THE embattled South African cricket team at the World Cup should try to avoid going overboard with analysis of their current plight at the tournament.
That is the advice of Paddy Upton, who helped Gary Kirsten mastermind from behind the scenes India’s elevation to the CWC 2011 title on home turf, and then also oversee the Proteas’ rise a few years ago to world’s top-ranked Test team.
The Proteas will seek to bank a much-needed first World Cup victory in their fifth match against Afghanistan, a day-nighter, at Cardiff on Saturday (2.30pm SA time).
Said Upton; “In a World Cup you have quite a long time between games, when compared to a more normal (bilateral) tour …
“This can mean you overthink a game. A hotel room can become a lonely place to be, you can arrive at a game mentally exhausted after playing it over in your mind too many times.
“Maybe in England freeing up your mind with (non-cricketing pursuits) is a little easier … you can actually get out and about, onto the High Street.
“There is (also) a very big danger when an individual or team is in a slump of focussing too acutely on the technical side, the fitting and turning of the game.
“Essentially what that does is get the player to pay attention to what is going on in and around his personal space. Really when a cricketer is doing his best is when a batsman, for example, is looking down the other end of the pitch at the bowler … you need to be focussing down the other side.
“You are in trouble when you focus too rigidly on what is going on in your own space. It is the same with teams: when you focus too inwardly it becomes a problem, a downward spiral.”
He also said coaches could, almost unwittingly, become counter-productive in their methods at times of difficulty.
“When slumps last a while, we coaches can actually be responsible in some ways … that’s when we feel we can jump in and make a difference. We start finding things that are wrong and helping people fix them … so all we do is direct attention to players’ techniques or teams’ processes, which gets them too self- or internally focused.”
