‘Cricket is one of those sports where you can bowl well, bat well and not get results’

All sports are mind games.

Well, at least to a certain extent they are.

All skills start in the mind and mental strength is very much required to excel in the sport.

Only the ones with great mental strength survive over a longer period and deliver consistent performances.

When it comes to the Bangladesh cricket team, there have been countless accounts of the players' psychological fragility, limiting them from performing to the highest of their abilities.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) quite recently asked one certain performance psychologist from Australia, Dr Phil Jauncey, someone who has experience spanning over five decades in the field, to come over for a week and conduct sessions and consultations with the players.

What you will find below is an exclusive interview that the BCB and Dr Phil Jauncey granted The Business Standard, barely thirty minutes before he boarded a flight back home.

 

When it comes to Bangladeshi cricketers and people in general, there is a narrative around them that they are quite reserved people. When you're here for only a week of consultation, how do you get them to open up about themselves, and their shortcomings despite the language barrier?

It's a good question, to begin with, and the answer is that players who I have worked with in the past, trusted me; and I told the players to trust me.

The second thing is I really give them more general things about themselves.

I have a profile, which I gave them to help them understand what works for them because we all have different mental computers.

For example, my wife's mental computer and my mental computer are different.

So you have to watch out which software to put on.

It's like Apple and Microsoft - two very good computers but you don't put Apple in Microsoft and Microsoft in Apple.

So, we help the players understand what software works for them and then I also tell them how their brain works because people have not usually been told that (how the brain works).

For example - 'why do we make mistakes, why do we think bad thoughts, why do we fail?'

So I show them those things.

And when people are shown those things, they open up.

And as I see during the week that it's working for them, they ask more questions.

It's all about helping them understand themselves so they perform better, and helping the coaches understand the players so that they know how to teach them and how to respond to them.

So, generally, I have found that, yes, we need a translator.

However, the best translators are the players themselves because they trust the other players when they're translating.

Some of the players do speak very good English, some average and some pretty poor.

But I make sure everything I say, when it's in a group session, gets translated. 

This hasn't been a huge problem because the things I try to teach them are very simple.

Like, if your brain says if you're doing something that doesn't work for you it will give you pain.

If the brain says if you don't want bad thoughts; don't act badly. 

When the brain says that something is important, your first reaction is to get it wrong but if you override that, your mental computer turns back on.

So, it has not really been that difficult.

 

When it comes to Bangladeshi players and fans alike, they do get emotional about the sport. Especially when they are facing rival Asian teams like Pakistan and India, the emotional side of things does end up playing a part. There is a sudden resurgence of emotions and energy amongst the players. It feels as if they are more pumped and 'motivated'.

But the energy is good! You're almost sounding like the energy's bad!

See, the word motivation originally never meant 'incentive'.

It comes from the word 'motion'.

So originally when the scientists back in the 1920s looked at motivation, they asked, "Why did this motion occur?" And they were looking at what was the hand brake to motion.

People misunderstand. Motivation is not me having an incentive to do something. It's my handbrake for performance. Let me give you an illustration.

 

Dr Phil asked me to participate in a psychological drill in the middle of the hotel lobby by asking me to imagine walking on a narrow plank- first at ground level and then ten stories high- to demonstrate the variable psychological impact.

Now let's imagine over here that this is a plank.

Try walking this narrow plank without touching the floor.

Pretty easy right?

Now, let's assume this plank is ten stories high.

Now you'll say, "I don't wanna die".

If I tell you, "Don't think of an apple, what do you do? You think of an apple."

Now, when you walked here, your computer did the walking for you - it told you to lean forward, go up and walk quickly.

But when you're scared, you will lean back - leaning back away from your goal.

Now show me how you'll walk ten stories up you'll walk worried of falling, worried of dying. Notice that all your weight is in the back, away from your goal.

Now, you know about basic physics. What will keep you walking straighter? Faster momentum or slower momentum?

The slower you go, the more you go sideways-drifting away from the goal.

The faster you go, the less sideways you go as well.

What I teach players is how to get their computers turned back on.

Nerves are just fuel.

Fuel is good.

Fuel in your car is good but you don't light a matchstick near it.

If you tell a coach that you're so nervous that you have reduced your fuel by fifty percent.

So what you actually had to do was to make sure your fuel helps you walk correctly rather than badly.

So if I'm a batsman, if I know when I lean like this (weight on the front foot), my bat's higher, the computer's on and when the ball hits the bat I watch the gaps and I try to hit the gaps to score runs.

When I lean back, my bat's lower.

When the ball hits the bat, I look for fielders.

I know then that I'm scared and I tend to go back - something I do when I know that I'm scared.

When you're scared you want to go back.

But what should you do?

You should be coming forward but can you do that though?

It's called the power of positive doing.

The power of positive doing is when you feel like going to Z, go to A.

See, I teach people that you cannot control your mind.

I have fifty years of clinical experience, four degrees and a doctorate in psychology but I cannot control my mind.

I'm angry at you - I can't control myself feeling angry.

But what I can do is, I can wish you a "good day".

If you try to control your emotions - they get better.

My dad was a psychologist and years ago a man came to him and said, "Dr Jauncey, I have fallen out of love with my wife and I want to divorce her".

My dad said, "For the next five days I want you to do something special for your wife. Take her out, get her flowers. And on the sixth day, we can talk about the divorce again".

The man returned on the sixth day and said, "Dr Jauncey, I'm embarrassed".

My father asked why.

He said, "I have fallen in love with my wife".

See, he was waiting to feel romantic to act romantically. 

In sports, you don't have to feel good to act good but when you act good it feels good.

See if you were waiting to feel confident enough to walk that plank ten stories up, you'd die.

But if you start walking confidently, you don't die.

So if I know I'm feeling good I bowl like this, I bat like this, I field like this.

But what did you do when you were emotional?

See what happens.

The brain says - when you get more fuel, your first reaction is to be defensive but it's worse so I'll give you pain.

If you lean forward, I will help you fix it.

So what I teach people is to know how your brain works.

What's your point A and what's your point Z?

What do you do when you're successful?

What do you do when you fail? 

Do what you want, even if your brain is saying no.

I did a study at the University of Melbourne with the Australian National Academy of Music.

They said, "What surprised us was not the people you worked with being better than before. But they had the same amount of performance anxiety".

See, they thought that anxiety was bad.

I think anxiety is good.

It's good fuel.

I want more fuel so that I can bowl faster, and bat harder, I want more fuel so I can run harder.

So when people talk about motivation and emotion - it's good!

With my wife, I don't always feel like a loving dad or a loving husband.

But I can always act it, can't I?

And when I act it; I get more emotional.

So which is more important - you feel good or act good?

In cricket, ask this question - ask the ball, ask the bat how you feel.

 

The recent Bangladeshi squads have reached finals and match-winning positions but more often than not, they have failed to cross the final hurdle. Sometimes it feels as if it's not a skill gap but more in the differences of the psyche between the winning team.

In performance psychology, never talk about something that you can't see.

Have you ever seen a psyche?

Have you ever seen a thought?

Only ever talk about actions.

For example, if I were your boss I would actually never 'see' you have a bad attitude or that you're lazy, or if you are undisciplined.

That's because I have actually never seen them.

It's actually a judgment and I never judge them.

But I would have noticed that you haven't done two or three things that you were tasked with.

Maybe you have done two out of four things really badly or may have taken five times longer.

Only ever talk about actions.

So when you have seen the Bangladesh team do well, like reaching the finals, what do you see in them?

You 'see' them executing things well.

Let me give you a final thing.

Do you know the difference between an aim and a goal?

An aim is why you do something - for example - winning. 

We had a swimmer in Australia who broke a world record but came second to a guy named Thorpe.

Now if you're breaking a world record, you're not bad are you?

A goal is what you have to do to get your aim.

You haven't failed in your aim.

Cricket is one of those sports where you can bowl well, bat well and not get results, correct?

It happens.

But in light of the goal - you have failed.

So when players are batting well they're doing this, if they're bowling well they're doing this - what we wanna make sure is that they keep doing that. 

What happens is that there's a handbrake.

"I'm worried about what the crowd thinks. I'm worried if we fail" - these are handbrakes.

So what I'm doing is I ask them to remove the handbrake.

Because when I'm scared - my muscles aren't any different.

My skills aren't any different. 

See, my thoughts are different.

But my skills aren't.

Your skills of walking the plank on the ground floor are no different from the skills you need to walk ten stories higher.

So what we teach is that even when you're ten stories up, stick to plan A.

On that note, I have to go.