Former Australia all-rounder Shane Watson recently opened up on the mental aspect of the gentleman’s game. During a training session, a player focuses on his skills and there is no pressure on him. However, when it comes to live-action, he has to switch modes and play responsibly under pressure.
The scenario was better explained by Watson, who had earlier joined the Delhi Capitals camp as an assistant coach for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022. Speaking on the seventh episode of the Delhi Capitals podcast, the former cricketer provided a masterclass on the mental aspect of cricket. ,
Speaking about why he is interested in the mental side of the game, Watson said, “I find the mental side of the game very interesting and I am passionate about it. The players show incredible skill in the nets when they play without any pressure. But once they go into the game, the mental environment of the players changes drastically.”
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The assistant coach further said that he wants to enlighten as many cricketers as possible about the mental aspect of the game, “I have spent a lot of time developing my knowledge about this side of the game. Everything is always built around technology. Usually, coaches try to perfect the technique of players, but there is no talk about mindset and if your mindset is not right, you will not be able to execute your skills. So one of my main focus as a coach is to spread the knowledge of the mental side of the game to as many cricketers as possible.”
The Australian also revealed how he helped Rovman Powell to be at his best IPL 2022, “There is an internal dialogue going on in everyone’s mind. We are in control of those dialogues, but most of us are not in control of those dialogues. Usually, internal chats are negative thoughts like fear of failure, don’t make that mistake again, you should be better than him and so on. But if you want you can control your thoughts and redirect them to right thoughts at right time, which helps from performance point of view. Rovman understood this and was able to redirect his thoughts.”
Watson also spoke to Powell about defining the best version of himself, “We don’t really define the best version of ourselves deeply from a mental skills perspective. Working with Rovman and defining the best version of himself deeply helped him. And you can see in the game that he got us home against KKR (Powell scored 33* off 16 balls). He was there when he came out to bat. He was right where he was supposed to be. In the end, it doesn’t guarantee you the results you’re looking for, but you’ve given yourself the best chance and that’s exactly what Rovman did.”
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