Six and Out - Some Serious Cricket

Take -Off: Brain- Science of Cricket: Why do cricketers lose form?

by Dinsa Sachan on October 6th, 2007

It gives me really bad vibes when good players start performing, well, badly, especially after some good show. James Anderson, we saw, did a brilliant job of keeping the opponents (uh, Indians) on toes on the recent test series. He was judged Man-of-the-Series, along with Zaheer Khan, for taking 14 wickets (that is coming off the top of my head). In fact, his “form” was quite stable through the ODI series that followed. But suddenly, it (his form) took a U-turn beginning the T20 World Cup and he is yet to send a single batsman back to the pavilion after the first two games against Sri Lanka.

Of course, I am not bringing fundamentally new insights to your notice, but the thing is: things like this get me thinking. (In fact, these thought patterns have altruistic origins. And for modesty’s sake, I am not disclosing them.) I have lots and lots of questions. And it will take a hundred posts to deal with the whole thing, but rather than make one long post, I am going to deal with this in installments. So let’s first consider the impact of personal life on form, since this is something which is most often blamed to ruin a player’s performance.

I have asked a few guys out who swear to play regularly, and play serious cricket.

Q # 1. When you lose your form (batting or bowling), do you think it has anything to do with your personal life? Like, I tend to be distracted from studying when under negative stress generated by a personal problem. Put another way, does the emotional state of affairs in your life affect your performance?

Ankit aka Behind the Wicket says:

Yes, but not to an extent that it hampers your ability. When you play a game, you may be bogged down by a lot of external factors, and you may be thinking about them when you bat, but your judgment of which ball to hit and how to play is not affected…so batting form can only be mildly affected by external factors. Mind you, when it is not your day, these things can spell doomsday, you may get out due to the ‘mild’ change in your technique…

While keeping, it does affect you more as you have to concentrate a lot more and minor changes in your psyche can affect your skills...

Ravi says: From a bowler’s point of view: Nothing really affects the performance except the weather, i.e., wet outfield!

And here’s Ravi’s reasoning on why he has a point-sharp focus:

Whatever happens off-field doesn’t affect at all! I guess the reason for that might be because we’re meant to have fun in the weekend cricket while trying the best for the team to top the district chart!! So, we put everything aside and concentrate on the game, i.e., play without worrying about anything else!

Alex’s take:

I played for 5 years (indoor cricket) and never found personal life to affect my performance. Maybe as the intensity is so high and as you are constantly involved in the game it makes it hard for external factors to affect you. However it may affect you just before the start of the game but by the time you are warming up that’s the last thing on your mind. So I guess the answer is yes you can bring external factors with you to the game but its forgotten pretty quickly.

A-It might have a role to play at the highest professional level,since there s so much media scrutiny in the lives of international players that can exaggerate a normal problem thousandfolds.But at an amateure level or for a common man,the stress,even if there is any, is nowhere near what the professionals ave to cope up with.

Personally speaking,for me,the game has always been a genuine stressbuster.On the arre occasion that I’v entered the ground in a not so jolly mood,I’v used the game as my personal punching bag.Cricket has been one thing in which I’v been able to lose myself completely.Once on the field,I am ‘there’..ABSOLUTELY 100%.The game’s charm renders me incapable of thinking about anything other than the game at hand.

Thinking on this topic from a non personal point of view, I feel that ‘IT’ is a very ‘relative’ concept.It varies from one individual to another.Some might get bogged down by the stress from personal life while others use the situation as a kinda punching bag to come up with even better performances than their average ones, while under pressure.

(Hi Jodie! *waves hand* Sorry, if it’s all going over your head.) [snarky smirk]

A big thanks to all who shared their insights.

Alex came close, I think. I have, however, got a scienterriffic (sp?) explanation for why most men don’t get distracted. (This won’t solve the “form” enigma, but I thought it deserves mention.)

Here’s the deal:

Corpus callosum is a thick rod-like structure in the brain that connects the left-brain and the right brain hemispheres. It’s function essentially is to ensure proper co-ordination between the two sides. For bio buffs: We would call it “maintaining equilibrium between the two hemispheres.” Not goint too deep into the neurobio, personal life is mostly right-brain and cricket intelligence pretty much resides in the left brain. Of course, everything requires at least some part of both the sides, but you get what I mean. It’s thinner in men, the callosum. And that’s that. The male brain is more compartmentalized and that’s why personal life doesn’t create probs. Elaboring on that: women mess things up big time. We know that.

{A male friend at Michigan State Univesity said in response to this explanation: “Wow, then I must be a woman in disguise.”} This is only a generalization, and behavior varies from person to person (like Alex said).

To explore male-female brain differences, please refer to: The Female Brain by LouAnn Brizendine and Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps by Allan and Barbara Pease [Alert: At least one fact in each of these books has been refuted by recent clinical trials. Mehl et. al. found that men don’t usually speak less than women (Brizendine’s claim). ]

So, there goes out my question to you all.

I welcome (read: beg) your opinions, insights, theories on this. The more pros I hear back from, the better. Wow, I might even get a Ph. D. on this.

Photo Courtesy: Nottingham Cricket Council

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POSTED IN: Beyond Cricket, Cricket, Cricket Facts, Feature of the Week, MeThinks, ODI Cricket, Off the Field, Players