In this episode, we talk about leadership and the idea of cultural architects vs cultural assassins.

Whether you’re a coach, player or parent, you are part of a team's culture. I’d really encourage you to think about whether you’re more of an architect or an assassin and then think about how you can be a leader in your environment by improving your behaviours on a daily basis.

This might not make much sense now but I’m sure you’ll understand what we’re talking about once you start listening.

This is the final of 3 episodes from our epic conversation with Cricket Australia psychologist Peter Clarke. If you haven’t already listened to part one and two then I highly recommend you go back and check them out as there were so many great learnings from those episodes that lead into this one.

In this episode, Peter shares some brilliant practical examples of how some of the best athletes in the world use routines to manage their anxiety and release little bits of emotion and nervous energy. He also shares how the best athletes have specific mental techniques and behaviours to get themself in the best possible state to perform at their best.

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This is part two of our three-part series with Cricket Australia sports psychologist Peter Clarke. If you haven’t already listened to part one then I highly recommend you go back and check that out as Peter shared so many great insights into what sports psychology is, how we can all understand our thoughts and emotions and learn to manage them to help us perform at our best more consistently.

In this episode we discuss:

• Overcoming being someone's 'bunny'
• Mindfulness
• Letting go of mistakes
• The 3 R's - Reflect, Relax, Refocus
• How the best players use routines to refocus
• Cue words and pre-ball routines
• Dealing with stress
• PLUS a whole lot more!

If you want to reach your peak performance on the field, this will help you to understand how to manage your thoughts and emotions.

This episode is a change-up to our normal format as we don't have Burkey with us and instead have a special guest.

Peter Clarke is a sports psychologist who works with Cricket Australia, and during our hour-long conversation, we (former Australian Test Opener Chris Rogers and I) asked Clarke some questions about how aspiring cricketers can deal with nerves, anxiety and pressure, plus a whole lot more.

Cricket is a contest. A contest between the batter and the bowler. A contest between the bat and the ball. And this conversation was to try and give you an insight into how you can give yourself the best chance to win the contest, over and over again! If you can do that then, providing your technical fundamentals are sound, you’re giving yourself a pretty good chance of the ultimate goal of any cricketer...to score runs or take wickets!

But, to win the contest you have to have your mind and thoughts in a place that allows you to let your body execute the skill that you’ve trained so much, do what it’s capable of doing.

In our last episode, we shared a few of our thoughts and ideas on game day mindset and what and how to think on game day. In today’s episode, we’re going to dive even deeper into this and discuss how to mentally ‘get into the contest’. We share some thoughts and stories from our experiences of what we think you should or shouldn’t be focusing on each and every ball to give you the best chance of ‘winning that contest. This is a really interesting topic that we’ve been spending a fair bit of time recently learning more about so I hope you enjoy it and learn something from it.

In this episode we discuss Game Day mindset and how what you think has a massive impact on how you perform. Something that I’ve heard a lot from people in our community and I’ve seen it first hand with some of my teammates over the years, is players who are good in the nets but can’t transfer their skills into a match. Our minds and thoughts can either help us or hinder us and we explore this in more detail in this episode.

Here are a few things we discussed in this episode:

• Justin Langer’s idea of Batting Perfection and how it had nothing to do with the result.
• Routines bring confidence and trust in yourself and your game + how important routines are in other sports like tennis, golf and baseball and how if you look closely, the top athletes in all those sports have extremely consistent routines, each and every time they perform their skill.
• There is a difference between having mental and physical routines and how the very top athletes will have some sort of mental routine or process that focuses their thoughts and attention into the next ball.
• The mental side of your game CAN BE PRACTICED or developed. Even though “in cricket, our training environment is so different from a game” that doesn’t mean we can’t develop our mental routines and processes. Buck shares how he encourages his athletes to mark a cross on the ground and use it as a spot to go in between balls to refocus.
• Scolls shares his 3 R’s: Reflect, Relax, Refocus to get your mind back into the next ball. Both techniques can most definitely be practised in the training environment but either way, if you want to work on your mental process, aim to slow your sessions down so they’re more like a match!
• A lot of people won’t know what their routine is yet but you’ve got to keep experimenting with it. Keep experimenting until the answer becomes clearer and clearer and when something seems to work, try and continue doing it for a while to see if it sticks.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

In today’s episode, we look at a topic that is extremely important for any sportsperson to understand - balance! Not balance in a physical sense but getting the balance right between being the best athlete you can be with having a life outside of your sport.

The research that we've heard suggests that cricketer who have something outside of cricket are the ones that are more successful and this episode dives into why having balance in your life outside cricket can help you and your game.

This podcast is for aspiring cricketers, athletes of other sports, coaches and parents who want to learn and develop themselves on and off the field.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

From our experience, we've seen that a lot of young players get intimidated by what they don’t know. It can seem like there are players that are so much better than you so after some feedback from our listeners, we thought it was important to share a few things that we think any aspiring cricketer, athlete, coach or anyone for that matter, can do to increase their knowledge in their craft, as many of the things we discussed aren’t limited to just the cricket field.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything and you don’t have to do it all. It’s just some ideas from 3 mates who chat regularly about topics like this and want to share some of our ideas that we’ve developed over our lives in sport with whoever is interested and wants to learn.

A few key messages and points from this episode...

• Young players get intimidated with what they don’t know. It can seem like there are players that are so much better than you but if you’re prepared to chip away and keep working hard and constantly be looking at ways to get better then who knows where you can get to. And as Buck said, even if you’re learning some bad stuff at times, you’ll find that out as well and you’ll realise that’s not helpful and you’ll steer clear of it in the future
• If you want to be the best, you have to be prepared to seek avenues where you’re learning more. Try not to just be a fan of the game but try to be a student or an analyst and use every opportunity to learn and develop yourself
• Be resourceful and use the resources you have available to you. You might not have access to footage of every innings you play like the pros do but you can find ways to learn and improve
• We share a number of stories including how one of the players that Buck mentors, sent him the video of the Ponting, Gilchrist and KP doing a masterclass and said “I just want to talk about it. I just want to try and understand it”.
• It’s up to the young players to seek out information and mentoring from the older players. You have to get out of your comfort zone and not be scared to ask questions or ask for help.
• Buck shares a brilliant story he heard of NBA star Tim Duncan about how he goes in to practice and to do his daily vitamins on his days off and then speaks to the team's analyst about how he can get better. An inspiring mindset & work ethic.
• Plus a whole lot more!

We want this podcast to gives as much value as it can, so we’d love to hear your feedback - what did you find interesting or learn from this show? We also want to hear what topics you’d like us to discuss in future episodes so send me a message via the Cricket Mentoring social media channels and we’ll start shouting out the people who suggested the topics we’re discussing.