I heard an expression that made me think recently, it was ‘95% of people turn up’.  I think that the application of this expression to cricket is that in most cases 100% of people turn up to a game, but how many of the 24 people at the game turn up to do what it takes to win or to play the best game of their lives or to take responsibility for their team winning the match.
 
I believe that great performances don’t just happen, they are a result of making the effort to plan carefully and having the courage to make a disciplined effort to execute the plan with precision.  People don’t play for Australia or achieve any great success by accident it is the result planning and effort.
 
I think the easy thing to do is just turn up to a match and go with the flow of the game taking the attitude that if your team and team-mates have a good day you can cruise along with them. It’s easy not to think!  (95% of people turn up!)
 
The tough but rewarding thing to do is to make the effort to take the responsibility for being the very best you can be.  This path does not guarantee you success, however it does give you the chance to be the best you can be and if you never aim to do something, how can you achieve it other than by luck and let’s face it you could be waiting around a long time for a lucky break!
 
To be the best you can be means you need the courage to take the risk to commit fully to carrying out your game plan and accepting the consequences no matter the result.  You need the courage to test yourself and see how good you can be and this means taking the risk to fail.  However, failure is not a bad thing in fact I see it as an opportunity and if you can be honest with yourself every performance is an opportunity to learn weather you succeed of fail.  For example if you failed under a certain set of conditions or against a certain bowler what did other people do that worked in these circumstances that you can learn from or how can you do it better next time. 
 
When you turn up to your next game, will you be prepared to be the best you can be? Are you prepared to play the best game of your life or better your personal best performances?  If the answer to any of these questions is YES, then have you got the plan, discipline and courage to make the effort that it requires?
 
Good luck
 
Mark

I suppose the best place to start is what are the benefits. Well I reckon the main benefits of staying in are as follows. The longer you bat; The more bad balls you receive. Say on average you receive 1 bad ball for every 10 your face. If you bat for 10 balls you get 1 bad ball but if you can bat for 100 balls you get 10 bad balls. Assuming that you hit all the bad balls you face for 4, if you face 100 balls you’ll have 40 runs and if you bat 10 you’ll have 4!

The more tired the bowlers will become, which will accelerate the rate at which you receive opportunities to score. As bowlers tire their techniques can deteriorate which is likely to more opportunities for you. The more comfortable and confident with the conditions and the bowlers you become. You can’t beat time in the middle and you can’t score runs from the pavilion. When you are well set at the crease is the time to cash in and make a big score. The more fun you have. The next question is how do you make sure you bat for as long as possible, well I believe the answer is to minimise your risk.

What are the best ways to this, Have a plan that is realistic, that you can achieve and stick to it. My plan is defend balls on the stumps and leave the wide balls until I want to score from them. For example if I don’t want to score off a ball that I know is wide of the stumps, I don’t take the risk of hitting or nicking it for a reward of no runs!

Technically, stay balanced, play as straight as possible and restrict your swing in defence and full swing in attack. Be patient and wait for your opportunities instead of trying to force them, remember the longer you bat the more opportunities you will get.

Relax and enjoy the challenge, if scoring runs was easy you’d do it all the time!

Good luck

Mark

Cricket can be a very tough game at times and consistent success doesn’t come easy.

One thing for sure is that all players no matter their skill, experience or level struggle for form at some stage of their careers. When this occurs it is very easy to make excuses and feel sorry for yourself, however the tougher and more worthwhile road is to accept the great challenge that cricket presents and tackle it head on.

A key element in succeeding in the face of the challenge that struggling for form presents is to remember to enjoy the challenge.

After all when you enjoy something you do it well, so feeling upset, uptight or thinking that the game of cricket has got it in for you won’t work! When we play well we enjoy it and when we don’t play well we tend not to enjoy it, after all not performing isn’t much fun.

However while form may be temporary class is permanent and as such it is very important to continue to enjoy the game despite a personal lack of success in the short run. If you let a lack of short-term success destroy your enjoyment of the game you simply won’t play well.

Key tips for enjoying the challenge.

• Remember what you love about playing the game
• Think back and remember how you play best and how good it feels when you play well
• Enjoy the challenge of getting back to form and when you overcome it this time it will help you to do it better when it occurs again
• Realise everybody misses out from time to time and this is a natural part of the game
• Enjoy your teammates success and keep contributing to the team effort

Good luck

Mark

Getting nervous is a positive sign.  It is your body’s way of telling you that you are ready for action and that you want to do well in a situation.  Nerves seem to affect people in different ways, sometimes they make you feel sleepy, sometimes they make you quiet, sometimes talkative and I’m sure the’re many more reactions than these! 
 
One thing that is for sure is that everybody gets nervous! Which means you are not alone, even though nerves can sometimes be a bit daunting before you perform but even the guys who look very calm and relaxed are probably just as nervous about their performance as you, maybe more!  In fact I would say the time to worry before a game is when you don’t get nervous!
 
As I said before, getting nervous is your body’s way of preparing you for a performance and means that you want to do well. The other side of wanting to do well is fearing failure.

Good luck.

Mark

‘In all things, success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure’ - Confucius

An expression you often hear around cricket is ‘back yourself’.

What does it mean to back yourself?

Some of the things it means to me are:

• Trust yourself to perform
• Be confident in your own ability

In order to trust yourself and be confident about your performance you need to be prepared, for example if you lived in France and studied French for ten years you would probably face a basic exam on how to speak French very confidently - in fact you might even enjoy the opportunity to apply your skills!

However, if you know nothing about the language, have never studied it, but still need to pass the exam you wouldn’t enjoy or face the exam with any confidence, in fact you’d probably expect to fail…and you’d be right!

Confidence comes from knowing that you have done everything you can to be the best you can be in terms of your planning, physical preparation and mental and technical skills.

Backing yourself to succeed goes hand-in-hand with confidence and as we see with the French exam example above, your confidence is related to the quality of your preparation. The trick is to know what to do in the situation before you get there, this is where your planning and practice comes in and is where you pay the price for your success with hard work and as Justin Langer says he’s never met a successful person who hasn’t worked hard!

Playing against a high quality opponent is as much about knowing what to do as doing it! Excellent players will test your technique and temperament. If you have done the work in preparation you will have a solution (that works) for the challenges you are facing and will have practiced your skills to the point where you can execute them in a match. You can confidently face the competitive challenges and enjoy them, however if you don’t have the answer and haven’t done the work, you will be unlikely to play with confidence and more likely to fail!

If you plan and prepare to the best of your ability and commit to the discipline of the hard work required to achieve excellence in your game, then you will earn the confidence you will need to succeed and can back yourself when the going gets tough.

Good Luck.

Mark

An expression that I often use in the batting coaching context is ‘don’t make a good ball into a bad one’. Boony rarely, more so than any player I have played with, attempted to hit a good ball for runs. If you bowled him a good ball, he would respect it with a fortress like defensive stroke. However, if you bowled to Boony in one of his key scoring areas, cut, drive and off his legs, he would pick off runs with machine like efficiency. This was part of the skill set that allowed him to play 106 tests in Australia’s top order against teams including the then formidable West Indies.

Boony’s greatness as a batsman was not brilliant strokeplay or rapid scoring (not that he didn’t play great shots or score at a good pace), his key strength was an understanding of what he needed to do to make runs against the world’s top bowlers and the discipline and courage to execute it.

Boony had a simple plan (defend the good ball and score off other opportunities) that allowed him to succeed and he was able to consistently execute it.

Keep it simple!

Good luck.

Mark

Like it or not, negative thoughts are a part of the game, everyone has them!

No one will hand you 5 wickets or 100 runs on a plate. It is natural to have negative thoughts from time to time and you will need to learn to deal with these to overcome the adversity you face from external challenges, such as competitors and conditions, and from internal challenges i.e. your own thoughts.

A critical mental skill is to be able to turn your negative thoughts into positive thoughts.

Negative thoughts aren’t all bad as they help to make us aware of the things that can go wrong in a performance and tell us that our performance is important to us, making us aware of the consequences of failure. However, in order to be the best you can be, you will need to manage your thinking.  If negative thoughts take control of you they can become overwhelming and lead to you being defeated before you even get into the contest!

An important thing to realise is that you control your thinking and that your thinking does not control you! You need to take responsibility for your thinking including managing and controlling your negative thoughts.

By turning a negative thought around into a positive one you can turn an obstacle into an opportunity. Ask yourself ‘What is the opportunity here?’ For example, if you are concerned that you will perform poorly due to a recent run of poor form, instead of being resigned to another failure, look for an opportunity.  A batsman faced with a wicket where the ball bounces and moves, assisting the fast bowlers may be worried about nicking the ball.  An opportunity here would be to use the bounce and movement the wicket offers the bowlers to leave the ball alone and frustrate the bowlers into bowling to you in your scoring areas.  A bowler may be worried that he won’t get a wicket because the pitch is very flat and offering no bounce or movement.  This is an opportunity to bowl the best line and length of your life and to see how well you go in tough conditions.

Next time you get a negative thought, will you let it control and eventually erode your performance or will you take control and seize the opportunity it presents?

Cheers.

Mark

The end of the season offers a break from match play and a chance to reflect on your recent performances while they are still fresh in your mind. It is also a good time to set some goals and start planning for next year.  I have outlined below a simple 5-step plan that you may like to try when you are ready to start planning your success for next season. 

Step 1  - Situation Analysis (Where are you at right now?) is a “stocktake” of your game and involves reflecting on a few simple ideas including what you did that worked well last season, what you did that didn’t work last season and overall a summary of what you learned.  In this type of approach I would look at the following areas of your game: tactical (shot and delivery selection), technical (balance and alignment), mental (concentration and thinking) and fitness (strength, endurance and flexibility). 

Step 2 - Goal Setting (Where do you want to go?) is to determine what you want to achieve.  A good model for your goal setting is the SMART model. Your goals should be S - specific, M - measurable, A - attainable, R - realistic and T - time oriented.  The best goals can be measured, because if you can’t measure something, how will you know if you have achieved it or not? When you have set your goals you can then progress to Step 3 of your plan.   The difference between a dream and a goal is that a goal has a deadline. Write your goals down, it gives them a better chance of success!

Step 3 - Strategy (How will you get from your current position identified in Step 1 to where you want to go identified in Step 2?)  This will involve you identifying what you need to work on and as per Step 1 this may include a range of areas such as technical, tactical, mental and fitness and then developing a structured program for yourself.

Step 4 - Implementation (Doing it) Having the greatest plan in the world will be of no use to you if you don’t do the work and put it into place.  The biggest challenge of your plan will be having the desire and discipline to go out and make it happen, so while it is important to make the plan, the next step is to make it happen.  Cricket is a tough game and I would love to tell you it is easy. Keeping it simple is not the same as  it being easy.  About all I can say here is that all the great players that I have played with over the years were both hard and smart workers, so if you want the success you will need to do the work.

Step 5 - Review (How are you doing?) You do not want to be chopping and changing you plans every week, however it is wise to review your progress from time to time in order to see how you can improve.  Every game and training session will be an opportunity to learn and grow, so make sure you’re using your time and effort effectively.

Good luck

Mark

Skill acquisition experts tell us that it takes around 10,000 hours or 10 years of focussed practice to develop expertise in a skill!

Whether your goals are to play for Australia, recover from a bad season, take your game to another level or simply get the best out of your ability, these goals will not come easily or without effort.

The best investment you can make in achieving your cricket goals is to put in the time and effort to develop the best possible skill set you can. Let’s face it, to score runs for example, is a huge challenge when you have 10 ways to get out every ball and 11 opponents whose job it is to see you fail! Your best protection against this challenge is an excellent array of skills that you understand and can apply consistently. To attain them you have to put in the work, there is no way around it, however, the benefits of striving to be the best you can be are well worth the effort required to achieve your goals.

The off-season, presents an ideal opportunity to make the effort to invest in your skills, whether it is to build consistency and precision around your existing strengths or to work through a change strategy to turn your weaknesses into strengths. The benefit of working hard through the off-season is that the out of competition period offers an opportunity to experiment and work through change or extend your capabilities away from the competitive pressures of a match. It also presents you with the chance to accumulate the hours of focussed quality practice you will need to master your skills.

Good luck

Mark

What does it mean to be mentally tough?  It means making the effort to think of and develop a game plan that gives you your best chance of success and then having the commitment and discipline to carry out your plan under any circumstances.

To develop a plan for success, you must have a very clear understanding of how your game works and this includes knowing your strengths, weaknesses and how you play best.  The odds are that if you have ever performed well in the past you carried out a process to help you achieve success. In general, consistently repeating your individual process for success you will give yourself your best chance of success. 

Great players understand their game very well, right down to tiny details, which allows them to know exactly what they are doing at every step of their performance and also to self-correct rapidly if required.

Once you have established your plan for success, you need to carry it out and this takes discipline and commitment.  There are many distractions that will take your mind off doing your job successfully (executing your plan for success) if you focus on them.  Remember that any time you are not focussed on implementing the steps you need to take to be successful, is a waste of effort if you truly wish to succeed in achieving your goals. 

It takes genuine toughness to commit to focussing on your success process in the face of challenging and uncertain conditions but remember, giving up or not thinking are easy and don’t work. The hard road of being mentally tough is difficult but the effort is worth the reward,  if you have the desire to succeed.

A helpful way to self-manage the execution of your plan, is to firstly know your plan and your job (your job is to implement your plan) and secondly, some simple self-questioning in the middle while you are playing can help focus your mind on the job at hand.  A good question to ask yourself is, ‘What is my job’, this will not only bring your mind back to the present, it will help you to focus on what you need to do now to succeed.  We often get distracted thinking about past or future events, for example what happened the previous delivery or how you will perform at the end of the day.

If your can leave the past in the past and understand that the future is only influenced by the next ball, it will help you to know that the most important thing you ever do in cricket is deal with the next ball the very best you can.

Good luck

Mark