Cricket: 5 Stump Pentagon Drill

Ignore the key fielding principles at your own peril - use this early-season session with your squad today to keep your fielding game sharp!

Players work in groups of 5, in a grid with 5 cones set up in a zig-zag formation, roughly 7 metres apart.

Each player stands on a cone. All players, except for those queueing behind the first cone require balls.

On the coach's call player 1, on the first cone, aims to get to collect the ball that has been dropped from shoulder height by the player on the cone in front of them, before the ball bounces twice.

This is one pick-up.

Player 1 then gives the ball back to the player on the cone, and sets themself before the coach gives the next call.

Again the working player aims to get to the next ball before second bounce.

This process is repeated until all players have performed 4 pick-ups.

The player at the front of the 2 players runs to the middle to collect the ball on the cone and roll it to the player on the opposite side.

This player collects the ball and runs to the middle to put the ball on the cone.

The next player then runs to collect the ball and rolls the ball for next player waiting.

For this game you need two teams of between 6-10 players on each side.

One team tries to see how many catches they can do in a specified time, whist the other team sees how many people they can get to run around the cone and back.

When the batsman (1) calls Yes the coach rolls the ball towards the fielder stood by the stumps.

Fielder (1) runs across, picks up the ball and then tries to run out the batsmen.

Repeat with the next fielder and batsman.

Each batting team has a certain number of wickets (eg. 3 wickets). The teams change over once the batting side have lost all their wickets.