Nic Maddinson batting for Eastern Suburbs CC in the Sydney Premier cricket competition (Photo: Barry Clarence)

“Cricket is such a mental game, especially at the professional level.”

Nic Maddinson is one of the cleanest strikers of the cricket ball in world cricket and has always been seen as an unbelievable ‘talent’ who has lots of ‘potential’. He made his T20 debut for Australia in October 2013 at the age of 22 and at the start of last Australian summer, was selected for the Australian Test team on the back of a strong start for NSW in First-class cricket. Unfortunately, his Test career didn’t start as he would have liked and he was dropped after three Tests. This tough time caused him to lose a bit of passion for the game and he took some time away from cricket to freshen up and find the love and hunger for runs again. That he has certainly done. With 2 centuries in his last 3 innings, he’s started the Australian domestic summer in blistering form and there’s no sign of him slowing down. In this article, we get an insight into what makes ‘Maddo’ tick and how he goes about his cricket. I have no doubt that he’ll be back in the Baggy Green again and probably play all three formats for Australia very soon!

You’re on fire at the moment, it must be nice to remind everyone how good you are?

It’s nice to be back amongst the runs. Last year was a tough one for me so it feels good to see some of the hard work I have put into my game paying off.

What’s been the key to your success in the past couple of weeks where you’ve been dominating the JLT cup?

Just confidence in my game plan and a hunger for runs. Knowing I can get through a tough spell of bowling and get the rewards later in my innings.

After you were dropped from the Australia Test team earlier this year, you took some time away from the game. How important do you think it is to be in the right head space to perform at your best?

Extremely important. Cricket is such a mental game, especially at the professional level. It allowed me to take a step back and re-evaluate my game and what areas I needed to improve.

Do you do any mental conditioning or work on your mindset/ mental skills?

This is an area I have been putting a lot of work into over the past 6 months. For me it starts at training. Being disciplined during my session and having a clear goal with what I want to achieve. I have also used mindfulness meditation which helps me stay in the moment and not get too far ahead of myself when out in the middle. It is also a great way to stay relaxed and focused when under match pressure.

Do you have any routines or habits on a match day?

Not really. I am pretty relaxed on match day and my routine often changes game to game. Some days I like to get to the ground early and hit lots of balls, other days I don’t touch my bat until going out to the middle. The hard work has already been done so it is about feeling fresh and confident heading into the match.

Do you have a mantra, say anything to yourself or focus on anything in particular when the bowler is running in?

This is an extremely important part of batting. Without something positive to focus on our mind will wander and worry about the things we can’t control. I tell myself to watch the ball and play late. Each player will be different but I feel they are the things I do well when in form.

Maddo joined me at the SCG for a 1-1 coaching session where he offered some great advice to young gun Brendon Piggott.

How do you handle the pressure and scrutiny that comes with playing at the highest level?

Just by staying relaxed and focused on what I am doing. My job is to score runs and help the team win.

Having played with Steve Smith, David Warner etc. what do you think it is that separates the great players with the good or average players?

It is a lot of things put together but ultimately I think it is a hunger for runs and total belief in their ability. Regardless of who is bowling or the game situation they always look confident and in total control of their game.

You look like you have amazing ‘talent’ and make batting look easy at times but can you give us an insight into how hard you worked at your game when you were growing up? How often would you train and how hungry were you to make it to the top level?

I don’t really like the word talent. I think everyone is a product of their environment. I grew up with a dad who played cricket and 3 younger brothers. Any of the skills I have developed have come from playing and training with them growing up. I didn’t actually train in the nets all that much until I got older and started taking cricket more seriously. I was always playing both on weekends and in the backyard which helped shape the way I play now.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

This is a tough one. I have received some great advice over the years but one that stands out to me is to “Play the ball late”. I feel like this is an extremely important part of my batting and something I focus on a lot.

What are the 3 most important things for any aspiring cricketer to understand?
  • Cricket is just a game so enjoy playing it. Everyone wants to be the best player they can but don’t put too much pressure on yourself.
  • Every player is different so find what works for you and stick with that. Dominate in areas you are strong and continue to develop the areas of weakness.
  • Enjoy the success of your teammates. There are plenty of tough days in cricket so get behind your teammates when they do well. It will make cricket much more enjoyable.

About the writer: Nic Maddinson is a left-handed top order batter who has represented Australia in Test & T20 cricket. At just 25 years of age, Maddo has a long career ahead of him and being dropped from the Australian Test team last summer has only made him hungrier for runs. He has started the Australian domestic season with 2 centuries in 4 innings and currently has 284 runs @ 71 in the JLT cup.

About the author : Tom Scollay

One Comment

  1. Kate letty June 3, 2021 at 6:47 pm - Reply

    IPL 2021 is going to be the biggest cricket T20 Leagues of the year 2021. Not just because of the name of the Cricket T20 series Indian Premier League 2021. Cricket World Cup 2021s

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Chris 'Bucky' Rogers batting for Somerset in one of his 554 First-class innings

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I once spoke to a former professional player who became a coach in the professional ranks and asked him whether he would change his technique during the season during his playing career. He responded in the negative.

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About the writer: Chris 'Bucky' Rogers isn't your typical cricketer. Having toiled away in First-class cricket for over 15 years, he was finally rewarded for years of dominance opening the batting in both Australia & England with selection in the Australian Test team for the 2013 Ashes in England. He went on to play 25 Test matches for Australia where he scored 2,015 runs @ 42.87 including 5 x 100s. With the amazing First-class record of 25,470 runs & 76 centuries, he has now retired from playing and transitioned into coaching, where he currently is the batting coach for Somerset CCC. 

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He said working on technique is for preseason and once he started playing, all that mattered was watching the ball.

That, I’ve discovered, is a very traditional response, handed down from father to son.

I had to stop myself from groaning out loud. “How short-sighted” I wanted to reply. I’m sure he’s not alone and these days, coaches are reluctant to challenge technical issues in young players, preferring the students to figure it out themselves. Perhaps they fear intervention will only create more problems.

NO PRE-SEASON?

What if a player never has a pre-season as, like me, he plays continuously on both sides of the world, where the seasons overlap?

Just once did I have a pre-season in Australia – and that I remember mostly for the agony of running the sand-hills at City Beach in Perth, rather than any working on technique.

Instead I was chasing an endless summer by playing 12 months of the year in England as well as home. “What is a pre-season?” was my standard jibe at teammates.

That meant technical experimentation had to be done on the job – so the standard answer to not work on your game for six months of the year seems like a waste of time and opportunity to me.

Often as a young batsman, you’ll have days when you pick up a bat and it feels like it is a natural extension of your body and other days when it feels like you’re hefting around a railway sleeper.

DAYS WHEN THINGS WEREN'T WORKING

Numerous days in grade cricket and even opening the batting for Western Australia, my swing would feel so awkward I would be trying to adjust almost every ball. I might try picking the bat up higher in my swing, other times move my hands forward in my stance and even change the width of my stance. These were just a very few of many.

In fact what would really confuse me is, somehow I’d last until the lunch break feeling like I couldn’t hit one off the square and then come out after a 40 minute sit down and feel like I was Brian Lara … well not quite but you get the drift.

What it taught me though was to keep trying to get better. I would often think to myself, and now sprout this to every kid possible, one step back to go two steps forward. Working with my dad who was my coach, I’d try all sorts of technical changes and usually, after a while, something would click and it would all fall into place. It would be like hitting at a brick wall and then all of a sudden one thing works and the rest fall over like dominoes.

PROBLEM SOLVING - DON'T GET OUT THE SAME WAY

One of the great advantages of playing in four innings matches is the chance to problem solve as a batsman between the first and second innings. I disliked … no, I hated getting out the same way or to the same bowler in the second innings as I did in the first.

After getting out I would sit down and figure out a way to combat the bowler who dismissed me first time around. It might not have just been a mental change but quite possibly a technical one.

Stuart Clark once dismissed me for a duck with a perfect ball that pitched on off stump line and nipped away but instead of just accepting he’d bowled me a jaffa, I checked out the footage and saw my hands were not coming down straight in my swing pattern and caused everything - my hands and bat - to go towards mid on. So my bat actually was inside the line, hence the ball found my outside edge.

Second innings, my focus was trying to get my hands to go towards mid-off while playing with the inside half of my bat to counter the away movement. Yes I know this is a bit more than ‘Batting 101’ but I only started to understand my own batting by constantly tinkering – even to the extent of working out what doesn’t work, to find out what does.

PLAYING TO COACHING

As I moved from player to become a coach, a surprise first-up piece of advice from other coaches was to be careful about the level of input you try to pass on. Yes, that makes sense and it would be ignorant to not listen to advice from people who have spent a long time coaching. However, it will need to be balanced against my long-held belief that the best players in the world never stop seeking improvement.

My first club-coaching role came via former Australian player and teammate Bob Quiney to help out at his beloved St Kilda Cricket Club, where the players have an average age younger than ever and a thirst for learning.

I was wary of saying too much early, but when one player said, “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do Buck”, my tinkering instincts took over.

“One step back to go two steps forward”, I reasoned.

The first player asked me how to play slow medium pace bowlers as he had nicked off to one the previous Saturday. I told him to be positive and proactive. Walk at the bowler or walk into his line … a la Steve Smith … and whip him through the leg side if the bowler went for the stumps. The next Saturday he was in the same position and ended up, he said, with too much going through his mind and being neither proactive nor defensive. He nicked off again. But he had learnt from his mistake and knew what he’d do the next time and since has had some success.

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 Bucky passing on some knowledge during a batting masterclass for Cricket Mentoring in Perth

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INDOOR NETS SYNDROME

Another had what I call ‘indoor nets syndrome’ and had developed a swing where he just jabbed at balls that would race off his bat on the true synthetic surface, but had difficulty with the natural variation of turf wickets. His hands would go towards the leg side in his swing but the ball would slice to cover or more likely the slips. I was wary of trying to reshape his whole swing but then thought “Why not?” I’ll show him what I think works and he can figure the end result out for himself”. He was quite difficult to adjust and we even experimented with grip changes, not something I’d usually recommend.

After an hour’s work he was starting to get the basic principles and enjoying it. He had a far better understanding of a swing after trying something new and that can only benefit him. He can always go back to what he was doing but at least he’d tinkered and thought about it. Afterwards he seemed genuinely excited at the change and the understanding.

Yet there have been plenty of times where my coaching hasn’t worked. I tried to help Peter Siddle with his batting but made it worse. Eventually he figured a few things out himself and is still getting better – so maybe my “one-step-backwards” theory helped!

CHANGE TAKES TIME

With most things, change takes time to feel natural and this principle needs to be stressed and I’m wary of trying to change players into playing like me but sometimes certain things need to be tried.  I’m amazed when I see any tall player stand with his feet close together in his stance when Kevin Pietersen is ‘Example A’ of how to succeed as a tall batsman.

I firmly believe all the best players in the world are tinkerers and never stop trying to improve. Just ask Marcus Trescothick, who at age 41 was still telling everyone how he’s trying to fix things. That and his saying that ‘form hides in mysterious places’ were my two favourite things I got from him.

At the moment the county season has just started and he’s still working on his game plan against different kind of bowling. You’d think he’d have it all sorted by now but no, he’s using every opportunity to improve as we all should.

SUCCEEDING AT THE AGE OF 38

When asking me to write this article, Scolls (Tom Scollay) asked that I write a little about my own journey and how I managed to play well in the 2015 Ashes at age 38.

Like Trescothick, I had a thirst for perfection. Grit and determination was only a part of it. So many years of 12-months-playing of four-day cricket meant I had a very good understanding of my own game, with all its strengths and weaknesses, and to have some success against James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Mark Wood and Steve Finn in bowler-friendly conditions was only possible with an in depth, intimate knowledge of my swing and my game.

For different bowlers and conditions, I would have different triggers. On the wickets that provided more bounce and seam I would have a back and across trigger while at other times, particularly against Anderson’s swing, I would push forward to try and cover the movement.

This skill only comes from trial and error and experimentation and willingness to learn. If every time I tried something, had initial failure and not persevered, my game would have been very one dimensional and limited.

Growing up I often watched in awe some of the bigger kids who seemed to make batting look easy but then fell away when they had to play against adults who matched them in size and strength. I believe it was because these kids had got it so easy early on, that they hadn’t learned to work at their game to try to understand it better.

ALL THE BEST ARE ALWAYS CHASING IMPROVEMENT

Of course, there are plenty of examples to disprove the mould but of all the best batsmen I have seen, the one consistent attribute they possess is a desire to never be satisfied and to chase improvement.

They tinker to learn … and then comes improvement.

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