Why "Ultimate Pace Secrets'?

It’s been frustrating to see the poor standard of fast bowling coaching globally.

Bowlers are often left alone to ‘fully develop’ according to so-called experts, yet end up with injury-prone actions. And instead of making often quite simple (and certainly obvious) changes those young quicks are grooving incorrect movements and biomechanics that are inefficient. 

This means that they have to compensate for problems and never quite fulfil their speed potential or length of career. Worse still, we discover stress injuries of spine, intercostal, knees and ankles as stresses are carried incorrectly through the body.

It does partly explain why we have seen the plethora of Strength & Conditioning coaches in cricket – to help make players ‘stronger’ (instead of better). Strength and stability have tended to be used as watch words for avoiding teaching correct actions in many cases. Yet the truth is Strength & Conditioning has a vital role to play.

The secrets of coaching pace and accuracy have yet to be picked up by much of the world. The plain truth is that basic knowledge of creating pace bowlers has not been known. Fast bowling is a process and like all processes, it can be learned.

The book allows all coaches, all players and all those involved with cricket at all levels to once and for all understand just how to achieve those ends.

The Fast Bowler’s Bible was ground breaking in 2006. This book finishes off what that book started. This one has the drills to go with the interventions and tweaks. If you choose to improve, this book will help you do exactly that.

The reason this book is your two and a half second coach is that it focuses on the most important part of pace bowling – the part that takes around two and half seconds. It starts as you approach the crease, includes your jump to the crease and then your action through it.


I wanted to write this book now because having travelled to many Test playing countries and spoken to hundreds of high-level coaches, it is clear that there is no consensus on how to bowl fast - even from them. It would be useful to have some pace bowling guidelines with regarding to coaching, that everyone can use and develop talent. What is evident is that nothing remotely useful is coming from coach educators on this subject and thus the coaches themselves rely on urban myths, wives tales and good old-fashioned incorrect information.

To those of you who have the incorrect belief that fast bowlers are born and not made (which was covered in The Fast Bowler’s Bible) are doctors born? Are racing drivers born, scientists, surgeons, dentists, architects or any other profession you choose to mention? Clearly we know that fast bowling is a process and since humans are process-based learners, we can learn how to bowl fast. 

It doesn’t mean that certain people aren’t pre-disposed with natural attributes and some people, without the slightest coaching, can fling the cricket ball quickly. In the same way people can run fast, or jump high, hit hard or swim quickly. But It isn’t about genetics, height, diet or other factors, as all of the processes for improving performance can be learned. Partly the problem exists because coaches tell people they cannot bowl fast. The only reason you would do this, is if you didn’t know how to coach it.

So I want to keep very complex information simple. I want everyone who reads this to be able to understand the processes of pace bowling. And I want everyone to be able to take this information and apply it. After all it is not knowledge that is important but the use of knowledge that will make you a better coach or player.

It therefore comes in two parts to coach speed – understanding how it is generated, then being able to apply it to live bowlers.

What I have done is explain how to bowl fast, then break down the reasons why that particular drill works and how you should go about training yourself to do it ‘naturally’. When you have adopted and adapted the new movements into your action then you will feel they have been there all along. This book is a walk-through guide to assist you if you seek ultimate pace.

What I wanted to also do is bust the many, many myths that surround fast bowling coaching. As you go through this book you will discover that there are some things you thought about fast bowling that might be shown to be just plain wrong. It stems from people never really questioning what they hear from others and simply repeating it as fact. Sadly much of it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. So we will show how pace is correctly generated and why the movements create power in your body to accelerate the ball out of your hand.

Strength & Conditioning coaching (S&C) has an important role to play as a function of fast bowling but not instead of it 

Let me be blunt. You do not bowl faster just because you are stronger. You cannot ‘muscle the ball” down to the batsman. Strength helps the body take the strain and rigours of the stresses that apply within the action, but the size of the muscle is not the deciding factor in generating speed in fast bowling.

I say this because teaching a bowler to compensate for problems of injury due to a poor action is not eliminating the cause of any issue. 

Understanding how to bowl fast and straight and having all the skill drills and correction techniques to go with it, can feel a little like being someone who knows where all the gold is buried but has no road map. I wanted to chart that road map so others could discover fast bowling ‘gold’. So this book is your guide if you choose to follow it. It is a blueprint for producing fast bowlers - or at least those who can maximise what natural attributes they already have. 

The one thing you need as a coach is a receptive audience. Plus you need to have full access to players and a large pool of them to have some success with. That is why I hope coaches who are in charge of fast bowling development, at all levels are open-minded to producing 100 mph fast bowlers regularly with the same progress that other sports have made such as running, throwing and swimming. It’s almost a ‘no-brainer’ to develop pace bowlers and we are already way behind in technical terms. Other than simply relying on Strength & Conditioning to make players fitter, the information is out there for improvement in actions that not only help prevent injury but also increase speed and control.

Hats off to anyone who wants to start learning how to produce genuine pace bowlers.

And one final thing before we start. If you stop for a second, that’s where you’ll finish. What I mean by that is you can do it. You can change your action by applying the drills and knowledge contained in this book. The only person who can stop you – is you.

Your challenge is in filtering the information you will be given based on anecdotal evidence, stories, tips of what others used to do and good old fashioned myths about speed.

Good luck with that and enjoy the journey.

https://shop.maverickscricket.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BOOK003