Wednesday, 22 May 2013

Finding the Pressure Points

This weekend saw one of the most dramatic finishes to a cricket game I have experienced in quite a while. I suppose the real drama of it was mainly created by the speed at which Clifton capitulated from a seemingly unassailable position. My last memory of such a turnaround was when I played at Loughborough University in BUSA Final. There, it was Durham University who were cruising towards our modest total when suddenly they embarked on a self-destruction mission. We always joked that they had their victory cigars on a half price sale the next day. Yet how can teams lose matches from such a comfortable position?
Cricket is such an unusual sport. I can’t think of many others like it other than perhaps Baseball or Rounders, which combine the adversarial individual battle of ‘me against you’ within a team context. Yes you are playing within a team, and you are reliant on your teammates to support you when fielding and batting (making sure they don’t run you out!), but ultimately it is a contest between batsman and bowler. Others would also argue that is as much a battle with yourself as it is with your opponent, stating the famous adage that ‘cricket is 90% in the mind and 10% in ability’.

The fielding team can put a batsman under pressure

Does this explain though how we can get such dramatic swings? Well a huge part of playing any sport is the ability to perform under pressure. This is an area which is traditionally associated with the field of sports psychology but it is just as much about training methods as a whole. The reason we practice the repetition of skills is so that when we need to draw on that particular aspect of our game, it becomes tacit, and stands up to the scrutiny of competition. Much of training is geared around repetition, but as players and coaches, how much of that repetition is high quality? Do we spend enough time repeating the skills that should be core to us? Only when we do this can we expect to perform well under the scrutiny of pressure.
Yet what creates a pressure situation? Surely Clifton on Saturday at 117-2 needing 148 to win would have felt little pressure with the target so close and men left in the shed. What they probably started to do, was concentrate on the scoreboard and less on the execution of batting well. We suffered the same fate last week at Sandiacre. With an ugly pitch, rain in the air, and a high quality attack, as batsmen we were probably worrying less on ‘batting’ and more on the excuses we might have for getting out. As wickets then started to tumble, the bowling side can make you feel like you are doing worse than you probably are. It is only the most mentally robust batsmen who can shut out those external factors, and concentrate on playing the ball as they see it. I am not saying that batsmen should not play to the situation they face, this is something that is critical to success. The skill though, is can they accurately read the situation they are going into and react accordingly.
On Saturday, when we were 15-3, Dominic Brown and James Mann batted slowly, yes, but intelligently, as they recognised the importance of building a partnership at all costs. That was being mentally robust. Thankfully for us, Clifton missed that trick, and as well as Atif Sheikh bowled, we should not have really won that game. If we can continue to win the mental battles through the season, it should be worth some points, Saturday being a casing example.  

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