More Nets Won’t Fix Your Match Performance

Briony do you think a lot of players are actually setting themselves up to fail by the way that they train?

it’s a big call, but it’s probably true for many of them.

because we see it every year players have a really good winter lots of nets they’re feeling good and then the season starts and they can’t buy a run

Yeah, and then what do they do? They go back into the nets and they try and fix it.

Exactly. More practice, but not better performance.

which is why it feels like they’ve gone backwards when actually they’re just stuck in the same old cycle.

Yep. Well there’s a definite theme to this week’s questions. Players feeling good in nets, but less so in games.

Shall we get stuck into the show then?

Let’s do it.

I’m Briony Brock.

and I’m Nathan Wood.

Welcome to the Cricket Mind Podcast.

So on today’s pod we’re going to be answering your questions and our first question comes from Alex Rayner who sent this in via Facebook and the question is this: I judge how I will perform based on how I feel before a game going into bat. If I don’t feel right then I just know it will be a bad innings Should I trust this instinct

or ignore it? So what do you think Briony? Do you go with instinct in these situations or not?

Well, thanks Alex for sending in the question. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this notion that things need to feel right. I mean, what’s your experience as a batter? For you, it need to feel right?

Well, I preferred it to feel right, but you know, there was so many times where, mean, I can remember loads of times where I felt really good walking out to bat. I then got out cheaply and conversely, there were times where I felt absolutely terrible, but you know, I still managed to get a decent performance in. So they’re not linked, are they? In my experience, they’re not linked.

Yeah, no, I’d agree exactly with that, with what you said there, Alex. Our instincts can be helpful, but as you say, it’s not necessarily connected. I’m sure we’ve all had days on the cricket pitch or in other sports or in life generally, we wake up and we feel like, ⁓ just not feeling it today. But by the afternoon, you’re fine. A few hours in, you’re fine. So putting too much weight on those things is probably not helpful. I think thinking about what’s helpful in that moment.

is maybe if that instinct is it’s going to go well, then yeah, lean into that and have that extra boost of confidence that day. But kind of thinking that you can predict the future or predict the outcome is probably not really going to help your performance massively.

Yeah, I feel that, well, how you feel is not a reliable predictor of how you’re to perform. So the key for me is not to buy into that story. “I’m not feeling good”. It must play out that way. I think what do have to do? You have to acknowledge how you’re feeling. You have to accept that feeling. But ultimately you have to get on with the job, don’t you? Because great performances,

Well great performance comes from what you do, not how you feel.

Yeah, absolutely. And leaning into those controllable factors and things like that, that you actually do have an impact.

Right, well thanks for that question. What’s the next one?

The next one comes from Josh Bailey by Instagram. I feel like I’ve improved a lot over the winter and I’ve been playing really well in the nets, but when it comes to matches I just haven’t shown that. I’ve been getting out early and not really getting going. Why does it feel so different and how can I play the same way?

in games as I do nets?

Well, the short answer, Josh, is that it feels different because it is different. Nets, there’s no real consequence. You get out, you carry on, you find your rhythm and you face a lot of balls regardless of how well you play in the nets. But in a match that all changes, doesn’t it? know, there’s scoreboard pressure, fielders maybe sledging you.

There’s probably some bowlers that you’ve never faced before. If you make a mistake, your game can end in a flash. And sometimes you don’t even need to make a mistake for your game to end — you could get a really bad decision or you could even get run out by your own umpire due to, by your own partner, by, or maybe, maybe the umpire sometimes due to a bad call. So, you know, that sense of internal pressure can

rise significantly in a game because there’s just simply more to gain and much more to lose. Where are you on this, Briony?

Yeah, I’m the same. This idea that you would play the same way in games as you do in Nets is just probably one best parked. To prepare you for a game, it’s not replicating it in any way. I think Nets have diminishing returns almost more so for the stronger players. think maybe for weaker players, it’s not so bad, but the stronger you get, the more you’re reinforcing this idea that you’re this player.

But it’s not like the matches at all.

No, I reckon that most players in the nets, they have a mentality of “See ball hit ball” But in matches it can flip to ‘don’t get out,’ ‘this bowler’s fast’, ‘i need to perform today’. And that shift in your mind, it can have a massive impact on how you move. You you can get a bit more rigid in your movements, on how you make decisions and ultimately on how you play. So

What tends to happen is that players start thinking, “why can’t I just play the same way in matches as I do in practice”? But actually, I don’t think that’s the goal, Briony — I think the goal is to prepare for what the game will demand of you.

The important bit is how do you bridge that gap? And I reckon the single most important way of bridging that gap is looking at how you train. Does your training actually look and feel like a match? Are you starting on nought in training with a little bit of pressure? Are there any consequences if you get out? ⁓ Are you having to make real decisions or are you just hitting balls? It makes a big difference.

Yeah, absolutely.

It’s my turn, isn’t it? And we’ve got another question. And this one is from Pratik. And this is also coming via Instagram. So Briony here it is. I got 50 in my first game of the season and it felt amazing at the time. But in the last few games, I’ve not been able to replicate it. And now I feel terrible. It almost feels…

like I’ve gone backwards. How do I get around this? We’ve got quite a lot of batting questions this week. Maybe it’s because the wickets are soft and green. What’s your advice here, Briony

Oh Pratik, it’s so difficult. The bar always rises with cricket, doesn’t it? It could always have been more. You could have always got more and you could always want to get more. The expectation that you’re going to replicate it for every game from now on is again one that you probably want to kind of acknowledge and maybe park because even the best in the world are not able to do it every time. And that’s what keeps you coming back to cricket and makes it interesting is the

the variables, the peaks and the troughs of the game. that expectation is probably one that you want to let go a little bit. But I think we work with a lot of people where this situation happens. And I think it can be useful to look back and think, what were you focused on when you got that 50? And quite often it’s sort of like that net stuff. It’s, I wasn’t focused on anything. I was just watching the ball. I was just playing really freely. I felt really great. And then you think, well, what were you focusing on when you

you haven’t played so well. And they’ll say, well, I didn’t want to get out. I was watching the scoreboard. I felt clunky. So it’s those processes that lead to the outcomes. We’ve talked about that before. so if you’re going into every game saying, I need to get 50 again. I want to get 50 again. Why can’t I get 50 again? You’re ignoring all the controllable processes along the way. Whereas if you’re going into that game and going, it’s one ball at a time, just hit the ball, read the ball. That’s how you play.

maybe more in a net, you take it one ball at a time. You don’t think the next six balls, I’m going to do X, you just one at a time and really break it down because that 50 is a great experience and maybe something you can look back on to feel confidence and remind yourself that you’re capable of it. But it’s not your new baseline. It’s not the new par. It’s still something that you’ve got to be working on.

This is common, isn’t it? People start the season well sometimes. He gets a 50, but then the danger is, I think you said baseline, I’d call it benchmark. You start using that as your benchmark or baseline and then anything after that or anything below that, it feels like a failure, doesn’t it? If you’re using that as your benchmark.

I reckon like you said, I think a common trap is when many players try to replicate that 50. They start chasing that feeling, that same outcome, but cricket’s not like that, is it? Progress in cricket is not linear. Every innings is different. It’s not a case of, I’ve got 50 now next week, I need to get 60, and then a week after I get 70, it’s much more up and down than that.

And you know, score of 30 in a low scoring match, it can actually be much more valuable than, I don’t know, a score of 60 on a flat deck in a high scoring situation. ⁓ Absolutely. So context is everything, isn’t it? So I would say instead of asking, how do I do that again? You know, try and shift your thinking to how do I give myself the very best chance of performing well?

season friendly.

in this innings that’s coming up.

Yeah, absolutely, would agree. And while the 50 was probably really nice to have on your record, you probably felt really nice along the way. You played freely and you felt good and you connected with the ball well and those are things that you could replicate even just getting 10 or 20. Yeah, so thank you Pratik. Okay, it’s me, isn’t it? We’ve got Jenny H who is also from Facebook.

We’ve just had a really poor team performance. Low energy, poor decisions and a heavy loss. What’s the best way to address it without damaging confidence?

Yeah, really good question, Jenny. ⁓ something that every coach will need to deal with at some point. I dealt with it a couple of weeks ago. and I think the biggest thing here is getting the balance right. Beacuse you can get two extremes here. You can either go too hard and then players will shut down and the confidence can erode even more, or you can ignore it.

but then nothing really changes and the players don’t learn from it.

Well, as my wife says, actually, the middle is, often the best place. and that middle in this occasion is an honest and constructive perspective, I would say that you give to your players. So the first thing, don’t make it bigger than what it is. It’s one performance. Be really clear on that. instead of kind of it becoming, we’re not good enough.

It’s that performance wasn’t good enough. And there’s a big difference between those two things. One attacks The identity of the players in the team and the other one focuses on behaviour. So try and focus on their behaviour really. and then you need to review it, don’t you? But when you do, and actually I’d like your opinion on this, Briony I think you need to take the emotion out of it or at least.

Bring the emotion that you want to bring to the situation. So, you know, be specific. Instead of kind of saying, “That was poor”, “That was embarrassing”. Go with specific things like, “Our energy drops after 15 overs”, or “We made some really poor decisions when the number three batter was getting going.” By being specific, your players will actually

understand what you’re trying to refer to. But Briony as a coach, as a person actually, what’s the best way of regulating your emotions when they are high, you are disappointed, but you know that that’s not going to be the best emotion to bring to the team. What would you advise?

think it’s a tricky one. think Key is having really knowing your players really well because there’s probably some things that you don’t need to highlight to them. If there were lots of dropped catches, they’re probably going to remember those dropped catches far longer than you. It’s probably more helpful for you to internally recognize that they probably feel pretty bad as well. Put that into your next session. You’re the coach, the next training session.

tie it together. I thought after the last game, we’d work on catches. That enough tells them that you’ve recognized they dropped catches. They probably already recognize it anyway, but you’re looking at an action point moving forward. So I think it’s very easy, whatever age you’re coaching, I mean, from under 10s to adults, to highlight things that they already know. But I think there’s other things, like you said, their energy dropped at this point, or I noticed this. So knowing your players really well and knowing what key things are going to be helpful.

⁓ and then I also think it’s a, it’s a funny one with cricket, isn’t it? Because often there’s like a week between games. So easy to sit around after your game and go, yeah, we didn’t have quite as much energy as we should. We mis-fielded a bit, but you kind of got to remember that next week. So it’s also making some, maybe some notes yourself as a coach. And then when you get to that game, the next time being like, look, remember last week.

didn’t have quite as much energy as we’d like, so let’s really try and make that our focus for the game. And then even if it doesn’t go your way, you can go, look, well, we’ve worked on this and this is better. So as you say, it’s kind of those specific points that are behaviours that you can actually work on rather than things that are just going to knock confidence even more.

I think you also want to involve the players. Ask them what they think. Because if everything just comes from the coach, you’re missing a trick here. When players say it themselves and they think about it themselves, there’s much more ownership. Yeah. And you weren’t out there. And what, Briony?

out there in the middle. don’t actually know what was going on. I would always start with, how do you think that went? 100%.

Yeah. Yep, definitely. And then the final bit is, it is about confidence, but here’s the thing with confidence. You don’t protect confidence by ignoring what happened. You develop it by understanding what you did well, what you did not so well, learning from your mistakes and having a plan for how to move forward. and then I’d say finally, was it Jenny? Yeah. Jenny. ⁓

You probably want to get the message across that the result is not defining, it doesn’t define you as a team, but how you respond to it will. So I think ultimately the good teams, the great teams, they’re not the ones who never have bad days, but they’re the ones that respond really positively when they do.

Yeah, and I think early season loss as well, it plants a seed for quite a nice narrative of growth. You could easily reflect back on that game in four weeks, five weeks, six weeks and go, we’ve really worked on these specific things and we should be proud of that progress that we’ve made.

Yeah, totally. Well, good. Thanks for that, Jenny. Here’s hoping that your team comes back strongly over the next few games. Right, final question. And this one comes from Tony Porter, who emailed us. And this is his question, Briony. All right, OK. ⁓ I’m chuckling here because anyway.

Why are there are so many runouts in the early season? As a coach, it’s so frustrating as it’s such a silly way to get out. We do a lot of nets through the winter and sometimes try and do calling, but it doesn’t seem to stick when we go outdoors. Tony, I feel your pain. My local team, Mobberley — the one I’m coaching at the moment — lost our first game of the season a couple of weeks ago.

And a big reason for the loss was that we kept running ourselves out. Briony, what’s going on here?

similar situation at my club actually. had our men’s teams, first and second teams kind of had an internal preseason friendly and I was on the sideline watching with, so I run the girls with the boys manager and the first team captain who was on the batting side, so he was sat off. We were commenting, the boys manager in particular, on the number of runouts and I said, you just wait till we get started next week. We’re going to have them too and lo and behold, runouts galore.

at all levels of club cricket. It is frustrating to watch. It’s probably even more frustrating to be run out, to be honest with you. And so it’s probably again, one of those where as a coach, you do want to acknowledge it, but equally they also probably know. It’s sort of like also this time of year April, right? You go out to a game, you’re like, it’s really nice and warm, I won’t bring a coat.

Eight o’clock you’re freezing. You learn from the experience. do feel that you kind of being run out really teaches you about how important it is to call. ⁓ just on the nets, as we’ve kind of talked about, I think we’ve run outs and calling and running between the wickets. It comes a bit down to your practice design. And I think there’s really great opportunities to not replicate a match, but

prepare well for a game situation. something that I really like doing as a coach is you do a sort of session on running between the wickets. you know, everyone knows what they’re doing. They know how to run. They know how to call. They know how to turn. And you go into a game, batting team, fielding team, and you say, if you’re not backing up properly or calling or running, you know, properly between the wickets, then we’ll change over. That way a change of innings every time. Usually what happens first ball, non-striker doesn’t back up. ⁓

shame you didn’t back up, change over.” And they go, ⁓ why didn’t he back up? Then the next innings and maybe get through three balls and then they forget the wrong person calls or something like that. ⁓ no, change over. And by the kind of fourth or fifth innings, they’re calling every time, they’re running properly. And that’s nothing like a game, right? Like in a game, you’re not going to be, the game’s not over when you don’t call, but adding a consequence that’s appropriate really reinforces that learning.

And again, it’s something you can continue when you do indoor games is, you know, one of the ways of getting out is ⁓ by not calling. You can add those sort of consequences. And I think again, it’s an example where nets are maybe not preparing you because actually calling in a net, you’re never going to make the right decision or know if it was the right decision because there’s no field or because it’s not just you need to call, but it’s calling appropriately.

with nets at the side. You see people put cones, say, that’s a fielder. I mean, it’s not, it’s a net. So I think it’s probably a bit of practice design there and then also a bit of this happens at the early season and hopefully they will learn from it.

So about 10 years ago, I was speaking with Steven Croft, who was then a Lancashire player and is now the head coach. And he was noticing that a lot of young players who were joining the professional staff, these are now professional players, they had brilliant skill levels, but very low levels of game awareness.

And I think this observation from Steven is actually reflective of a lot of young players today. And I think it plays out in their running between the wickets. And for me, the reason for this is fairly straightforward. I think a lot of young players today spend the vast majority of their time in a lane working on technical skills.

but very little time practicing in game like situations. And so they don’t actually get to practice the running between the wickets until game day comes around. And then they’re essentially learning on the job, which often results in poor decision-making and bad calling, particularly when the feeling under the pump. You said something earlier, Briony you said something about

Always listen to the players because you don’t know what’s going on in the middle. So in that first game of the season when Mobberley kept running themselves out, I was on the sideline. I was like, what’s going on here? I didn’t know. So the following Tuesday at practice, we did a match scenario running between the wickets, And the intention was: batters, You need to call well, run it hard first.

back up — all the things, look to pick up singles and fielders, your job is to stop the single. So it was really game specific. And it was so revealing being right next in amongst the players because they were coming out with, yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes, sorry. ⁓ And they weren’t doing the basics actually. And one of the basics is if you’re not sure, say wait.

and be clear and have a strong communication with your partner. So my best advice, ⁓ Tony, I think it was, is to set up a game in training where your players can actually practice running between the wickets and all the things that involve.

communicating firmly and clearly with your partner, understanding whose call it is. We’ve got a very young team at the moment and sometimes the ball would go behind square on the leg side and the batter is calling it even though they can’t see it. So that’s not your call. So whose call is it? I think it also, if you practice these things in training, you learn not just to trust your judgment.

but you also learn to trust the judgement of your teammates. Which is massive isn’t it? You know, with running between the wickets.

Yeah, that’s a good point. It might be a factor at play here because as you say, if people haven’t played as many games through the winter, they’re not teammates in the same way. They’re not sort of trusting their partner’s speed. They don’t know how quick they are. They’re not trusting their ability to get it and they haven’t built that fundamental trust. So that’s a really good point as well, actually.

Well, we’ve said it so many times and loads of people have said it so many times, cricket is an individual sport played in a team context. But I think the game in terms of players training for it, they’ve gone too far to the individual element. And actually, I think what we need to bring back is that team cohesion. So the antidote, Tony, to poor running between the wickets in matches.

For me, very simple, very old fashioned, get out the nets, get in the middle and practice it in practice. Good question. Yeah, And I can see why it frustrates you.

I think that’s it, Briony, for questions. That’s all we’ve got. big thank you to everyone who sent in those questions. Really, really good. We love receiving them. And hopefully you’ve got a few ideas from it that are helpful. And if you’ve got a question that you’d like us to answer in any future kind of episode, then please do send them in.

Is that all we’ve got?

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people discover the show and ultimately, Briony helps us to support more players, parents and coaches. So thanks again for listening. Shall we call that Stumps Briony? Yeah.

Let’s see you next time.