Fitness for Cricket - Part Two

Are you mentally fit for cricket?

How do you deal with anxiety and lack of confidence? How do you maintain your motivation levels? How do you manage to focus your attention, and then learn to relax?

Being mentally fit for cricket is as important as being physically fit. You must be able to deal with nerves, with the tension of the game situation, while being confident in your own capabilities. You must not fear failure. You must be able to concentrate on the task at hand, yet be able to relax when the pressure is less intense.

Mental preparation training can be practised for any cricketing activity. Before you score your first fifty or your first century, you must believe that you have the skills to achieve these. Before facing the opposition’s demon fast bowler you must have developed a mental plan to enable you to deal with each of his types of deliveries.

You should develop the habit of regularly rehearsing in your mind the processes involved in being successful at the task at hand. As you rehearse these movements in your mind, imagine how your body will feel when performing these skills.

Confidence

Confidence is a personal thing and varies from individual to individual. Nobody is fully confident all the time and the unknown or negative past experiences can always constitute a potential problem to your confidence. This can lead to fear of failure and a wish to avoid responsibility. For example, if you believe you have a problem playing leg spin and you know that your next opponent has two top-quality leg spinners, what should you do? You could try and avoid the problem by asking to bat in a position in the batting order where you are less likely to have to face these bowlers. Or you could regard this as a challenge to be faced head-on, and rehearse for a successful performance. By succeeding in this personal challenge your self-confidence will continue to grow.

Motivation

Cricket is not an easy game to master. In fact there is truth in the belief that no-one ever totally masters the game. Many enthusiastic young cricketers become over-whelmed by a run of disappointing performances and give up the game to go and pursue something less demanding. I hope that you will not be one of these, and that you will be a young cricketer prepared to pursue a search for excellence over a longer period of time.

Some cricketers are motivated by fear of failure, others by the need to achieve and be the best they can be. To maximize your level of motivation, you must develop a plan about what you want to achieve in the game. You should then set about achieving those planned goals, realizing that there will be unexpected set-backs along the way and that you will need to regularly revise your plan in order to overcome them. In this way your motivation levels will continue to grow as you achieve positive rewards in the coming months and years.

Concentration

This is a special mental skill which needs to be developed to a high level if you are to succeed as a young cricketer. If you are facing a demanding fast bowler, you need to be able to focus exclusively on the task at hand and not allow factors outside your control such as comments made by the fielding team or the disagreement you had with your brother at the breakfast table to lessen your concentration on the ball that is about to be bowled.

Concentration is all about having what is called an “uncluttered” mind, where your attention is solely on the brief moment of the task at hand. The mention of the briefness of the task at hand is important as you must learn to “switch off” between deliveries and relax your intense level of concentration until it is next required – when the bowler begins running in for his next delivery. Failing to do so will lead to mental exhaustion and a significant lessening of your ability to focus on the next delivery. This switching off is important for all actively involved in the game, bowlers, fielders and umpires included.

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