photo credit: Neil Saunders

With the new season upon us it's time for an update from some of our Case Studies.

Guy

I gave Guy some specific things to focus on in the pre season. Here is how it went for him:

• Increased practice on bowling and batting after setting practice targets for the winter.

photo credit: Scott (SA-Photo)

Matt

Matt has completed a very useful exercise to try and improve his team's performance in 2008. I asked him to write a fake newspaper report summarising the season with the most incredible success he can realistically come up with. Professionals call this 'outcome visioning' which is just a posh way of writing down what you want to achieve without holding yourself back.

Mike is a bowler in his 40s playing in Wiltshire. In days gone by he played at county 2nd team standard for the Army and is still taking wickets for his club. He plans to continue to do so in the coming season.

Mental Skills

As an Army man, Mike is efficient, focussed strongly on completing tasks with minimum fuss. He seems to know his strengths and weaknesses well, thriving on the competitive pressure of playing cricket. From his initial questions I suspect Mike gets everything he wants from playing cricket already.

Charlie is a 19 year old batsman on the brink of making it as a regular in his club 1st XI. He is aiming to score a century in that team this year and in the longer term make it into county cricket. Last year he met his goal of scoring a first team 50 and averaged 16.5.

Mental Skills

Charlie has a good mental approach and uses a lot of techniques already to maintain concentration and set goals. He wants to gain self confidence and this can be done by some more specific goal setting. I feel he may also benefit from learning how to relax at the crease and will show him some ways to do this.

Matt is captain, opening bowler and lower order biffer for a side in the West Sussex Cricket League. He is in his mid 30s and last year averaged 16 with the bat and 24 with the ball taking 12 wickets in 13 games. He has recently dropped down a level to captain and improve standards but last year things did not go his way personally or as a team. This season he wants to turn the team round from a bottom side to win promotion.

Here are 2 more participants in the Case Study series this year.

James

James is another unique member of the trial. He calls himself a 'specialist fielder' although he does bat and bowl at 3rd XI level in the West Sussex Cricket League Division 4. He has little experience in the game having taken it up for social reasons last year. He has no ambitions to play at a higher level, just to have more success at his current standard.