quality cricket ball.

Begin gently by tapping bat, particularly focusing in on edges, as these are a very vulnerable part of bat and by end you want edges to be almost slightly rounded.

Spend 2-3 hours doing this stage of knocking in bat, making sure you cover all of face of bat, excluding splice area. Don't knock-in back of cricket bat.