Five months ago, Shaun Marsh made an impressive Test debut in the highlands of Sri Lanka. His 141 in the drawn second Test suggested a long and successful career at number three in a new-look Australian batting line-up.
Since then, it has been a real struggle. His next 10 Test innings have resulted in 160 stuttering runs. It seems that his career now hangs in the balance.
Lean period
What goes wrong when accomplished players go through a lean period? We know they can play, but they give the distinct impression that they have lost their talent. In some cases it is hard to see how they will ever make worthwhile runs again.
Good players don't lose their skill but they can lose their way. Gambhir, Sehwag, Laxman and Dravid all suffered loss of form during the recently completed Test series. Form, it seems, is a tenuous thing.
They will all have spent hours of introspection, probably spending time with coaches and the video trying to work out what has happened. All of them, except possibly Sehwag, will be thinking it has something to do with their technique. The video analysis will no doubt confirm that because nobody looks good when they get out!
But, it may be the worst place to be looking.
Quality players have honed their skills over thousands of hours of coaching, training and playing. They have got to the point of trusting their method by constantly adjusting it through the different layers of competition on their way up.
When they are playing well, they hardly think at all as they respond to the information that their eyes pick up. The brain automatically processes this information. In turn, it arranges muscles and ligaments to respond in the right order to move them into the optimal position to play the ball.
The human brain is multi-layered; in simple terms, the ‘conscious' mind is the hardware that deals with the big-picture whilst the ‘sub-conscious' mind is the software that runs the physical programme.
When all is well, the player allows each part of the brain to do its job. This could be as simple as saying to oneself ‘watch the ball' — which gives the conscious mind something to do while letting the sub-conscious mind get on with what it does best.
Auto-pilot
Basically, the operation is being run on auto-pilot.
The amazing thing is that when one is ‘in the zone' like this, everything seems to move in slow motion. Often one will be surprised with the shot that results because no ‘conscious' thought or effort has gone into the response to the delivery. Rarely does one get tired when ‘in the zone.'
Having experienced it, I found that when one is in the middle of a bad trot the ‘conscious' mind starts to interfere in the running of the software as we try to be careful not to get out.
We no longer trust the ‘software' to do its job.
This results in confusion and potential failure. The mind is battling itself which means that the thought process is cluttered. In this state of mind the ‘conscious' mind does not do its simple job of watching the ball which means the information it is collecting is partial or non-existent.
This is compounded by the fact that the ‘conscious' mind is not equipped to run the physical programme which now looks clunky. No wonder the out of form player appears to be ponderous and slow. Feet do not move, body weight is not optimally transferred and the body rotates into the shot early bringing the bat down across the line of the delivery.
From here it usually becomes a downward spiral. As the coach and the player view this on the video tape they discuss the ‘technique' work that needs to be done. This encourages the conscious mind to become even more controlling as it takes a ‘safety first' approach to the problem. Its critical role of watching the ball falls off its radar altogether.
When I had been through this sequence a few times during my career, I learnt that the opposite approach was the best. Understanding the problem was my key to solving it.
Shaun and the others would be best advised to take a deep breath, start watching the ball again and trust their instincts and let the ‘sub-conscious' take over the role of running the programme.
If they do, runs will start flowing again as if by magic. Just ask Ricky Ponting.
