Bangladesh Batsmen Have To Practice A Strict Mental Routine

For a brief period of time the current Bangladeshi cricket team’s thorn in the throat has been the batting. In most of the times the batsmen doesn’t deliver the goods and they tend to throw their wickets away by playing reckless strokes. And for which the team tends to suffer a lot with heavy defeats.

It’s not that our batsmen don’t come from a sound cricketing infrastructure or they don’t take any sort of coaching diets from a good cricketing school but still why they fail to deliver is a question which is killing our cricketing experts’ brains.

I believe that the batsmen of our country are weak mentally. I think they lack a mental routine which is needed to apply in between balls and between overs which is quite similar to a golfer’s pre-shot routine to conserve mental and emotional energy.  

All the greatest batsmen in the world used to have this mental routine and for which they dominated the cricketing world with great authority. I have been privileged to witness this combination in some of the greatest batsmen in the history of world cricket.  I have observed Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara’s mental state, courtesy of the outstanding camera works of modern times, before facing a delivery. It’s not that they use this mental routine for a particular bowler but for all sorts of bowlers they face.

Now what is this mental routine?

According to Greg Chappell, the mental routine comprises of ‘Awareness’, ‘Fine focus’ and ‘Fierce focus.’

‘Awareness’ as Greg Chappell stated, is the state of mind in which a batsman is well aware of what is happening around him but he is not acutely focused on any one thing. It is used while waiting to go into bat, between balls, and between overs.

‘Fine focus’ is the state of mind that comes after being aware of the situation and at this stage a batsman gets focused when a bowler is at the top of his bowling mark. At this point a batsman will move his focus to the bowler’s face and which gives the batsman an insight into the bowler’s emotional state and via his peripheral vision, into the body language of the bowler.

As a bowler reaches his delivery point a batsman mind will shift to ‘Fierce focus’ by narrowing his visual field and devoting his attention to the point from which the ball will be delivered and when the bowler will deliver the ball the batsman’s focus will only be on the bowler’s hand and the ball leaving it.

This is the combination that is needed to build longest innings and script epical knocks. On very rarest occasions this combination can be found amongst the Bangladeshi batsmen. On rarest occasions they execute this routine subconsciously and for which on rarest occasion we find our batsmen scoring hundreds. Most of the time they don’t trap themselves on this mental routine and for which our top order batsmen’s stay at the crease are short and leaves the lower order in tremendous pressure.

The problem of the Bangladeshi batsmen is in their minds rather than their technique. Such mental routines should be habituated amongst our batsmen and encourage them to apply during their stay at the crease. 

Thank You

Faisal Caesar