No one has full control of their environment, but your individual mindset is not only controllable, but also essential to flourishing as a cricketer.
This thought crossed my mind last night at a training session. It was with good standard schoolboy cricketers in a sports hall.
To illustrate I’ll explain the game and how it went wrong (Spoiler: it was more about mindset than game design)
Cricket noughts and crosses
We played using the whole hall, indoor cricket style with two batsmen a bowler and fielders.
However, instead of a “most runs” game, the winning team had to win a game of noughts and crosses. every player was either a “nought” or a “cross”. To put their mark on the board, they needed to achieve a skill in the game. For example batsmen had to hit a four, bowlers had to bowl no wides in an over and fielders had to take a shy at the stumps at the right end.
If you achieved your chosen skill, you make a mark. If you get three in a row, you win the game.
The benefit of the game is giving the players a choice of what to focus on in game context and breaking the “just having a hit” mentality of nets. It makes you hone in on specific skills.
In the game we played it went a little wrong due to not everyone buying into the idea. One player said “I just want to hit balls I don’t care about the game”. We had to stop and reset and discuss why. In this case the player thought it was a waste of time to put the cross on the board instead of getting extra balls in. This caused further disruption as all the player’s immersion in the format was broken.
You could argue he was right, and we talked about the pros and cons of changing the format. This is a trick I try with players who are not engaged and it often works to reset motivation by getting to the root of the complaint.
In this case, it took a bit longer so we talked about committing to the game as it was.
My point was that all cricket training is a compromise.
We are constrained by being indoors with artificial light, only having an hour and a small group of players of different abilities. If we decide it’s not worth the effort any game will fail.
So, we have to commit fully to the game, or change it and commit to the change.
After this, the intensity shot up, players got into the game and there was real execution of skills under pressure.
The only difference was mindset. They found meaning in what they were doing and went for it. But without meaning, anything becomes pointless.
When you feel that energy drain, try to reset the meaning, commitment and mindset and see what happens.