Graded or Mixed Nets: Which Gets the Best Out of Your Squad?

Ask ten coaches how they set up their nets and you'll get two camps. Some swear by graded nets, keeping players with others of a similar standard. Others prefer mixed nets, spreading players across the grades so everyone trains together. Both have their champions, and both can be right.

So which one actually gets the best out of your squad? The honest answer is that it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Let's look at both properly, because once you understand what each one does, you can stop picking a side and start using the right approach for the right night.

What graded nets do well

Graded nets group players by standard. Your first-grade batters face your first-grade bowlers, your lower grades train together, and so on down the club. The whole idea is to mirror match day as closely as possible.

The strength of graded nets is realism. Your top players are tested against bowling of the standard they'll actually face on Saturday. The intensity is high, the contest is genuine, and everyone is training at a level that stretches them without overwhelming them. For match preparation, it's hard to beat. Players walk into the weekend having faced exactly the standard they're about to come up against.

Graded nets also make selection clearer. When players train at their level, you get a clean read on who's in form and who's pushing for a spot above them.

Where graded nets fall short

The downside is that graded nets can become a bit of a closed loop. Your developing players only ever face bowling of their own standard, so they rarely get the experience of facing something quicker, sharper or more cunning than they're used to. They can plateau, simply because nothing at training ever asks a new question of them.

There's also a cultural cost. When the grades never mix, the club can start to feel like separate teams training in the same place, rather than one club pulling together. Juniors coming through don't get the chance to learn from the senior players, and the senior players never get to pass anything on.

What mixed nets do well

Mixed nets spread players across the grades on purpose. A developing batter might share a net with a senior player. A young bowler might get the chance to run in at an experienced bat.

The strength here is development and culture. Younger and lower-grade players get exposure to a higher standard, and there's no faster way to improve than being stretched by someone better than you. Senior players take on a mentoring role, often without even realising it, and the whole club feels more connected. Pre-season in particular, when the focus is on development and building the group, mixed nets can be brilliant for bringing a squad together.

Where mixed nets fall short

The risk with mixed nets is the mismatch. Put a developing player in against the quickest bowler at the club with no thought, and you don't develop them, you knock their confidence in a few deliveries. Go the other way and your best batter is facing bowling that doesn't test them at all.

Mixed nets also drift further from match realism. If your top-order players spend the week facing a wide range of standards, they're not getting the concentrated, match-standard preparation that graded nets provide.

So which should you use?

Here's the part most coaches miss. It was never meant to be a permanent choice. The best programs use both, depending on the time of year and the goal of the session.

Early in pre-season, when you're building your group, developing players and growing your culture, mixed nets often make sense. As the season approaches and matches loom, graded nets sharpen your sides and get them ready for exactly what they'll face. Some nights you might even run both, graded nets for the senior squads and a mixed group for your juniors and developing players.

The key isn't the label. It's making the choice on purpose. A graded night should be graded because you decided it needed to be, not because it was easier. A mixed night should be mixed with the matchups thought through, so every player is challenged rather than exposed. The moment it becomes an accident of who walked in first, you lose the benefit of either approach.

Making it work without the headache

The trouble with all of this is that setting up graded nets properly, or mixed nets that actually make sense, takes real thought and time. Grading nets by hand means sorting your whole squad by standard every session. Running mixed nets well means carefully managing the matchups so nobody is overmatched or under-cooked. Do it wrong and you get the downsides of both.

This is one of our favourite things about what we built into NetCaptain. It does both, and it does them properly. Choose graded, and it groups your players by their grade to mirror match day. Choose mixed, and it spreads players across the nets while still keeping the matchups sensible, so a developing player is challenged rather than blown away, and your best players are still tested. You can even run graded and mixed side by side on the same night for different squads. Switching between them takes seconds, so you can set the session up around your goal for the night, not around whatever's easiest to organise.

Graded or mixed was never really the question. The question is what you want out of a given session, and then setting your nets up to deliver it. Get that right, and both become powerful tools in a well-run program.

You can see how NetCaptain builds graded and mixed sessions for your club at netcaptaincricket.com, and start a 14-day free trial whenever you're ready.