Have you ever asked yourself, what is it that makes Steve Smith or Virat Kohli so special?

What is it that separates the best from the rest? Not just in cricket, but in any sport or industry.

Growing up, I aspired to play cricket for Australia. Watching the Aussie teams of the mid ’90s and early 2000s, made me want to represent my country and travel around the world playing cricket, as it did for so many other youngsters around Australia at that time.

I sit here at 32 years of age and like many who dreamt of playing for their country, I unfortunately wasn’t able to achieve it. However, it wasn’t through a lack of trying. I was ambitious and desperate to make it happen, and my cricket journey and life has been incredible as a result of chasing that dream.

CHASING MY DREAM

Growing up in a small town in central Australia had its advantages and disadvantages. I knew from a young age that if I was serious about pursuing my cricket, I needed to get out of Alice Springs as soon as possible. So, three days after my final year 12 exam and a week before my 18th birthday, I bid farewell to my mum and twin brother, and moved over to Perth to pursue my dream.

Although I got into university, I deferred my degree so that I could play cricket all year round. When I finished my first season in Perth (March 2006), I played in Darwin and this was the start of playing for 11 months of the year (with a small break in between seasons) for nine years in a row. After two seasons in Darwin (2006 & 2007), I went over to England for opportunities to learn and develop my cricket and life skills (2008-2013).

Through some decent performances in league cricket and second XI, I had a short but very enjoyable professional career with Middlesex County Cricket Club (2010-2012). My professional debut against Bangladesh at Lord’s, the Home of Cricket, was a very special moment and I was fortunate to play with and against some of the game’s great players.

[Click here to read my article No Sleep Before My Debut at Lord’s]

Batting against Bangladesh at Lord’s in my List A Debut

However, after three seasons of, at times, some very good but generally inconsistent performances (mostly in the second team), I was told I was no longer needed by the county, as I hadn’t done enough and there were some excellent young players coming through.

Being told your lifestyle and dreams are being taken away from you, is an incredibly hard thing to comprehend. However, I was able to accept the news and be okay with it, when Angus Fraser, Middlesex’s Director of Cricket, called me into his office in September 2012.

PLAYING WITHOUT PRESSURE

A year before losing my contract, I’d been playing the best cricket of my life. In between the 2011 and 2012 English seasons, I came back to Perth and played grade cricket for Melville CC. With my Middlesex contract in my back pocket, I didn’t have to worry about ‘trying to make it’ into the Western Australian side, which had always been a goal of mine since moving to Perth, five years earlier. This meant I had no ‘pressure’ to do well.

When I say ‘pressure,’ it was all coming from within. There were no external expectations. My parents weren’t pushing me to achieve things on the cricket field, unlike what many young athletes go through. All the ‘pressure’ was from my own mind and thoughts, which restricted me from playing with freedom.

Over the year or so prior to this Aussie season, I’d made some technical changes that started to ‘click’ and I began to trust my game. An improved technique, combined with playing with freedom, meant I finished with the most runs in the WACA 1st grade competition – 819 runs in 13 innings, at an average of 81.9. I scored three centuries and had a highest score of 182 (not out) and came third in the Best and Fairest award in the competition, despite missing the first two games of the season. I also played a second XI match for WA at the end of that season.

So when I got the news that my Middlesex contract wasn’t going to be renewed, I felt okay, as I was thinking, “I was the best batter in the WACA comp last year. l’ll go back to Perth and do well again and break into the WA side.” However, that never happened. With the ‘pressure’ back on to do well, despite scoring three hundreds that season (within a couple of weeks of each other), I wasn’t able to get back to the form of the previous season and went back to being a grade battler, who had some good days here and there.

The Cricket Mentoring Community – the world’s best cricket community for players and coaches, launching 23rd November, 2020 (click above for more information)

BECOMING CURIOUS

Upon returning to Perth full time after my final season in England in 2013, I became extremely curious as to why I was so inconsistent. On days I played well, I was as good as anyone, but why were these days so rare? What was it that made the best players different from everyone else? Why were some people so successful and others just average, despite seemingly working just as hard?

Because of the pain I’d gone through losing my professional career, I was desperate to get the answers to these questions and understand what separates the best from the rest. Around this time, I also began coaching young players one-to-one and wanted to offer them more than standard coaching advice, such as how to play a cover drive or pull shot. I wanted to help them understand all the factors required to perform at your best, and not just focus on technique.

On this learning journey, it became clear to me that while I worked hard at my game, I had no real understanding of my thoughts and emotions or the lifestyle needed to consistently perform at my best. I’d had some good coaches in my career, but didn’t have a mentor or someone older who’d been on a similar journey to me with whom I could speak to and get advice from (which is why I’m so passionate about being the mentor that I never had).

[Click here to read my article: I’m Trying TO Be The Mentor I Never Had]

I realised that when I was in a good place mentally, emotionally and physically, and my game was in good order, I would play at my best. That didn’t always mean I’d score runs though. Batting is incredibly hard at the best of times and there’s so many things that affect the outcome/result that are out of our control. However, looking back, I wasn’t even close to understanding and managing my thoughts and emotions, so how could I expect to be in control of my performances?

Over the last few years of continually finding ways to up-skill myself (reading books, articles, post-match transcripts, listening to audiobooks, podcasts and interviews), hours upon hours of conversations with former Aussie Test opener Chris Rogers, and lots of conversations with successful players and coaches for The Cricket Mentoring Podcast, I’ve come to gain a good understanding of what it takes to perform at your best or close to your best. 

6 PILLARS OF SUCCESS

Through my personal experience and leanings, I now believe that there are 6 pillars to success, that are true for almost every athlete.

They are:

  1. Technical
  2. Tactical
  3. Mental
  4. Emotional
  5. Physical
  6. Lifestyle

[Note: You won’t always be at the top of your game in all 6 areas, however, the closer that you are to your best in each pillar, the better your chance of ‘success’.]

WHAT SEPARATES THE BEST FROM THE REST

I now know what makes Steve Smith, Virat Kohli and Kane Williamson so special. They understand themselves and know what they need to do in order to prepare themselves in all 6 pillars, so that they have the best chance of succeeding, every time they step onto the field.

For me, it wasn’t a lack of skill. It was a lack of understanding. It was a fluke if everything aligned both internally and externally, and hence why I was inconsistent.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE 6 PILLARS OF SUCCESS

About the writer: I founded Cricket Mentoring in August 2016 with the goal of helping cricketers all over the world become the best they can be – on and off the field. 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 coaching and cricket. I believe there’s 6 pillars to peak performance (Technical, Tactical, Mental, Emotional, Physical, Lifestyle) and most athletes only focus on one or a few things. All of our content (articles, videos, podcast) covers the 6 pillars and has been created to assist cricketers understand what it takes to achieve great things in the game.

CHECK OUT MY VLOG

When I quit my job and went full time with Cricket Mentoring in July 2017 I decided to do a vlog (video blog) detailing my life as a player, coach, small business owner, entrepreneur and someone who is constantly trying to learn and become better. Fast forward almost 3 years and we’ve published just under 300 episodes of a daily vlog Scolls Stories and this year transitioned into a weekly vlog, Scolls Weekly. Click here to check it out plus the other hundreds of awesome free coaching videos we share on our YouTube channel. They are created to inspire people to chase their dreams and live their best life and are designed to help aspiring cricketers and coaches around the world learn and improve themselves. Please say ‘G’day’ in the comments on here, YouTube or any of our social media channels and make sure you subscribe or follow so that you get our daily tips and advice!

FOLLOW US…

About the author : Tom Scollay

2 Comments

  1. Farjad Chowdhury May 27, 2020 at 2:41 pm - Reply

    If this article was written in lords it would have been on the honors board!…very insightful and truly inspiring !…everything in life happens for a reason…If Scolls sir went on to become an Australian legend then aspiring cricketers from around the world would have stayed in the dark…through sir’s podcasts videos and online programs my life has changed both in cricket and personal…! hats off to the legend (tom Scolls sir) he is changing lives of thousands of people around the world and he is truly a hero to look up to! even in these desperate times of the lockdown sir is still reaching valuable informations to aspiring cricketers around the world and changing lives!

  2. Jordan Sondergeld June 9, 2020 at 7:33 am - Reply

    Awesome content so helpful

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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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