Attention aspiring cricketers! This is a message to you.

If you truly want to be the best and have the success that you claim you’re so desperate to achieve, and we hear from hundreds of people every week who claim that they want to be the best, it’s never been easier. Here’s why.

A SNAPSHOT OF TODAY’S YOUTH

Earlier this week I had a lesson with an aspiring and talented young cricketer. School holidays have just come to an end in Perth and when I asked him how his holidays had been, his father said that he’d been a handful as he was far too interested in girls. “He’s on heat at the moment” were his words. Now as a 15 year old, who is probably just becoming interested in the opposite sex, who can blame him! However, I then asked if he’d done any cricket practice since our last 45-minute lesson the week before. To which he replied, he hadn’t.

We have one weekly 45-minute session that his father pays for and to his credit, he has improved a lot since we first started 10 weeks ago. He is a fast learner and asks good questions, which mixed with his natural ability and good hand eye coordination make his potential unlimited. He could be very good if he truly wanted to be.

However, since the time our lesson ended last week to the time he walked into his lesson this week there had been 10,035 minutes (10,080 minutes in a week minus 45 minutes as he started 45 minutes earlier than he ended). Of that time let’s assume he slept 8 hours a night which equals 3,360 minutes sleeping a week. So that leaves him with 6,675 minutes awake to do whatever he liked from the time our session ended to the time he came in the following week. And he didn’t spend a single minute on improving his cricket. Yet he was frustrated that he was making a number of mistakes in his session.

MY TEENAGE YEARS

When I was a younger all I wanted to do was play cricket at the highest level. As a teenager living in Alice Springs, I tried to play as much cricket as I could and would practice almost every day all year round. To make this happen I would phone a number of other kids the night before and ask them if they wanted to go to the nets the next day after school and usually I would practice with a different person each week as no one else was a committed as I was.

One particular year, when I was 15, I spent my 4-week winter holidays (June/ July) in Darwin, away from my family, playing & training as much as I could while also doing work experience with the Northern Territory Cricket Association. Due to the climate in Darwin, their season is the opposite to the Australian summer and therefore allowed me to play lots of cricket in my off season. I trained every day for the months leading up to the mid-year carnival and then continued to practice when I returned in the lead up to the next season. The following year I spent a full 6 months in Darwin playing the season with the Northern Territory Institute of Sport and looking back I realise how fortunate I was to have very supportive parents and the opportunity to play all year round. There also wasn’t the distractions that the current teenagers face in their lives.

DISTRACTION

Smart phones, social media, Netflix, play stations, smart TV’s, Pokémon Go etc. have all made the environment that we live in extremely distracting. All these things take our attention and focus away from what we want to achieve, often without even realising it. I bet most of you can’t even read to the end of this article without being distracted by your phone or another tab you’ve got open.

Another very talented young player told me a while ago, during a previous school holidays that he had spent his holidays chasing after Pokémon Go. Again, he hadn’t done any extra cricket practice outside our weekly sessions.

USING DISTRACTING DEVICES TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

While smartphones, social media & smart TV’s can be hugely distracting, they can also be extremely beneficial if used in the right way.

A few weeks ago I caught up with one of the young players (14 year old) I mentor who broke his foot while playing footy early in the winter. He has been in a moon boot for the past 2 months and therefore unable to do any physical skills practice. Instead of letting that worry him, he decided to work on his mindset and mental skills while continuing to be a student of the game. At our catch up, in a cafe, he pulled out his laptop and showed me some footage from the ICC champion’s trophy. The specific clips were slow motion examples of Joe Root and Kane Williamson playing good balls down to third man to rotate the strike with one of the TV experts analysing how they did it. The young player said he’d been studying it so that when he was fit to start practicing again he could try and bring those skills into his own game. I think is a brilliant example of how young players can use these distracting devices to their advantage if they do truly want to become the best.

It’s never been easier to gain the advice and coaching you need. The improvement of the internet and smart devices makes finding the best coaches and mentors easier than ever, they are only a few clicks of a button away.  

When I was a teenager growing up in Alice Springs, there was no Youtube, Facebook or Instagram to learn from. For most of the year, I was restricted to the few coaches that were in Alice, but did get access to a bit more coaching in Darwin when I went there as part of the NTIS or an underage representative team. The stark difference between then and now is back then I had to be physically with the coach in order to learn from them, which is certainly not the case anymore.

Former Western Australian squad member Ryan James letting a leggie rip

IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE

In August last year, I received an email from the father of a keen 14 year old leg spinner from Hertfordshire in UK. Having come across Cricket Mentoring, the father saw that we have a very experienced leg-spinner, Ryan James as one of our mentors. Being an experienced coach himself (ECB level 2), the father of the young leggie understands that cricket is 90% mental and therefore thought outside the box in engaging Ryan to mentor his son. His first email read:

He wants to be the best. But there are no specialist leg spin coaches around (even for County) and I am no leg spinner plus of course  – I’m his Dad! He won’t listen to me! You can imagine why I think a leg spinner of Ryan’s calibre might be able to help and support Andy, especially as I feel 90% of his difficulties are mental (as they so often are in cricket). If you could let me know how we might approach this (a monthly subscription to exchange videos, ideas, advice etc?). Would be happy to take some video of Andy bowling and send to you maybe?

Since the initial contact, Ryan and Andy speak regularly about Andy’s cricket. They discuss Andy’s previous matches and his mindset. They discuss what he did well and what he can improve or learn from. They discuss his game plans, field settings and managing expectations. All these things that can be done via video calls just as if the coach/ mentor was in the same place as the player.

As a young leggie growing up in Darwin, Ryan didn’t have anyone who’d been through what he was going through, no one to discuss his mindset and help overcome his struggles. He has no doubt that having a mentor (like what he is now for Andy) when he was a teenager and young adult learning his trade would have helped him enormously.  

Our aim at Cricket Mentoring is to help serious cricketers from around the world become the best they can be. No longer do you have to be bound by your location to get coaching and mentoring from elite level players/coaches. We’re currently mentoring cricketers on a 1 on 1 basis of different ages from all parts of the world. While their ages and stages of their careers differ, the one thing that is constant is they are serious about becoming the best they can be and are willing to do whatever it takes.

WE ALL WANT TO BE AS GOOD AS STEVE SMITH

When speaking to Keeno (Simon Keen), a former Australian under 19s captain and now a coach and one of our head mentors, about young players these days, he said how a lot of young players have unrealistic expectations and want immediate success and results. “They do one forty-five minute lesson a week and they want to be Steve Smith. They don’t understand how much work and practice is needed to get to that level. I know first-hand how hard Steve worked as a junior and how hard he continues to work to improve his game.” As someone who captained Smith at an underage level and has seen him progress from up close, Simon knows how much time and effort Smith has put into becoming the world’s best batsman.

Having played representative cricket against a young Smith, I’ve since met him a few times and spoken to our mutual friends about him, I know that he used to practice for a minimum of 40 minutes every day with his father.

So here I was, finding my own way and teaching myself in Alice Springs, competing against the boys from NSW, Steve who practiced everyday with his father, Simon who practiced everyday with his brothers, a young Phillip Hughes who practiced everyday with his brother on their farm plus thousands of other young aspiring cricketers from around the country who were completely focused on their goals….to get a baggy green! We didn’t have the distraction that the current generation have and that made it harder to become the best as thousands of people were putting in the work to master our skills.

10,000 HOUR RULE

Some of you may have heard of the 10,000 hours ‘rule’ made famous by author Malcolm Gladwell. For those that haven’t, it states that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master any skill. While this theory has been called false by other researchers, all studies and research states that mastery (becoming the best at something) requires huge amounts of deliberate practice. While it may not be exactly 10,000 hours (which equates to roughly 90 minutes a day for 20 years) it’s obvious that to become the best, you need to be constantly practicing and improving yourself. One 45-minute session a week isn’t going to bring you the success you think it should!

JOIN OUR FREE 5 DAY CHALLENGE

CHOICES

Ultimately it comes down to your choices.

  • You choose whether you get a friend and go down to the local nets to have a hit or go to the shops chasing the opposite sex (You can do both – just prioritise your practice).
  • You choose whether you stay in bed or get up and do your fitness training.
  • You choose whether you want to learn to meditate and make it part of your daily routine or sift through your social media feed being envious of other people’s lives.
  • You choose whether you want to invest time and money in coaches, mentors & programs to upskill yourself and help you improve or you buy another PlayStation game.

How good you become and the success you have will be a direct result of all the choices that you make throughout your life.

There are hundreds of thousands of aspiring cricketers the same age across the world. I guarantee you that the ones that end up the most successful are the ones that make good choices every day that take them closer to their goals not distract them from them.

Be a leader and make choices based on what’s best for you. Not what others are doing or what’s cool (Go to the nets instead of the shopping centre…).

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO ANSWER (BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF)

  • Are you doing whatever you can to become the best you can be?
  • Do you CHOOSE to spend time on the things that help you improve or on the distractions?
  • Do you prioritise your practice and self-improvement or does it just come whenever you’ve got nothing better to do?
  • How good do you really want to be?
  • Does your action reflect your dreams or are you kidding yourself?

SO HERE’S HOW YOU CAN BE THE BEST

In the distracted world that we live in, if over a long period of time you can:

  1. Remain focused on your goal and avoid the distractions in your environment +
  2. Get the right people to help you move towards your goal

It’s never been easier to be the best, there is far less competition as everyone else has become more distracted.

**Names of young players were changed for privacy reasons**

Tom Scollay batting for Middlesex CCC

About the writer: I founded Cricket Mentoring as I believe there isn’t enough emphasis put on understanding the mental side of the game. Our articles aim to help cricketers from anywhere in the world learn more about what’s required to become your best – in cricket and life in general. As a former professional cricketer with Middlesex CCC (2010-2012) I’ve played with and against some of the world’s best players and worked with some elite coaches. I’m a Cricket Australia Level 2 coach and through my own personal experiences, practice and a hunger to always learn, I’ve developed and continue to refine my principles and philosophies on the great game.

SERVICES OFFERED BY CRICKET MENTORING

ONLINE

IN PERSON

  • 1:1 coaching (Western Australia & NSW)
  • Group coaching 
  • Specialist programs (clubs, schools etc)
  • International academy
About the author : Tom Scollay

Leave A Comment

Subscribe to newsletter

Insider offers & flash sales in your inbox every week.

Latest videos

Join our mailing list today

Insider offers & flash sales in your inbox every week.

[one_full last="yes" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding="" margin_top="" margin_bottom="0px" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""][imageframe lightbox="no" gallery_id="" lightbox_image="" style_type="none" hover_type="none" bordercolor="" bordersize="0px" borderradius="0" stylecolor="" align="none" link="" linktarget="_self" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" hide_on_mobile="no" class="" id=""] [/imageframe]

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

[/one_full]

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.

[one_third last="no" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding="" margin_top="30" margin_bottom="" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""][imageframe lightbox="no" gallery_id="" lightbox_image="" style_type="none" hover_type="none" bordercolor="" bordersize="0px" borderradius="0" stylecolor="" align="none" link="" linktarget="_self" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" hide_on_mobile="no" class="" id=""] [/imageframe][/one_third][two_third last="yes" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding="" margin_top="30" margin_bottom="" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""]

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. 

[/two_third]

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.

[imageframe lightbox="no" gallery_id="" lightbox_image="" style_type="none" hover_type="none" bordercolor="" bordersize="0px" borderradius="0" stylecolor="" align="none" link="" linktarget="_self" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" hide_on_mobile="no" class="" id=""] [/imageframe]

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

[separator style_type="none" top_margin="" bottom_margin="" sep_color="" border_size="" icon="" icon_circle="" icon_circle_color="" width="" alignment="" class="" id=""]

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.

[separator style_type="none" top_margin="" bottom_margin="" sep_color="" border_size="" icon="" icon_circle="" icon_circle_color="" width="" alignment="" class="" id=""][one_full last="yes" spacing="yes" center_content="no" hide_on_mobile="no" background_color="" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_position="left top" hover_type="none" link="" border_position="all" border_size="0px" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding="" margin_top="30" margin_bottom="" animation_type="0" animation_direction="down" animation_speed="0.1" animation_offset="" class="" id=""]

If you enjoy our thoughts and insight into the game then please Subscribe to get our articles straight to your email (keep an eye on your junk mail as they sometimes end up in there).

[/one_full]

Curabitur non nulla sit amet nisl tempus convallis quis ac lectus dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit sed porttitor lectus.