Former England Lions wicketkeeper Ben Scott, now of Kinetic Cricket, gets you in tip-top shape. 

Exercise No.1 – Working the abdominals

There are three main ‘ab’ exercises that we see and tend to use in cricket. Any abdominal exercises are good, but in cricket there is a slight hierarchy of needs.

The ‘crunch’ involves lying on our backs and crunching those stomach muscles to bring the body up into a sitting position. Secondly, the good old ‘plank’, where we perch on our toes and elbows, tensing the stomach muscles so the body stays rigid in that plank-like position, and holding the pose. That way we’re holding our abs in position, which is particularly important when it comes to holding our shape when batting. But fundamentally the best movement we can make is to get rotation through the body, so I suggest a ‘Russian twist’, with the backside on the floor and the legs raised, and trying to get all 10 fingers to touch the ground either side of the body, alternating as we go.

Exercise No.2 – The clock lunge

Lunges are so important for cricketing fitness, because they benefit every discipline in the game. One of my favourites is the ‘clock lunge’, which involves making a series of lunges with one foot acting as the pivot in the centre of an imaginary clock face, and the leading leg stretching out as far as possible, and then returning to the centre before moving around on a different angle. I advise that you change which leg to lead with, but the key is to complete a series of separate lunges in different directions, going round the ‘clock face’ and finally returning to the position where you started.

Part one & part two of this series