Play a winter sport!
Maybe not for everyone but I play rugby over the winter, this was instilled into me at school 'rugby = winter, cricket = summer'
On the whole though abut 8 weeks befre season. Mixture of everything for first couple of weeks then getting more technical closer to season. Of course you southern hemisphere guys have a rather large advantage over us northern hemisphere boys -
- we get approx. 13 hours of direct sun a year (note - point may be a
very rough approximation but accurate with current weather in UK)
- any guys like me, midlands and up I'm sure will generally agree that wickets (especially pre-july) are a bit of a lottery so one week can come nicely onto the bat and the next stick into the wicket like a fat person running through a mud wallow.
I've found that you can prepare your fielding and also your bowling to a certain degree but batting is a lost cause as most UK nets tend to be indoors batting on tracks never seen in game time (unless you are elite).
Some might detect my biterness about being rained off today but just wanted to bitch about an all too common point grr
What was the question again?
LF