Who said what
Everything on this site traces back to somebody. This page separates the two kinds of attribution honestly. First the people whose exact words were written down, quoted in full. Then the ideas that are attributed but paraphrased, where no exact wording was recorded.
The quotations below are reproduced as they were recorded in the notes this site was built from. Where a passage was transcribed with an obvious slip, the clean sentences are quoted and the rest is left out rather than tidied up and presented as speech.
In their own words
“Just as you have always stuck up for your mates, I’m sticking up for mine.”
“One of the strongest parts of reinforcing the freedom in which we play is backing that up with selection. If we want our players to play cagey, yes, we would change things and probably half of us wouldn’t be here.”
“He’s very, very good at creating role clarity within a team. One thing he identified about the Hundred, he was astute enough to realise that it can be quite chaotic. So he found a way of getting us to find simplicity within the chaos.”
“When they played for England did they not want to be the best side in the world? Doesn’t every Test team want that goal? Surely? Isn’t it very obvious and natural? I find it strange that it’s seen as overconfidence or an outlandish goal. Otherwise aren’t you selling yourself and your country short?”
“One good practice is to bat against Swann and Monty without pads or with just knee pads (maybe not a day before a game!). When you have no pads it will force you, sometimes painfully, to get the bat forward of the pads and will force you to watch the ball.”
“Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t play spin, I have seen you and you can!”
“There’s some technical deficiency there, but he’s making the margin for error for the bowlers too great. He can’t score off the back foot, and if you can’t score off the back foot in Test cricket, batting becomes a hard game.”
“Just keeping it really simple, and going back to how I used to play. It is what has worked for me my whole career.”
“If I could have my career over again, this will be the first shot that I’ll teach myself: the late block. Once you can play this shot, everything else will come naturally to you. Every shot I play, I set up to play a really late defensive stroke.”
“Deano, watch their ball release, watch the rotation of the seam, and try to get down the track and hit the ball on the full. If you can’t get to the pitch of the ball, then play them off the back foot. It’s easy!”
“When you play against quality spinners, you must have mental courage to be successful. And your footwork, or the bottom half of your body, must be nimble and supple, and yet be able to move quickly to get to the pitch of the ball.
I quickly realised spinners don’t like you running at them. I learnt that I must always make my first stride to the ball a big one. No half steps.”
“If I just concentrate on looking to score, my defence takes care of itself. I was too worried about trying to be so defensive and then attacking. We talk about intent, if you’re not looking to score that person who’s bowling to you has already got the upper hand, because you’re looking to defend. I’m at my most vulnerable when I’m looking to defend. If I look to score and I nick it, so be it, but I’ve got to be looking to score and have that intent because if I’m not looking to score I have no intent at all.”
“It’s an act. Of course I had self-doubts, but I kept an act up. The skinhead. A few sendings off. I fear nothing. Some sort of machine. Which is nonsense. You act, don’t you!”
“I’m my Game Face no matter what. I say it, be it, do it, act it, embody it, enact it.”
“One of the things that I love is focusing on the process over the prize. I would say to myself a lot: process over prize, process over prize, process over prize. Just to take myself away from the outcome.
I can get real caught up in the outcome. I just really need to remind myself that the outcome will ultimately happen if you just focus on the process. It takes care of itself.”
“You have to let go of outcomes. It has to be about the enjoyment and embracing the process.”
“Communication and communicating regularly is so, so, so important to a winning team.”
“A magic formula that delivered freedom and flow.”
“Full.”
Attributed, but not quoted
These are ideas taken from named people where the notes recorded the thinking but not the words. They are written plainly on the site rather than in quotation marks, and they should stay that way unless an exact wording turns up.
Clarrie Grimmett, through Ashley Mallett
That it is not where the ball lands but how it arrives, and that getting the ball above the batter’s eye line is what puts them at sea.
Shane Warne
That he did not aim at a spot on the pitch but thought about the shot he wanted the batter to play.
AB de Villiers
Playing the ball inside a small box near the stumps, under your eyes, after early trouble with hard hands.
Michael Bevan
Thinking about the gaps rather than the fielders.
Adam Gilchrist
Playing what the ball merited whatever the time of day or state of the game.
Michael Clarke
That every batter can score in form, and the great ones find a way when they are out of it.
Brendon McCullum
Seeing it early and hitting it late, and not giving up after a mistake. His 2016 Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s is the fuller statement.
JP Duminy
Going ball by ball at Melbourne in December 2008, making 166 and putting on 180 for the ninth wicket with Dale Steyn.
Rahul Dravid
Going forward against spin without planting the front foot, so you can still change your mind if it turns more than you expected. From the same email to Kevin Pietersen, recorded in the notes as a summary rather than as his words.
Ricky Ponting
Not over committing forward against spin. Separately, telling every group he joined that they had his trust from the first day rather than having to earn it.
Pat Cummins
Using the bouncer to stop a batter getting fully forward, so the full ball that follows arrives at someone who no longer trusts their front foot.
Glenn Maxwell
Hitting for power, in conversation with Sam Konstas: arms extended, aim square, back and across if it is short.
Pat Cummins, on the side
That keeping it fun is the point, because fun is why everybody started playing, and it is what gets the best out of players and makes them work as a team. Teammates describe him as calm and consistent, and as somebody who tries not to add pressure to players who have plenty already. His words on standing by his players are quoted above; this summary of the rest is still a summary.
Eoin Morgan
Taking the fear of failure out of England: be as courageous as you can, and it is all right to fail. He is quoted above on the half of that which can be checked, that the freedom only counts if selection backs it up. The line the site leans on hardest is still not quoted, and it is the distinction between reckless and fearless: reckless is doing something you would never normally do with no method behind it, fearless is the same thing with a method. It is widely attributed to him and no original wording for it has been found anywhere this site can reach, so it stays down here.
Stephen Fleming
That there is no secret formula and the strength is delivering on the philosophy. That sentence is the headline of an interview this site cannot reach, so it is recorded here rather than quoted. Find a player’s strength, give him a clearly defined role, and back him long enough to succeed, where other sides change after a handful of poor games. Chris Jordan, quoted above, says the same thing from the inside.
Andy Flower
Refusing to accept ordinary, which won three Ashes, and he is quoted above saying so. The other half of it is not a quotation: the intensity eventually exhausted the dressing room and the run ended five nil. He did name the intensity himself long before the collapse, telling the Guardian in February 2011 that with the intensity the players played at and the intensity demanded in training, it was no surprise people broke down at the end of a long, hard tour. What he says now, that working with the person matters as much as working with the athlete, is recorded here as a summary.
Brett Lee
How Jofra Archer generates pace off a short run, largely through the front arm and the hips.
Sachin Tendulkar
How to play the cut: back and across, wait, and come down on it with the face closing over the ball.
Dewald Brevis
Not a saying but an example. He watches the ball the whole way through contact, which is the clearest current demonstration of the thing this site asks for most often.
Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Novak Djokovic
On failure, and on what to do the day after one. Each is linked from the page it appears on.
Jarrod Kimber
That Mitchell Starc is not a swing bowler in the way the phrase is usually meant, but a bowler who can move a brand new ball for a few overs. Written up on Good Areas. Paraphrased here rather than quoted, because the original could not be read from where this site was built.
CricViz, and Ben Jones
That a bowler like Starc takes the pitch out of the equation, being no less dangerous on a dead surface than a lively one. Also the expected wickets model, xW, which judges a delivery on its speed, swing, line and length rather than on whether it happened to get a wicket. Ben Jones is CricViz’s head of insight and the person who most often explains the model in public. Paraphrased, for the same reason.
Three corrections
Errors of fact found while building this, corrected here rather than carried forward.
The four minute mile. John Landy broke it 46 days after Roger Bannister, not six weeks.
JP Duminy at Melbourne. The innings was in December 2008, not 2005.
Mitchell Starc and the first over. A draft of the bowling feature said he had taken more first over wickets than anybody. He has not: James Anderson and Stuart Broad have both taken more. The published version is about his rate instead, which is the stronger claim and the true one.
A few lines on the site are quoted from the notes themselves rather than from anybody famous. Those are cited as coming from the notes, and the wording is the owner’s own.
One gap worth naming: the quotations above are reproduced from the notes rather than checked against original recordings or transcripts, which were not reachable from where this was built. If an exact wording matters to you, the McCullum lecture and the Warner interview are both published in full and worth reading at the source.
The Ponting quotation is the one exception, and it is a partial one. It was checked against contemporary reports of the same Channel 7 segment, which agree on the wording, rather than against the broadcast itself. The video was not reachable from where this was built.