I'm updating these on behalf of my lad. He reads your website quite frequently and is fan of this website. Rachin is now 9 and represents Hutt Districts cricket in Wellington, New Zealand. Rachin was an early starter in cricket. When he was growing up (or should I say when he first started to walk), knocking around the balls in the backyard was his favorite passtime. I play cricket fairly seriously and my involvement with cricket spurred Rachin's interest in cricket farily early. Rachin started to play milo cricket when he was about 3 year old and has always continued to play way over his age group. At the moment he plays for premier cricket at the age of 9. He's absolutely mad about cricket and despite our concerns he continues to play every day. Wellington cricket has been of tremendous help in allowing him to practice when he likes at the academy (indoor). Primarily a batsman, Rachin has taken up left arm orthodox from being a medium pacer given the demands of fast bowling. I wasn't happy with that as I thought he had a fantastic fast bowling action but I understand it is up to the player to take up that he feels comfortable at. Rachin ideally hits about 1500 balls a week including throw downs, facing the bowler and the bowling machine. Over the years his training has been fine tuned and winter is the time when we work on the technique. During the summer we just concentrate on facing different bowlers (mean bloody 30 year old club bowlers bowling short stuff included ).

Rachin does pilates, yoga, SAQ, Karate, biking and cross trainer for physical conditioning. Over the time we will updated this with his progress. This is a truly novell idea by you folks to have a repository of training logs using which one can fine tune.

Rachin first played hard ball cricket when he was 7 years old playing in the U11. At 8, he played U12 and mid way through he was pulled up to play for premier cricket as he had scored at an average of 110 at U12. The age group for premier cricket generally is between 11 and 13. Rachin did very well last season scoring nearly 500 runs at an average of 60. In the U11 tourney, he scored 164 runs getting out just once.

When he first played hard ball cricket as a 7 year old in the U11 division, he scored 90 runs through out the season at an average of just about 9. Last year there was no stopping him though, he continued to show consistency and scored more runs than me and at a way better average. I guess failing early teaches a lot of good lessons and can only get better from there. That said he was a champion with the ball in the U11 two seasons ago claiming the best bowler award for the club.

Last year he was chosen as the best batsman for the U11 tourney by Cricket Wellington and was awarded with a trophy. Here are some videos of him since his early years, there are several more on youtube :

Rachin's last uploaded video, from last year :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlrnTYIIrig&feature=channel

He has changed since and we are currently working on fine tuning his batting without actually stuffing his ability to hit around the ground hard. It's always quite hard I have found to change a growing kid too much. More than anything the kids should continue to hit the ball well and technique should only compliment that natural flow not the other way around.