Batting Drill: Death Hitting

Here's a fun drill that can teach players about hitting at the death of an innings. Perfect timing for the World T20, where batsmen will be in the death from almost the first ball.
It's a fun time for batsmen with all the swinging, scampering runs and racing for the line. But it's still a skill that can be developed, so here you can practice your "slogging" in a more organised way.

Most people know that the secret to death batting is hitting the rope, but not everyone knows that there is more to it to swinging wildly. The best death hitting is a calculated risk based on:

• the quality of the bowling
• the distance the batter can hit
• the confidence of the batter

This drill teaches you the range you have at your disposal, which feeds into the best tactics for your skills. In other words, you know what you can do.

Range hitting drill

You will need:

• Plenty of space (a middle practice area is ideal)
• A bat, lots of balls and the usual protective equipment

Set the drill up as shown below, with the batsman having open access to deep midwicket and deep mid on. Station fielders on the boundary.

Feed full toss length balls to the batsman who attempts to hit the ball for a boundary. The feed can be from a throw or a bowling machine. Over time you can change to length balls or half volley balls.
Track performance (runs scored, times out) so you can see improvements.

Review to improve

While this drill is a lot of fun, you also want to get better at death hitting. That mean making time to review how you did.

• What is your range?
• What techniques worked best for you?
• Based on your hitting ability, would your tactics be better going for the rope, or finding gaps and running hard?
• Based on this conclusion, how will you practice next time?

Give it a try and let me know how you go.