Underneath everything else
The mind.
You cannot control whether you hit a six, take a catch, or win. You can only control what you do with your body and what you are thinking while you do it. Every single thing on this site comes back to that one sentence.
The mind
You cannot control whether you hit a six, take a catch, or win. You can only control what you do with your body and what you are thinking while you do it. Every single thing on this site comes back to that one sentence.
The only five things you own
There is a world out there, but you are in here, at a control panel with five levers. Get those in the right place at the right time and your mind goes quiet. Everything outside the shell is weather: it arrives, it bangs on the glass, it leaves.
Everything outside the shell is weather. It arrives, it bangs on the glass, it leaves. Your job is the five levers.
If I just concentrate on looking to score, my defence takes care of itself. I am at my most vulnerable when I am looking to defend. David Warner
Two seconds of total attention, then genuinely let go. Nobody can concentrate for four hours. Everybody can concentrate for two seconds, six times an over.
The reason this matters is stamina. Concentration is a bar in a fighting game and it does not refill while you are using it. Spend it on the two seconds that matter and you will still have some in the last half hour, which is exactly when games are won.
Process, and being good at failing
Trust the process, get the prize
Judge an innings on whether you did the right things, not on the number next to your name. Did I watch it? Was I still? Did I play late? Answer those honestly and the runs arrive on their own schedule.
Rory McIlroy repeats it to himself like a chant: process over prize, process over prize. It is a way of pulling his attention off the outcome, which he cannot control, and onto the shot, which he can.
Rory McIlroy, via coachajkingsJJ Redick puts the same idea the other way round. Results do not create discipline. Discipline creates results. Everyone loves outcomes, and almost nobody loves the process that produces them.
JJ Redick, via coachajkingsBe genuinely fine with missing
If you never fail you are not attempting anything. Being okay with failing actually makes you fail less, because you stop spending the next ball thinking about the last one.
Jonny Wilkinson on being genuinely okay with missing: if it misses, let it be my miss, and the most beautiful miss there is. The freedom is what makes the next one go in.
Jonny WilkinsonKobe Bryant on what to do the day after a bad one. The answer is boring and it is the whole answer: get up and go to work.
Kobe BryantLosing is part of winning
Not a consolation, a mechanism. The people who win most have lost most, and have looked hard at every one of them instead of away.
Michael Jordan on losing being part of winning, not the opposite of it.
Michael Jordan, via Josh ChambersGiannis Antetokounmpo, asked whether a season without a title was a failure, refuses the question. There are steps towards a goal, and calling them failures is just a bad way to count.
Giannis AntetokounmpoThink about what you gain, not what you lose
Fear points at the thing you are trying to avoid, which is exactly where you then hit it. Point at what you want instead, and trust the technique you have practised.
Think about what you are going to gain, not what you might lose. If you feel fear, do not feed it. Trust your technique and your instincts, because they are what you have actually practised.
a reel worth watching twiceYour game face
A competitive persona you can put on deliberately. Two or three action words, sometimes with an animal or a player attached. It is not fake. It is a description of who you need to be once the game starts.
Dan Abrahams, on a Roy Keane interview: "It is an act. Of course I had self doubts, but I kept an act up."Roy Keane admitting the hard man was an act: "Of course I had self doubts, but I kept an act up." Dan Abrahams calls this a game face, and treats it as a technique you can build rather than a personality you are born with.
Dan Abrahams on Roy KeaneFlow, and getting back to it
Flow is not luck. It has conditions: a clear task, no scoreboard in your head, and complete attention on the thing in front of you. You can rebuild those conditions on purpose.
Jonny Wilkinson on recapturing flow. It is not luck and it is not mood: it is a set of conditions you can deliberately rebuild.
Jonny WilkinsonJonny Wilkinson on force versus power. Straining harder produces force and noise. Power comes from sequence and timing, which is why the relaxed player hits it further.
Jonny WilkinsonCopy on purpose
If somebody in front of you is doing it, physics says you can too. Watch their five levers, then move yours the same way. Roger Bannister ran the first four minute mile in May 1954, and John Landy did it 46 days later. Knowing it is possible is most of the job.
Being coachable is a skill
It is a skill exactly like the cut shot is a skill, and you can get better at it. It is also much rarer, which makes it worth more.
Being coachable is treated here as a skill in its own right, trainable like any other, and rarer than the physical ones.
the skill of being coachableTeam
You win and lose as a team
Everybody does something they wish they had not, and that is fine, because the greatest do. Don Bradman was bowled for a duck in his final Test innings, needing four runs to average a hundred.
What being a great team mate actually looks like, in behaviour rather than in slogans.
on being a great team mateTalk, constantly
Between overs, between balls, from the non striker's end. Information nobody says out loud is information the team does not have.
Ben Stokes: communication, and communicating regularly, is so important to a winning team.Standards, stacked daily
Culture is not a speech. It is a small number of standards that everybody actually keeps, repeated until a hard day feels normal.
Curt Cignetti on building a team through standards, accountability and stacking consistent good days, so that pressure in a close game feels like an ordinary Tuesday.
Curt Cignetti, via coachvintTrust first, not last
Ricky Ponting told every group the same thing: you do not have to earn my trust, you have it until you lose it. Be yourself, play your way, and feel good about yourself every day.
Preparing
Practise the match, not the drill
Anxiety is the price of an unprepared mind. Preparation means doing the thing you want to do, over and over, before the day you need it, imagining the real situation right down to how it will feel. Twenty push ups once does nothing. Twenty a day for a year does.
Make practice harder than the game
Mark Cosgrove's dad used to throw at him hard as a boy. Face something quicker and nastier than you will meet on Saturday, and Saturday feels slow.
Mark Cosgrove's dad prepared him as a boy by throwing at him hard. Face something nastier in the backyard than you will meet on Saturday.
on Mark CosgroveDo what most people your age are not doing
That is the whole advantage, and it is available to anyone who wants it. Nobody is stopping you.
Do what ninety percent of teenagers are not doing. That is the entire advantage, and it is sitting there unclaimed.
on the unclaimed advantageTalent is not the thing
Stuart Barnes is honest about why he did not make it as a professional, and it is worth listening to precisely because it is not a highlights reel.
Stuart Barnes on why he did not make it as a professional cricketer. Worth listening to precisely because it is not a highlights reel.
Stuart BarnesForm
Form is the most mysterious thing in cricket and the one nobody teaches. It is worth having a picture for it, because the picture tells you what to do when it goes.
Michael Clarke: every batsman can score when he is in form, and the great ones find a way to do it when they are not. That second half is the whole skill.
Stay on the track as long as you can
When you are in form, you have a clear view of what is coming, room to move, and time to see the danger. Do not wander off it casually assuming you know the way back.
Practise on a different track
The nets are a different track. Useful, but there is only one track that counts, and that is match day. Stay on it as long as you can, and enjoy being there.
Know your own way back
When you get lost, it is hard work hacking out of the scrub. Remember how you got back last time, and go to the five levers. That memory is the most valuable thing a batter owns.
Michael Clarke: battling your way through poor form is the true mark of a champion.Write it down while it is working
The day it all feels easy, stop and write down what you were actually doing. Where you stood, where the bat was, what the plan was. Cameron Green calls his a time capsule, and he wrote one after a Shield hundred because he knew months of short format cricket were coming and that he would have forgotten by the time he needed it. Memory is the thing that goes, and it goes quietly.
Cameron Green, on the notes he made after a Sheffield Shield century in March 2026.Pleased, never content
Enjoy a good day properly. Then go back to work, because the weeds started growing the moment you stopped looking.
Novak Djokovic on how he thinks between points, which is really about how fast you can put the last one down.
Novak Djokovic