This is our human brain. It is the control center for everything we do, everything we know and most importantly, everything we are as individuals. In sport, it plays a pivotal role in how we manage our mental state of mind, especially the mental strength we ought to have in order perform. In Cricket, we often talk about pressure. So what do we mean as coaches or players when we talk about pressure or mental strength?
First, let’s talk in general about the different areas of our brain. As you can see above, it has several control categories which must communicate at the best possible levels – part of our neural network so to speak. From the front to the back and all around, in different parts and depths of regions of our brains, they all talk to one another allowing information to pass through in order for us to not just function as human beings but to control the rest of our organs so that our biology make-up continues to work effectively as much as possible based on what our physical conditions have to offer with the course of age.
In sport, we often see players who are physically fitter in their bio-mechanics from an early age, almost from the stage of infancy (3 / 4 years old) towards their mid-30s. These are typically the best years of our lives as playing Cricketers based on physical fitness. We almost tend to condition our bodies based on certain skilled movements as we practice yet age towards adulthood in the hope that those who support us will see our skill movements develop with time. However, what we sometimes don’t recognize or understand initially (because we do not see it physically) is how our brains and mental side is also developing which in fact is what controls our skill movements and development aspects in the first place.
What I believe in is this. As I grew up, I did not have anyone to guide or coach me mentally along with teaching me my physical and skill based movements. How to think, what to think, how to control my emotions and most of all, how to deal with pressure was all the unknown to me. I’m sure a lot of you learned on the job when you first started to play out there on the field and started to realize that their truly was a different side to this sport and not just being able to field, bat, bowl, run etc. We in fact play according to our reactive mindset, our movement and skills are honed in on based on reaction and our minds tell us to automatically do this based on the rules we know about the sport and based on how we visually see the ball.
Here is a classic example as I learned this for myself. During fielding and catching practice, I used to find catching difficult. Whether it was a high catch or a low catch even though I had literally perfected the technique of balance and head / feet position from an early age. My reactive mindset was pretty good. I still managed to drop some basic catches with a Cricket ball and I used to think about why I was doing this. So I did a test on myself. I practiced fielding and catching with a soft ball rather than a tennis ball because the feel of a tennis ball for catching practices had gone especially as I had grown out of practicing as a junior Cricketer. I must’ve been around 10 years old at this time. So there I was under a high catch and as the soft ball landed, I caught it with ease repeatedly! Whether the ball came in fast, slow, low or high, I felt that there was no way I was dropping this. The next day, change of ball and practice with a Cricket Ball, but this time I was dropping the same type of catches 50-60% of the time.
At the end of the 2nd day, I asked myself, why? Then one of my teammates shouted and said, “looks like you’re scared of getting hurt Amit!” It hit me like a ton of bricks – SCARED – that’s it – he’s right! I had to be honest with myself and think that I would generally find myself attacking the same ball when it was a soft ball but every time I was practicing with a Cricket Ball, I had a fear of getting hurt or injured. So now my brain had somewhat acknowledged that I was feeling a bit scared with a Cricket ball. This meant I was feeling vulnerable because it was outside my comfort zone. So what should I do to change this feeling?
It was actually quite simple. On the 3rd day, before the practice, I repeatedly spoke to my inner-self and said “right Amit, this time, you’re not going to think about the type of ball you’re going to catch. You just catch it! If I’m going to be scared of a Cricket ball and getting hurt, go home because this sport is not for you. Are you a quitter or are you ready to accept this fact?” Clearly, I am not the type to quit or give in which I have also learned about myself over the years and probably thanks to this experience, I am somewhat of who I am today too. So now my focus was simply on catching regardless of injury or any physical pain I may receive – I had to trust in my own ability that I knew I could catch.
RESULT!
I knew I had the confidence to catch because I knew I had the right balance and technique overall but this time I looked forward to challenging the Cricket Ball instead rather than letting it challenge me. I said to myself that I was stronger than the Cricket Ball and even if the ball does sting at times, shake it off but make sure you give it your best shot. That day’s practice was a game changer for me. This change in mindset, overcoming my fear of injury yet knowing I had good overall skill, balance and technique, my brain decided to adjust and fine tune my emotional thinking to my reactive thinking and they combined! From this day forward, I even enjoyed facing fast bowlers as a batsman and faster speeds off the bowling machine because as I learned that getting hit by a Cricket Ball was part and parcel of the sport and I should embrace this aspect and overcome this “side-effect” and notion of getting injured or hurt.
I am sure a lot of you can relate to me as you will read all this knowing that control is within all of us but it’s up to us what we can accept about the challenges we face versus how we can adapt and overcome those challenges. You have to decide whether you want to simply quit because you cannot overcome these negative aspects which also happen to be facts that one day you will get injured, or whether you will face this reality and still enjoy being involved. Accept it or keep living in fear will be a choice you have to make, not me or anyone else – just you!
Pressure
The level of pressure that you feel, to me, is a sense of confidence and making sensible decisions based on the amount of confidence you feel based on the situation you find yourself in. The more you make sensible and logical decisions, the more you can trust your inner-confidence.
Example: You have come into bat on a pretty flat batting track and you’re a middle order batsman. You still have a good 20 overs left and your team have 5 wickets in-hand. Therefore logically, you can afford to lose 1 wicket every 4 overs to play out these 20 overs collectively. If your team’s current run-rate is 4 an over, you should be able to make 80 runs still with the same type of bowling attack and you only have 70 runs to make. Should be achievable right? WRONG!
Why is this wrong when mathematically, I am right. Well, 20 overs is still 120 balls (20 overs x 6 balls per over) but the amount of pressure on each ball comes and goes, the reduction in overs or balls left starts to increase on us as individuals especially if 3-4 overs go by and you and your team mate have hardly scored any runs. Now the run rate required has increased to 5 or 6 per over and our overall is still just over 4 runs per over? Welcome to PRESSURE!
Now imagine I lose my wicket or my partner has just lost a wicket only in the 2nd over after I came on? This has a very demoralizing impact on the whole team even if you’re not the one who gets out. So individually rather than collectively, I have to make a choice, finding myself playing with another new batsman and I have to talk to them as they walk onto the field and take strike. How I communicate with them needs to make a huge difference not just to me but to us and the team. Whether I play an innings where I play for the team or for myself because playing for myself doesn’t guarantee the team will win but if I play for myself, my usual 40-50 runs that I am used to making still won’t be enough based on the total we need to win.
This is how I became a team player pretty early on in my playing career. I used to play for my team as I believed my team came first and the win came as a team, not individually. I distinctly remember a similar game where I put on the brakes as our top order had fallen cheaply and we still had plenty of overs to go having a mere 60 runs on the board. On a batting track, the expectation was 220-250 runs so pressure was definitely on to get past 150 the sooner the better without losing any more wickets and have a wicket or 2 left to go all in on any remaining overs. So now it’s up to me and my batting partner to play a sensible innings and to steady the ship till we play out the overs.
Reversing the pressure
When it comes to sensible batting and you find yourself coming in after a top-order batting collapse, you are automatically going to think, this is no fun. I feel stressed out already and there’s no way we are going to make 200+ now. WRONG!
What do I mean by reversing the pressure? Well, I used to intentionally play the first 5-10 overs in such circumstances without looking for any big boundaries or playing risk based shots. This included simply blocking or leaving the ball outside the off-stump. This would send out a message to the opposition that I’m not about to fall cheaply or put my team under even more pressure like my previous team-mates did. This would more often than not, kill the buzz of the other team who felt that had an easy win to look forward to. The next thing I would do is look for rotating the strike often (running the singles and doubles, simply pushing the ball out in the gaps and keep the scoreboard ticking) with my partner and also start picking up a pattern of what the opposition’s Captain was thinking and the bowlers he was using whilst I was out there batting. Watching the ball became even more of a focus as each delivery was bowled at me but as I chose to bat sensibly and not let it frustrate me that I was nor scoring heavily. Then I started to realize that this type of play started to frustrate the opposition including the bowlers and I could see that I had made an impact on them. Now their overall mental state and confidence of winning with ease had started to slip away as I continued to stay on the wicket. By showing them the game was still there to be played, my batting partner and I had shown an intent to keep batting for as long as possible. As their confidence diminished ball by ball, our confidence started to grow more and more. Poor bowling led to those deliveries being punished – wide of the stumps, wides, no balls, leg-side deliveries (easy pickings!).
RESULTS
By putting the brakes on the wickets after a top-order collapse, I learned with time that instead of making the usual 40-50 runs in the middle order or that being my target objective, achieving 20-30 runs and recovering my team’s confidence levels to fight was much more important to me as a Cricketer. Playing and soaking up the next 10-15 overs in a critical period of the match gave me the greatest sense of achievement knowing my team also had be as one of their best line and length bowlers too. If I was out there batting, this allowed my team and captain to talk to the rest of the squad and give them a sense of belief that if I could fight, they need to fight too. That thought that we could still win if one or two of us stay on the wicket can do wonders for the team environment and pump up our bowlers! If I was out there, the idea that if each of the next 4-5 batsman could play similar to me, that’s 100 runs easy which we will create a game out of this whole scenario basically. Anything I made above 20/30 would be the bonus for my team and the same goes for the other batsman if they applied themselves mentally!
Based on my own experience and pretty long history of the game as a player, it now helps me as a coach to analyze and talk to my players and learn about those who are keen to learn from mistakes they have made or will make and whether they are the type to learn based on those mistakes they have made or that I made – continuous learning is always going to be part and parcel of your life.
I learned through game play, how to reverse the pressure on the opposition. This was a key component and part of my success as a Cricketer knowing that I could now read the other opposition’s mindset and upset it. It also gave me a sense of accomplishment feeling that I had contributed to my team and to my Cricket and that I did not add negative pressure to my team by playing silly shots unnecessarily. Yes, I may not have been the type of player who was exciting to watch but getting the job done was more important to me than be looking good hitting more boundaries than singles or doubles. That was not how I went about my Cricket. I went about Cricket by putting on the brakes for my team and stopping a certain batting collapse giving my team time to reflect in the dressing room and enabling them to pick themselves up and look forward to making this a dog fight instead and not to making this easy for our opponents to simply take this match for granted!
Whether we still won or lost the match, more often than not, I would still be congratulated by my captain and the coach, that I did really well. They said they talked about me as an example even to the top order to bat like Amit did and stay there even if runs aren’t coming thick and fast. As time went on, this enabled me to climb up the order and starting becoming a top order batsman and still retain a top 3 bowling position. Hey, I always loved my bowling but to know that by changing pressure situations for my team that I would be given the chance to start climbing up the batting order too – I loved it because I earned it!
CONCLUSION
Can you turn pressure into a positive thing more for your team and not just yourself? Can you handle or love the pressure when you’re out there batting? Can you continue to bowl a consistent line and length under pressure keeping the runs down for your team?
The above are some questions you ought to think about constantly and this in turn will help develop your mental strength which allows you to cope with pressure. We all have our reactive thinking based on practicing our physical skills and movements but we also need to constantly practice our mentalities in order strengthen our capacities to deal with pressures according to match situations. This obviously comes with time but it’s what makes you a true Cricketer, not otherwise.
If you believe you can and you can prove you can, you certainly can! This will help define your Cricket strengths and weaknesses and that is my message to any Cricketer out there based on proven experience.