An amazing experience batting in my List A debut at Lord’s vs Bangladesh (Photo: Sarah Williams)

“I had no idea about the mental skills needed to be successful at the elite level.”

I wanted to share a story with you that for some reason, I was thinking about the other day.
 
Before I start, let me point out that I’m no hero cricketer. I wasn’t born a good cricketer or into a family who lived and breathed cricket and taught it to me from a young age. None of my family had ever played cricket before I did and I didn’t play my first match until I was 10 years old. However, from the moment I first played, I loved it and couldn’t get enough of it.
 
The reason I made it to be a professional cricketer 12 years later (at the age of 22) was through hard work, determination and a love of hitting cricket balls. I’m very competitive and was desperate to always get better so that one day I could be the best. While I had some good cricket coaches, growing up in Alice Springs meant a lot of the time I was left to my own devices to train and learn the game which was both good and detrimental to my career. More on that another time. 

MY PROFESSIONAL DEBUT

Today I want to share the story of my List A (one-day domestic) debut for Middlesex CCC, at the home of cricket – Lord’s. It wasn’t a regular Pro40 match but was against Bangladesh who were touring the UK in the lead up to an ODI series against England.
 
A week before the match against Bangladesh I was un-contracted, playing in the 2nd XI and pondering my future. With a big staff and some very experienced batters in the squad, I wasn’t sure if I would get an opportunity at the London club. I decided to tell Middlesex that I was going to trial elsewhere (on the back of advice from our batting coach, Mark O’Neill) as Hampshire were keen for me to play 2nd XI for them as well. Richard Johnson, the Middlesex 2nd XI coach said he was keen to sign me but needed me to get a big score and asked me to play that week against Gloucestershire as he had already picked the team. 
 
I told Hampshire that I would play this final game with Middlesex and then come and trial with them – a decision that proved to be a good one. For whatever reason, things clicked and I did just as Johno asked and after scoring 179 for the 2’s against Gloucestershire 2nd XI, Angus Fraser (Middlesex CCC’s Director of cricket) offered me a summer contract for the remaining 3 months of the 2010 season followed by a full contract for 2 years and also told me that I was going to play against Bangladesh at Lord’s a few days later.
 
It was a dream come true!  While I was full of excitement and riding the high of becoming a PROFESSIONAL CRICKETER at one of the best counties, being picked to debut at Lord’s plus having just scored a big hundred, I was also SCARED and immediately had doubts and negative thoughts creep into my mind.
 
I had a couple of days to think about the match and played club (league) cricket on the Saturday – 2 days before. I was captain of my club team, Eastcote CC, and while I did ok, I remember being very distracted by the game in 2 days.

PUTTING MORE PRESSURE ON MYSELF

A load of my friends took the day off work and came to watch – which made me put more pressure on myself as I didn’t want to let them down. [I’ll tell you the story of trying to get them all (20 something of them) free tickets another time].
 
While it was truly an amazing day playing at Lord’s for the first time and I remember lots of the match very clearly, there’s one memory that sticks out!
 
Firstly, let me give you a bit of context. We fielded first and got smacked for 301. When it was our turn to bat both openers were out early I found myself next in as I was batting at number 5. I did have to wait for a while though as current England Test batsman Dawid Malan, and former England batsman Owais Shah put on a decent partnership.

Sweeping – although it was my downfall in my debut, it’s a good scoring option against an accurate spinner

With the score 2-12 you would have thought I was incredibly nervous. Yes I had nervous energy running all around my body but I remember vividly feeling incredibly TIRED. One of the strongest memories that I have of the day is fighting myself from falling asleep while sitting on the balcony next into bat. I remember having a few micro sleeps then jolting awake I was that tired.

TRYING TO STAY AWAKE

You know the feeling when you’re so tired you can barely keep your eyes open but you have to stay awake for something? Well that’s how I felt just before I went out to bat….at Lord’s…on debut…with 20 odd friends in the crowd eagerly waiting for me to do well plus a few thousand other spectators.
 
Every time I’d feel the urge to fall asleep (which happened regularly) or did drift off for a millisecond, I’d have to wake myself up by standing up and doing a few exercises. Mix the tiredness with the nerves that you would expect and it wasn’t the best state to be in before playing in the biggest match of my life up until that point.
 
Finally the third wicket fell at 3-99 (17.1 overs after the second wicket had fallen). Now it was my turn to bat! I walked out to the middle in this state of tiredness but walking down the stairs, through the long room and onto the ground for the first time with the bat in my hand, certainly got my adrenaline pumping.
 
Unfortunately it wasn’t a debut to remember as I was out LBW trying to slog sweep a left-arm spinner for 3 off 13 balls. While I was obviously extremely disappointed to get out so cheaply, I was also pleased that I had played the way I wanted to and been positive. I had had a lot of success slog sweeping spinners so backed myself to play to one of my strengths but hadn’t executed my shot on this occasion.
 
Walking onto the ground – hearing my name announced and the cheering from my group of friends, getting my first run and batting with Owais are all still very fond memories and ones I’ll remember forever.

WHY WAS I SO TIRED?

So I’m sure you’re wondering, why was I so tired?
 
I’m sure you’ve had a restless night before a big match or job interview or something important to you in the past… Well I wasn’t tired because my preparation was bad. I ate a nutritious dinner, drank lots of water and went to bed early the night before. I’d ticked all the boxes for a good preparation.
 
Yet I only got 40 MINUTES SLEEP!
 
I remember looking at the clock next to my bed, having not fallen asleep yet and it said 5:30am! I was getting picked up at 7am as we had to be at the ground by 8am for breakfast and then warm ups and I was so angry that I hadn’t fallen asleep yet. I did manage to fall asleep from about 6:00am til 6:40am which is when my alarm went off (the latest I could put it back until). I still remember the sick feeling I had when I got out of bed feeling like I’d been hit by a truck or had a massive night out and knowing I had such a huge day in my life ahead of me.

SO WHY COULDN’T I SLEEP?

My mind was racing! And I didn’t know how to calm it down (like I do now). I played my innings and the match over and over and over in my head and must have thought about/ visualised every single scenario possible (mostly the negative ones).
 
“What if I drop a catch?” “What if I get a duck?” “Everybody’s coming to watch tomorrow. I can’t let them down!” Etc. Etc. Etc.
 
At this point in my life I was 22 years old and living the dream. I trained really hard and was so happy to be playing cricket day in day out and making enough £’s to survive from it.
 
However, I had no idea about the mental SKILLS needed to be successful at the elite level. I didn’t know how, or even that I could, have used mental conditioning to ‘quieten’ my mind and fall asleep more easily. Now I’m not saying that the result would have been any different. But I do know that I would have had a lot more energy and felt a lot more alert if I had had a good nights sleep.

LEARNING THE HARD WAY

The reason I’m sharing this story with you today is to give you an insight into how important being able to understand and then ‘control’ your thoughts and emotions are and how I learnt the hard way. We hear from so many aspiring cricketers who say they play well in the nets but can’t do it in a match. Do their physical suddenly disappear when they walk onto the ground? Of course not! It’s their thoughts and emotions that get in the way of their body doing what it can naturally do if allowed.
 
Since finishing my professional career with Middlesex at the end of the 2012 season, I have been extremely eager to learn about successful people and what makes them successful. This hunger to learn has made me consume thousands of books/ podcasts/ audiobooks/ documentaries/ Ted Talks/ Youtube videos etc. Anything that I can learn about people’s success and their mindset/ habits that make them successful or about how the brain works I try to consume.
 
No matter what profession or career, there are always similarities between the most elite performers. Their mindset, emotional control and habits set them apart from everyone else! We often see these people on TV and think they are special or were born with a ‘gift’. However it isn’t true. Every single person is human and has the same brain and emotions as you and I. What separates them is they work at understanding their thoughts and emotions so they can use them to their advantage instead of letting them sabotage their performance. 
 
So, are you working on your mental conditioning? In my opinion, that’s what’s ultimately going to determine how successful you become. Keep hitting/ bowling/ catching as many balls as you can and work bloody hard at your physical fitness, but make sure you’re working on understanding yourself as well. Understand your thoughts and emotions and how to get into the state that allows you to play with freedom and express yourself as often as possible and you will have success.
 
I wish I knew this before my debut!

Tom Scollay batting for Middlesex

About the writer:

I founded Cricket Mentoring as I’m trying to be the mentor I wish I had. Throughout my career, I showed that when at my best, my skills were as good as most. But I struggled to consistently perform at my best. I now know that’s because I didn’t understand my thoughts and emotions and how greatly they impacted my performance.

Even when I was a professional cricketer I spent so much time working on my technique but completely neglected my mental skills and as a result, couldn’t handle my emotions in the big games. This is the main reason I wasn’t able to reach my full potential and have a long, successful professional career.

Now I’m on a mission to help serious & committed cricketers around the world (no matter what age or ability as long as they have a hunger to learn & improve), become better players and more confident people.

All of our content (videos, articles & podcasts) at Cricket Mentoring, aims to educate and inspire with a focus on all 6 Pillars of Success (Technical, Tactical, Mental, Emotional, Physical & Lifestyle) required for peak performance.

I hope you learn something from our content that helps you on your journey of being the best you can be.

About the author : Tom Scollay

One Comment

  1. Prinze Linda August 8, 2018 at 10:32 am - Reply

    Hi,
    Thanks for sharing such a nice page. I am continuously visiting this page for latest cricket update.

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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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