If any of you follow me on social media (Instagram @littlebigsports, Facebook, Little Big Sports ), you will know how much I love cricket.  It is my favourite sport: I have such great memories of a childhood spent sitting on a summer’s day watching and I’m so pleased that it’s come full circle, with my son playing it now too (still working on my daughter and have even gone to the lengths of establishing a girls’ team at our local club!).

As a result of my passion for the game, I stock a great deal of cricket kit and training aids and as the Christmas shopping days count down, I thought it might be an idea to share some of the bestsellers with you.

New to cricket

If your son or daughter is new to cricket, then you might want to start with a plastic beginners’ set.  There are two on the website which have plastic bats, wickets and balls: the GM Opener Cricket set and the Kwik cricket set. 

The Zings Flashing Cricket Bails are good fun too and help to recreate the excitement of one day cricket!  The bails will fit on top of any wickets so these would be great stocking fillers.

You don’t need to buy the pads etc at this stage as they’re for protection when using hard balls – the traditional red balls that you might have seen on TV.  I certainly recommend playing with windballs at first and only use hard balls either at your local club or with a net, which I’ll come onto later.  I don’t want to be blamed for smashed windows on Christmas Day!

Improving cricketer

Whether your child is a batter or bowler or both, at some point in a match they will need to field. Reflexes and agility are critical parts of fielding and the Crazy Catch is great for honing these skills.  A bonus it is great for getting all the family involved in a game of a catch.

I love the Cricket Feed Buddy as its portable and gentle paced therefore suitable for all ages.  The joy of this device is that children can set it up outside master the basic batting strokes on their own!   A net might come in handy and I have lots in stock, depending on the batter’s proficiency and the size of your garden – check them out here (don’t forget that some of these nets will work for golf too so great if you’re a cricketing and golfing family!).

The V Pro Elite Cricket Practice Net is one of our new products and is proving really popular. My son loves his.  Children can practice their shots and the ball won’t go anywhere thanks to the string and the net.  The V Pro provides an intensity of practice allowing hundreds of balls to be hit all year round. This improves footwork and batting in the all important 'V'  committing the shots to muscle memory.  It's a good batting aid for adults too!

Advanced cricketer

For the cricketer that has everything, or nearly everything, I would love to suggest a Paceman bowling machine as a Christmas present!  These are one of my bestsellers, year in, year out because they are fantastic at what they do.  The settings go from 1-10 with ten being the fastest so your young cricketer will benefit for years from the machine.  It comes with specially designed balls which are hard but not as hard as a normal cricket ball.  I would recommend buying a net and this one is often bought together with the bowling machine.

The bowling machine isn’t just for children and many a parent will want to have a go – great for Christmas Day fun and with the net there’s no risk of it smashing windows or lights – you can just imagine smashing it for 6!

I could write so much more on all the cricket products that I have – cricket bats and balls, cricket pads and even a cricket game!  Thanks to my son, we have tried and tested almost all the cricket products on the website so if you have any questions, I’m always on hand to answer them.  Many of the products have free delivery too!