Next To Bat: The Demand for Mental Toughness in Cricket

This blog posts highlights the necessity for mental toughness and resilience in cricket, the continued onslaught of pressure along with the robust confidence needed on the field perfectly exemplify what is meant by mental toughness.

Picture this;

You're at the bat, the crowd is hushed, highlighting their nerves as a mere spectator. You're opening the batting for the day, expectations are high to get a good start to the innings. Pressure is high. Or maybe, you're in the middle order, the team has started poorly and it's on you to turn the game around, you've watched some strong batters be dismissed with low returns, so you're tasked with turning the tides. Pressure is high. Or maybe, you're batting deep into the lower order, the team has chased well needing a minimal score to secure the victory, but you've still got to survive. All you've got to do is do your job and survive, but the game could still slip away. Pressure is high.

Cricket possesses a unique relationship with pressure and the need for resilience and mental toughness as it is prevelant in almost all situations, especially when a team is batting as we will delve deeper into.

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Mental Toughness

Mental toughness referes to an athlete's ability to persist in the face of challenges, mistakes, and failure. In a sporting sense, at a basic level, it is how well an athlete can deal with pressure. Typically the pressure an athlete feels can either be intrinsic (internal) or extrinsic (external) both of which affect different athletes in differing ways. Cricket is unique in the sense that it is predominantly a team sport, meaning there are shared emotions, coping strategies and personalities. However, when at bat, the player is incredibly isolated, despite being part of a pair. This therefore means that there is very little psychological relief for the batter, the pressure is solely on them and it is their own responsibility to deal with it. This increases the requirement for having a strong level of mental toughness to manage emotions for optimal performance when at the crease.

More often than not, we hear of the "ultimate professional" mindset for a cricketer at the top of there game, but what does this actually mean? Typically those at the most elite level will have a high level of stoicism when they are in a professional setting, meaning that neither positive or negative emotions will be able to sway their focus from the task at hand. England captain Ben Stokes has recently spoke about the need to develop a mental fitness as part of playing cricket on the international stage; he speaks of having a relentless mind set that is fueled by purely by his own competitiveness that can keep him locked-in for a prolonged period of time. This clearly shows how peak athletes perform, with a shield from their peripherals with unwavering focus on a goal and their performance. Stokes is also very vocal about how this toughness has been developed from outside of the sport in his personal life also with previous situations out in the public eye.

On the contrary to this, someone with poor levels of mental toughness would find it difficult to remain at a high concentration level or focus during a competition. Possessing a neurotic personality type would typically be someone who may struggle with this, as when emotions are being experienced, they are being felt in maximal ways, deriving focus from a sporting objective. In a cricketing setting, this may mean a batter completely getting carried away after successful previous balls before a short lapse in concentration for complacency causing them to get bowled from an easy ball, or a bowler having a complete "headloss" after a poor ball or two. Both sides of this coin lead to suboptimal performance, skewing judgement and decision making which is pivotal for performance in cricket, especially with the smallest of margins as competition levels and standards increase.

The Role of Sledging

As previously mentioned, the individual-centric nature of cricket creates a solitary, pressured experience. This gives the batter a sense of vulnerability when they are in the pressured-zone of between the wickets. From this the art of sledging was born in cricket. This is defined to be the act of deliberately insulting or physically intimidating an opponent during match-play. With the purpose of attempting to weaken the opponent's concentration, therefore negating their performance levels.

This clearly directly correlates with mental toughness, as the better an batsman can protect themselves and silence the noise, the greater cognitive performance levels can be maintained. Similar "trash-talk" situations occur in different sports, but more often than not in other sports, these situations occur for a short period of time or often have multiple parties involved or at least nearby. Cricket once again holds a unique position on this, a batsman can be surrounded by multiple opponents for sustained overs, even hours in isolation whilst anyone can be hurling any abuse to an open target in an attempt to rattle them. Of course, the batsman can fight fire with fire in these situations, but often this can also lead to misjudgement, in an attempt to be bullish, unlikely errors can occur.

The limits and capabilities that a person has to such methods is very much dependent on their individual personality. Similarly, the best coping strategies for this are very much dependent once again on the individual. Some top athlete's will display stoicism, no reaction to anything whether that is positive or negative, whereas other will thrive off this confrontation and strive to stick it to their opponent seeking this external adversity as an attempt to further motivation. How this affects you is a difficult one to calculate when not in this situation, in a similar way, a fight or flight situation, to react or not to react. An athlete displaying high levels of mental toughness can lead to either of these methods, the sole aim is to not allow this to negatively impact on their performance and negate any lapses in concentration and decision-making flaws. They would simply remain untouched and uninfluenced by these external factors and focus on the objective performance markers for their game.

As an offensive strategy, sledging provides the perfect mindgame for an otherwise weaponless fielding side. An attempt to mentally dislodge a batsman with no energy expenditure. Whilst the ethical & moral perspective on the use of such tactics is consistently endlessly debated, the efficiency of them cannot be doubted. If you spot a single mental weakness within an athlete that you can take advantage of, you are going to dive on it as a competitor, an anything to win mentality will still be most prevelant especially as the levels of competition increase. This therefore provides more incessant need for strong levels of mental toughness, these skills are essential to be developed and deployed in almost every sport, the next section of this blog post will be how to develop combattive strategies.

How to Better your Mental Toughness in Performance

So, how can we limit these mentally taxing factors and reduce their influence whilst at the same time improve our own mental toughness in any performance environment, not just cricket:

• Focus on Flexibility

• Pursuit Quality, Not perfection

• Control the Controllables

• Pressure Practice

• Learn your Level

Focus on Flexibility

Dont stay in one mindset, a fluid gameplan is necessary due to the ever changing nature of sport, keep the gameplan moving.

Pursue Quality, Not Perfection

There is no need for the perfect performance every time, it's just about objectively progressing during the game, no need to take unnecessary risks, set a comprehensive plan and stick to it.

Control the Controllables

Focus on the things during the game that you control, how you can react to a certain stimulus, there is no need wasting cognitive energy on things that are out of your own control.

Practice with Pressure

Use training situations to acclimatise to pressure situations, use imagery, scenarios practice and other similar methods to get used to performing in those situations, the more practice you get, the less this will negatively affect your performance.

Learn your Level

Learn what strategies work for you in this situations, what techniques reduce risk, what gives you the most confidence in your performance and reassures you that you are in control of this situation.

You're next up!

Thank you for giving this blog a piece of your time, I hope you've managed to take some advice that you can put into practice in your own performance or at least a sense of perspective for the mentality monsters that most elite athletes are with their unwavering confidence and tenacity displayed on the world's stage. But remember, pressure is context specific, we've all felt pressure, it's how we deal with it that allows us to grow and improve our own mental toughness.

Any feedback or support to this piece would be more than appreciated, if you've got any sporting topics you'd like to see covered let me know and don't forget to check out my other pieces!

@MESportPsychology