Photo of the Women’s T20 World Cup Final at the MCG taken by Molly Healy

86,174 spectators at the ground, 1.231 million viewers in Australia, millions more watching from all around the globe. From dancing cricket bats to literal and figurative fireworks, the Women’s World Cup final was quite the spectacle.

Although leading into the tournament as clear favourites, Australia did not have an easy ride to the MCG. Losing to India in the first round, being 3/10 in a must-win match against Sri Lanka, and then losing spearhead Ellyse Perry, created plenty of hurdles for the Australians to overcome.

Both India and Australia had every reason to be overawed by the occasion. This is not something either side had experienced and is impossible to replicate in training. Yet Australia surpassed even their own expectations, producing a special performance that will hold a place in the hearts of millions more than the 11 players that took the field.

While many are frustrated with finals being cancelled or postponed due the coronavirus, the break presents us with some extra time to learn about the mental skills the Australians employed to achieve peak performance when it really mattered.

Photo of the Women’s T20 World Cup Final at the MCG taken by Molly Healy

Basics are best

Australia had a clear intention to keep things as simple and calm as possible leading into the final. When asked how Australia’s batting unit approached the final, Meg Lanning said, “We spoke before we went out to bat about playing good cricket shots to settle the nerves down. Obviously, after the anthems and the crowd roaring and stuff like that emotions are pretty high. So, we actually just spoke about calming the game down, and that first over was the perfect example of that. Healy just played nice shots, she didn’t force anything, it was all natural.”

They accepted that heightened emotions are normal in a high-pressure scenario and as a group came up with a method of managing them.

Sticking to basics also provides the team with a safety net as they know they have repeated these processes a thousands of times before.  There is no need to be greater than who you are right now. Trust your current skill set and allow the game to flow from there.

As Bruce Lee said, ‘Simplicity is the key to brilliance.’

Be where your feet are

Battles are often won and lost in moments where there is an opportunity to change the game. Having your focus in the present moment is the key to taking these opportunities when they come.

Both India and Australia had crucial chances presented to them in the early stages of the game, with India dropping two catches in as many overs. Given the inexperience of the Indian cricket team, it is likely that they were more overwhelmed with the sense of occasion and therefore more distracted from the task at hand.

At the key moment of performance, a distracted mind will either be stuck in the past or attempting to predict the future. Dwelling in the past is the most common distraction, particularly if a batter has faced a few dots in a row, or if a bowler has been hit for a few boundaries. The reality is that we can’t change what has happened and that the best way to get a positive result is do the best you can with the next ball. Although we are often taught to be aware of thoughts relevant to fear of failure, over-confidence from past positive performance or being too aggressive trying to be the hero can also take us away from what’s important now.

Another important concept is that there is no such thing as fear in the present moment. Fear generally arises when we worry about the consequences of failing. The root of this often comes from getting too caught up in what others think of us. If you are truly where your feet are, allowing yourself to surrender to the task at hand, there is no chance of your mind wandering off to different possibilities and how they could positively or negatively affect you and the team.

Whether you want to score a ton or produce a game changing spell with the ball, you have to focus on executing your skill, one ball at a time. As Adam Gilchrist on The Test documentary, “Just make the next delivery the most important thing in your life at that point. At that point nothing else matters.”

Article Author Bhavi Devchand playing a slog sweep during an innings for Ringwood CC

Team environment based on love and support

The ability to trust your skills in the moment is much easier said than done. A big part of it comes from knowing that you are still valuable and will be ok even if the result doesn’t go your way.

Credit has to go to Australian coach Matthew Mott and his team for creating an environment where players were encouraged to express themselves irrelevant of outcomes, allowing them to play without fear when it mattered most.

Many questioned Alyssa Healy’s position at the top of the order after a run of low scores leading into the tournament, however Mott backed her up internally and externally. Mott said to the media, “Players like Healy and Gardner aren’t in every team and they can take the game away from the opposition, so you’ve got to continue to back that and have back up policies as well. If you want us to be fearless and all the things we bang on about all the time when you get out a couple of times, you can’t try and reinvent the wheel.”

This view was reiterated by Australian captain Meg Lanning who said, “I’d be more worried if she [Healy] was going out and blocking it for three overs because that’s not her natural game. I’m sure she’ll hit a few in the middle and be off and running.” She also spoke about the batting group turned their poor start around by “celebrating each other’s successes and showing a bit of love to help each other through.”

The keys to building a culture where players could produce their best performance was implemented well before the World Cup. Cricket Australia brought in mindset coach Ben Crowe to help Justin Langer and Matthew Mott create environments that focused on being good people as well as good cricketers.

Rather than their entire self-worth being based on outcomes, it shifted to being more about sticking to their values and being a positive source of energy around the team. This created the base that allowed the team to play with freedom irrelevant of how much there was to lose.

Bhavi Devchand celebrating a wicket with Ringwood CC teammate and Irish International Una Raymond-Hoey

Joy

The Australian team we’ve come to know are clinical, professional and serious about getting the job done. They are very good at it, 5 wins out of the last 6 T20 world cups is a testament to that.

Although their approach was the same leading into the final, it seemed like something was missing. A couple of batting collapses against India and Sri Lanka, followed by letting New Zealand make a late run at their big total, had many thinking they might crumble under all the expectation of a home world cup.

How did they turn this around to produce one of the all-time great performances in the final? How were they so dominant against a talented Indian team who were undefeated leading into the final?

For me, the answer was found in a single moment, a close up shot of Alyssa Healy’s face before the first ball was even bowled. What stood out was a massive smile. It was the smile of the little girl inside her that played for the love of the game. She played to express herself irrelevant of what outcomes meant in the future. There was no sign of fear, pressure or even a sense of a warrior going into battle.

It was simply pure, unrestricted joy.

The freedom that flowed from this moment resulted in a dominant powerplay that set the tone for the rest of the game. We saw a team excited about the opportunity to display their skills in front of a huge crowd, rather than fearful of the negative consequences of failure.

The Australians had shifted into a purpose mindset. This is where they shifted from ‘I or we’, or money and status, to intrinsic motivations. Rather, they were playing for that something that lit them up inside, something they believed in and represented a legacy they had to leave the world.

Essentially, they were playing for a reason much bigger than themselves.

That reason included the female cricketers that had gone before them, paying their own way to represent their country, yet paving the way for generations to come. It included the current crop of female cricketers who had been juggling study, work, and part-time contracts, yet training the same hours as the fully professional men.

Perhaps most importantly, that reason included paving the way for young girls and boys with a dream. They showed that if you follow your passion, have a hunger to be better, support your mates and most of all play with joy, the impossible can really become reality.

Matthew Mott summed it up perfectly, “We turned up yesterday to have a celebration. Whatever the result was, we were going to enjoy it.”

About the Author

Bhavi Devchand is the head of female cricket at Cricket Mentoring while she continues to pursue her own cricket career. She was previously a professional cricketer with Western Australia and spent the most recent Australian summer captaining Ringwood Cricket Club in the Melbourne cricket competition. She is an all-rounder who bowls leg spin and is passionate about seeing cricket grow amongst girls and women around the world.

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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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