“No human is limited. It’s not about the legs. It’s about the heart and mind. With a strong heart and good mind you can do it. If you don’t rule your mind it can rule you.” – Eliud Kipchoge 

On Saturday, Olympic marathon champion, Eliud Kipchoge went where no human had ever been before. Aiming to be the first person to ever run a marathon in under two hours, he fell agonisingly short, by just 25 seconds. He did, however, smash the previous marathon world- record (although it wasn’t official).

This epic event, planned & run (pardon the pun) by Nike, was three years in the making and was designed to push the human mind & body to the absolute limits and test what is possible.

Kipchoge was one of three athletes selected for the record-breaking attempt after numerous physiological & mental tests over the past 2 years. Before the race started, the scientists were confident they had 3 guys capable of breaking 2 hours as the data from testing showed it was possible. As it turned out, the task was too much for the other two athletes as Kipchoge was the only one who got close to breaking the 2-hour mark.  

Throughout the race, the commentators and the clips of the scientists involved in the project kept referring to the fact that Kipchoge deeply believed that he was going to run under 2 hours while they often referred to the ‘potential’ of the other two athletes.

While Kipchoge didn’t achieve his goal of breaking 2 hours, it was his belief that it was possible that got him so close. Although some would say he failed to achieve his goal, he did much better than anyone has ever done before and showed what is possible in the future.

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill

THE MIND CONTROLS THE BODY

A marathon is seen as an incredible test of a person’s mind and body. You’re likely to hear anyone who has run a marathon say that it’s one of the hardest things they’ve ever done. While the body goes through incredible pain throughout the 42.2 kilometers (26.2 miles), it’s the mindset and mental battles that keeps a person going, no matter how much they are hurting. The body will never give up until the mind does!

Breaking down previously perceived barriers starts with your mindset and the belief that it’s possible. If you don’t believe you can do something or that you’re not good enough, then you won’t be. As Mahatma Gandhi once said:

“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I shall have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning.”

BELIEF VS HOPE

The opposite of belief is hope. Those that don’t believe in themselves hope that they are good enough.

‘I hope I get runs today.’ ‘I hope I bowl well.’ ‘I hope I nail that job interview.’

While hope can be seen as optimism (I’m all about being positive so I’d much rather people be optimistic than pessimistic) the best athletes, artists, musicians, business people etc. don’t rely on hope but instead get their preparation right and have a deep belief in themselves! It’s the belief that it’s possible that allows ordinary humans to achieve extraordinary things.

Eliud Kipchoge crossing the finish line after running the fastest marathon ever!

THE WORLD’S BEST

Whether it’s Kipchoge smashing previous human limitations, Sachin Tendulkar scoring the first ODI double-hundred, Shoaib Akhtar breaking 160km/h for the first time or Shane Warne’s ‘Gatting ball’, nothing extraordinary has ever been achieved by fluke or chance.

They set goals, make a plan, then take action to execute the plan. And most importantly they believe that they can achieve it. When their time comes to perform, they feel ready and trust their preparation. When David Warner was battling for runs in the recent Test series in India he was asked by the media about his struggles:

“The runs aren’t coming for me at the moment. That will come, it will turn around. I just have to keep being disciplined and making sure that my preparation is still the same.”

Note that he didn’t mention that he ‘hopes he gets runs’. And he did mention “it will turn around.” Although he wasn’t getting the results he would have wanted, he still had deep belief that the runs would come and was more focused on what he could control – getting his preparation right, as opposed to the outcome.

At the time of writing this article, Warner has turned his form around and is currently the leading run-scorer in the IPL. While in the past Warner has been accused of being ‘arrogant’, his belief in himself is undeniable and is one of the reasons he’s so successful!

As the old saying goes, ‘form is temporary, class is permanent.’ And class starts with your mindset and believing that you’re class.

CONFIDENCE COMES FROM BELIEF

Confidence is something that is spoken about all the time, in all walks of life.

‘She seems confident.’ ‘I don’t feel confident.’ ‘I’m gaining in confidence.’

These are common phrases that convey a feeling that someone possesses or is perceived to possess. According to the Oxford dictionary, the definition of confidence is:

‘The feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something.’

To feel confident you need to BELIEVE in YOURSELF.

CONFIDENCE IN CRICKET

I’m regularly contacted by cricketers who are going through a rough patch and as a result, are lacking confidence. When you’re not performing at your best, it can quickly become a very negative, lonely place as you get down on yourself. Negative self-talk takes over and even though you’ve performed well just a short time ago, you start to question whether you are any good at all (this extends far further than just the cricket field).

Losing confidence doesn’t just happen to amateurs, it also restricts top-class professionals. Tim Paine was one of Australia’s best young players before a number of broken fingers affected his results which shattered his belief and confidence in himself:

“Obviously I lost a lot of confidence in the last two years, so it’s just about reinforcing the fact that I’m still quite a good player, and if I believe that, I’ll produce more often than not.”

While it took time to build that belief again, he has bounced back in the last 12 months to regain a spot in the Australian team (he played T20’s for Australia in February). His struggles certainly weren’t through a lack of trying but instead a lack of belief.

While short-term confidence can be improved or some might say faked, ultimately it comes back to belief. I always try to help improve the mindset of the players that I mentor and stress that they need to believe they are good enough, in any situation, against any opposition or they will always struggle for confidence when things aren’t going well.

HOW DO YOU IMPROVE YOUR BELIEF?

The best way to believe in yourself is by getting it done. Some progress has to occur for you to believe in yourself otherwise you’re just a narcissist who loves themselves but has nothing to back it up. You’re never going to truly believe that you’re good enough to succeed against the fastest bowler in the competition if you first can’t handle the fastest bowler in your team. By mastering the fastest bowler in your team, it builds the belief that you CAN handle the fastest bowler in the competition. Creating the deep belief is a gradual process that takes time and is achieved through constant action and improvements.

Cricketers ride a huge roller-coaster of emotions with some weeks being amazing and others being terrible and we often have more bad days than good days. One belief building exercise that I encourage the players I mentor to do is remind themselves of their good performances. It’s about shifting their energy & attention from the negative performances that they generally stew on to the positive ones. I’m currently working with a number of talented players who have some excellent results behind them yet they still don’t understand or believe how good they are, which holds them back. It’s a fine line between having a strong belief in yourself and being the cocky or arrogant cowboy that no one likes but I believe that remembering your previous success (big or small) allows you to 1. overcome doubts and 2. move on quickly from short-term failures. 

I also believe that regularly using positive self-talk (affirmations) is one technique that builds belief but only if used in conjunction with ‘getting it done’. If you’re doing the work, improving and getting some results then affirmations can help you deeply believe that you’re good enough for the levels above you that you’re striving for.

Muhammed Ali was known for his bravado and confidence but it was a deep belief within himself that he gained from affirmations that gave him the confidence to do and say what he did:

“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”

Personally, I try to listen (I’ve recorded them on my phone) to my affirmations every morning. If it’s good enough for one of the world’s best ever athletes, then it’s good enough for me. And I believe that it makes a difference. So it does.

YOUR SUCCESS STARTS IN YOUR MIND

Belief (mindset) + Action (constant practise) = Success

If one of these two is missing then it’s a lot harder to be as successful as you want to be. Build deep belief in yourself and any short term failures won’t affect you.

Kipchoge believed deeply inside himself that he could run a marathon in under 2 hours…which is what allowed his body to come so close. His record-breaking run is a lesson to every person that anything is possible if you have the right mindset and truly, deeply believe it.

So, what is your sub two-hour marathon? Go after it…

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” – Buddha

5 Reasons Why you're not having the success you should be

Tom Scollay batting for Middlesex

ABOUT THE AUTHOUR

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.

About the author : Tom Scollay

2 Comments

  1. pakidad.tumblr.com September 25, 2017 at 1:41 pm - Reply

    However more importantly that series in my view shows that Jardine, like you, probably recognised Bradman’s mental balance and acuity as the source of his batting success and devised the bodyline as a means to upset it. In my view the role that the mind plays in batting is not well analysed and has a lot of scope for further research.

  2. Seema Mehta October 20, 2017 at 5:01 am - Reply

    “YOUR SUCCESS STARTS IN YOUR MIND”- it’s a true concept and writer has written lots of information and mentioned examples on how to connect the success with the human minds. We know that we can control our minds and achieve success in sports, and if we cannot build a positive thinking mindset we cannot win the match. Great and informative post

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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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