Cricket! The mental side...

For anyone who has played cricket, from club level to elite level will have some understanding as to the importance of mental preparation and in many aspects is that barrier that separates the good players with the rest, the ability to focus your mind and body using psychological techniques is a skill in itself which in my opinion has only really been mastered by a select few within the world of cricket.

This article has been written after reading the book 'The psychology of cricket' authored by Dr Jamie Barker and Dr Stewart Cotterill. This book summaries and explains the importance of developing mental toughness in cricket very well, and on a personal level has inspired me to write about it, the book also uses some very inspiring quotes from high profile characters, for which in my opinion would be doing the book some injustice if i didn't share them with my readers.

"I think ability is a 10 to 20 per cent requirement, you need 80 to 90 per cent mental strength" Glenn Mcgrath

"Hard work has to back up ability" Wasim Akram

"Cricket is a game that obviously requires talent, but when talent is equal, as it so often is, the formula for success comes from strength of mind" Steve Waugh

What is the mental side?

This is a question which every successful cricketer has to answer, cricket is not all about ability although this is obviously of high importance at higher levels. But in my opinion the most important aspect of any successful cricketer is their ability to deal with factors which can affect their normal way of thinking, for example irrelevant stimuli such as crowd or opposition fielders which can impact a players performance so if a cricketer is able to overcome these barriers and still maintain a complete state of concentration and preparation they are more likely to be successful compared to players who can’t adapt, in summation those who get talked out of their wicket or are overwhelmed by crowd pressure.

Mental preparation... sounds like a daunting process to any club level cricketer like myself, but having studied this area, what surprises me more than anything is that it’s something that we do almost instinctively and here's how. When you arrive on a Saturday afternoon for a civilised (most of the time) game of cricket, there are things we do without thinking about it. Going out into the middle to check the pitch to try and predict how it going to play, have a net before the start of play or even sitting in the changing rooms waiting for the toss to be conducted, all of these things although they seem like normal unimportant things actually help us prepare for the game ahead.

It’s only as we move up standards and levels where these preparation techniques become more specific and tailored to the cricketer themselves based on their behaviour and personality. At this level, preparation to play is the most effective way to convert learnt skills during training into a match setting to help athletes deal with irrelevant stimuli. Also developing measures and ways of coping with setbacks also known as coping strategies, are an important factor within mental preparation, this measure can be applied by both the player and the coach but on both levels need to be relevant to the performance or sport and achievable within the agreed time frame. Research has shown over the last couple of years that most unsuccessful teams whether being elite or not often practise with lower intensities with no consequences or psychological rewards, so it’s only natural that when put into a high pressure situation with consequences, these teams haven't developed the appropriate coping strategies and tend to underperform.

This is just a little insight into the mental side of cricket... I would recommend to anyone who is interested in this side of sport psychology or who is a fan of cricket to give the book mentioned earlier a read.

Hope you've enjoyed reading this, as usual any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

'The psychology of cricket’

Dr Jamie Barker

Dr Stewart Cotterill