Cricket Preseason Planner: Free Week-by-Week Plan

Build a week-by-week cricket preseason plan in under a minute. Tell us how many weeks you have, your role, how often you can train and what equipment you have, and you get strength, speed, role-specific work (including a graded bowling build-up), mobility and a taper into your first match.

Count the week of the first match as the last week.

Nets and club training count as sessions.

Please choose all four options above.
Cricket preseason plan · vizzblog.com
Your preseason plan
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Every session: start with an 8–10 minute warm-up (easy jog, leg swings, skips, a few build-up runs) and finish with about 8 minutes of mobility: hip flexor stretch, thoracic rotations, ankle rocks and hamstring sweeps. Shift the days to suit your week, but keep hard sessions apart.

Week by week

Listen to pain, not the plan. Normal muscle soreness fades in a day or two. Sharp pain, joint or bone pain, or low back or side pain in a bowler is a reason to stop and see a physio or sports doctor. If you have a heart condition, take blood pressure or heart medication, or have been inactive for a long time, check with your doctor before adding sprints.

How this cricket preseason planner works

The planner splits your preseason into four phases. Foundation weeks rebuild basic strength and running with moderate effort. Build weeks raise the load. Sharpen weeks bring in faster sprints, more match-like drills and fuller bowling spells. The last week is a taper: training volume drops by about half while intensity stays the same, so you reach the first match fresh. That follows a meta-analysis of tapering studies, which found the best results came from cutting training volume by roughly 41–60% while keeping intensity and frequency the same. If you have 9 weeks or more, one lighter week is added after the foundation block.

Strength training is in every week because it is the strongest exercise-based injury prevention tool in the research: a meta-analysis of randomised trials found strength programmes cut sports injuries to less than a third, while stretching on its own made no real difference. The plan also includes the Nordic hamstring curl, because hamstring strains are the most common injury in elite cricket and programmes that include Nordics roughly halve hamstring injuries. Mobility work is there to help you move well and feel better, not as injury insurance.

The bowling build-up

Fast bowling is the most injury-prone job in cricket. In Australian elite data, fast bowlers had the highest injury prevalence of any role, and lumbar (low back) stress fractures caused the most missed playing time. The research on bowling workloads points the same way again and again: sudden jumps in bowling are the problem, steady bowling is protective. Elite fast bowlers who bowled more than 50 overs in a match had a higher injury risk over the next three to four weeks, and bowlers whose weekly load jumped well above their recent average had a higher injury risk the following week.

So the plan starts pace bowlers on a short run at moderate effort, adds about one over per bowling session each week, keeps bowling to two days a week with at least two clear days between them, and only reaches full match intensity late in preseason. Spinners follow a similar but larger build-up. These ball counts are a cautious starting point, not a research-proven number for adults: there is no official adult limit, and Cricket Australia’s guidance for young pace bowlers recommends a build-up of more than 10 weeks so bowlers are close to match volume before the season. If your preseason is shorter, keep your early-season spells short and log them in the bowling workload tracker.

Tips for cricketers over 35

  • Do not sprint cold. Hamstring and calf strains love a cold, sudden sprint. Warm up fully, and in early weeks keep runs relaxed.
  • Keep the gaps. Two hard days in a row is where older bodies struggle. Put an easy day or rest day between them.
  • Count every ball. Warm-up balls, nets and throwdowns to teammates all count towards your bowling load.
  • Drink before the long days. Full days in the sun need a plan; use the hydration calculator.

Read more: cricket fitness after 35: speed and injury prevention, strength training after 35 and how to sleep better after 35.

Sources

  1. Bosquet et al. (2007), Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise: effects of tapering on performance, a meta-analysis
  2. Lauersen, Bertelsen and Andersen (2014), British Journal of Sports Medicine: exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries, meta-analysis of randomised trials
  3. van Dyk, Behan and Whiteley (2019), British Journal of Sports Medicine: the Nordic hamstring exercise halves the rate of hamstring injuries
  4. Orchard, Kountouris and Sims (2016), Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine: incidence and prevalence of elite male cricket injuries
  5. Orchard et al. (2009), American Journal of Sports Medicine: fast bowlers show up to a 3–4 week delay between high workloads and injury
  6. Hulin et al. (2014), British Journal of Sports Medicine: spikes in acute workload and injury risk in elite fast bowlers
  7. Cricket Australia: youth pace bowling guidelines (build-up, rest and recovery)
  8. American College of Sports Medicine (2009): progression models in resistance training for healthy adults

This planner gives general education, not medical advice or individual coaching. Check with your doctor before starting a new training plan if you have a heart condition, take medication, or are carrying an injury, and see a physio for any pain that does not settle.

More free tools: Bowling workload tracker · Hydration calculator · One-rep max calculator · All tools