6 minute read
Top level cricketers really care about what they do. Caring is the basic fuel for their careers. But whether it’s an Iranian gasfield, a Tesla Cybertruck battery or merely the giving of shits, sometimes fuel can also finish you. Part of an international coach’s job is therefore to protect players from self combustion. It’s a tricky one to pull off though because the flipside is you’re going to look massively uncaring whenever things go awry.
Back to the hotel!
Whatever language Brendon McCullum and his coaching team are speaking, Liam Livingstone isn’t fluent in it.
“I was just trying to ask for help to get better,” lamented Livingstone this week. “What do they see that isn’t going right?”
A man looking for medicinal specifics, Livingstone was apparently instead prescribed the kind of positive visualisation favoured by Christopher Moltisanti.
“You’d hit a couple out of the middle of the bat and they’d go, ‘Great, you found it. Let’s go back to the hotel’,” he revealed. “It wasn’t the most enjoyable experience for me.”
Who cares?
If the England cricket teams run by McCullum have a coherent philosophy running through them, it hangs off the notion that most international cricketers have more to gain from caring a little less about their cricket than from caring a little more.
We’d broadly agree with that. It’s such a single-minded professional age nowadays that a promising teenager will be following a plan, tailoring their diet, tracking their sleep and heart rate variability, and just generally investing everything they possibly can to fulfil a dream that was around long before biomechanics, Whoop bands and watching YouTube videos on how to bowl the knuckleball.
In England at least, “the system” has bled out way beyond the top level England teams. The wider sport has been reshaped by single-minded competitive professionalism. One way or another, all these guys have bet significant proportions of their lives on succeeding as top level cricketers. This means that even when you factor in some of the more whimsical selections, nobody has fluked their way into the national side without seriously giving a shit.
Shit-giving provides impetus and focus to a career, but on the international stage it often becomes stifling. Those big matches are when players are most brutally judged – and they, of all people, know that.
“This is what it’s all been leading up to,” they tell themselves. “This, right now. Your whole life hinges on what happens next. Get it right.”
We all know that a little anxiety sharpens, but too much short circuits synapses and disrupts the unconscious movements that define these people.
There’s a fragility in that, but it also means that if a coach can knock the “caring” back a few a notches, they’ll usually move the player closer to their psychological performance sweet spot.
It’s easier said than done though. You absolutely cannot just bark, “Care less!” and expect that to have any impact.
Messaging
Captains and coaches often talk about ‘the messaging’. They have an idea about how the game should be played and their job is to endlessly explain this so that everyone understands what they’re after.
The problem is when you’re communicating sometimes counterintuitive ideas to a large group of people, some of them will be more receptive than others. Some will be in a position where what you’re saying makes immediate sense; others will be sceptical or won’t really grasp what you’re driving at. There might also be one or two who are honestly kind of thick. (These people probably aren’t crippling themselves with overthinking, so maybe just send them to another room and keep them busy with some Lego.)
You may also find yourself advocating broadly useful approaches that are in fact massively unhelpful for a small minority
Ollie Pope, for example.
“I was probably just too eager to put the bowlers under pressure without necessarily realising it at the time,” he told Cricinfo this week, when reflecting on his crap Ashes.
Group messaging is a blunt tool. We’re all individuals. (Except for that one guy.)
Private messaging
Even dealing with players one on one, if you’re trying to communicate an idea like, “Caring a great deal has fulfilled your dreams and got you into the England team, but actually at this point we’d now like you to start caring a fair bit less,” then you may have to work quite hard to get your audience on board.
Players who would surely benefit might not actually agree and even if they do, changing ingrained thinking and behaviour isn’t as simple as just telling someone to do something and then them going away and putting into practice.
Have you ever tried telling yourself to relax? How did you get on with that?
We only have Livingstone’s account of the support he was given by England, but it’s embarrassing for the coaching setup if his version of events is even halfway true.
“I was asking for help and pretty much all I got was that I care too much and I need to chill out a little bit, and everything will take care of itself,” he claims.
Has anyone in the history of the world ever responded to an instruction to “chill out” by actually chilling out? If anything the phrase “chill out” is a good way to identify those in need of far more nuanced attention.
You can’t just tell someone to chill out and care less and expect them to actually do it. You can’t tell a batter short on confidence that they’ve middled a couple so now everything’s fine. Naming psychological destinations is not even half a job. You need to persuade people to set off for these places and also help them navigate their way there.
The message a coach tries to put out is rarely the exact message that’s received by the player. That’s the nature of communication. You have to acknowledge that fact, gauge the player’s response and then repeatedly refine what you’re saying. We’re confident England did try a few more things with Livingstone than what he has described, but we’re equally sure that if he was left feeling how he so clearly does then none of those messages meaningfully landed.
A given coaching method is always going to work way better with some players than others, but there’s a risk of a uniquely bad look with this particular one. You need to make a significant extra effort to support the non-responders when your central message is, “Hey, let’s try not to give a shit.”
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