[Arnab]

Facing the West Indian Pace Attack
Greg Chappell

The biggest thing to come to grips with facing an awesome quartet of pace bowlers such as the West Indies boasted in the second half of my career was that it was going to take a long time to make runs. On average, they bowled around 12 overs per hour with a high percentage of balls being short of a length, often head high. If you faced half the balls bowled and half of those were difficult to score from you were effectively facing 3 overs per hour. This made it difficult to build up any momentum with your innings. Even with the best will in the world it was hard to force the pace and get on top of the attack.

I decided that if I was going to score runs against them then I had to be prepared to bat all day and not get distracted by the frustration of not being able to score quickly. To achieve this I had to develop my mental techniques to give support to my physical techniques.

I had always prided myself on my ability to concentrate for long periods but I had to take it to a higher level during the period of World Series Cricket in the late 70's. What I learnt at this time was that to develop a mental routine I had to have a strict physical routine. Similar to a golfers pre shot routine I found it important to have a consistent routine between balls and between overs. This helped me to mentally relax between balls to conserve my mental and emotional energy. It also provided me with check points so that I knew I was concentrating before I faced each ball.
My routine allowed me to switch in and out of the different levels of concentration. I developed three levels of concentration. The first being the level of

AWARENESS

Awareness was the state of being aware of what was happening around you but not being acutely focussed on any one thing. It was used while waiting to go into bat, in between balls and in between overs.

FINE FOCUS

I switched from awareness to fine focus when the bowler reached the top of his bowling mark. At this point I switched my focus to the bowlers face which gave me an insight into his emotional state as well as his body language via my peripheral vision. All of this helped give me valuable information and cues from the bowler. As the bowler reached his delivery point I switched my focus to the point from which the ball would be delivered and I narrowed my visual field as I switched to fierce focus.

FIERCE FOCUS

Fierce Focus was only used for the shortest time possible because it required a lot of mental energy. As the ball left the bowlers hand all I saw was the ball and the bowlers hand. This gave me all the cues I needed to gauge the line, length and type of delivery. Once that play was finished I looked to the crowd momentarily to give my mind a rest as I switched to the state of awareness. This was important to conserve mental energy. The cue to bring my mind back to the game was to count the fielders then switch to the bowlers face as he reached his mark as I cycled through to the state of fine focus.

I went through this process for every ball I faced because if I didn't it was possible to get stuck at one level and either use up too much energy too quickly or face balls without being properly focussed. Each time I got back to the strikers end having been away from strike I remarked my crease as a signal to my brain to begin the cycle once again. These physical actions triggered signals to my brain that it was time to start the process over again. They were also check points for me to know that I was in the necessary state of mind to give me the best chance of success.

Each time I went through a lean period in my career I was able to trace it back to the fact that I had got away from this routine. As soon as I got back to the routine my output of runs increased. What I learnt early in my career was that 99 time out of 100 I would get myself out. It may have been contributed to by the pressure built up by the bowlers but it was a mental error that invariably brought about my dismissal. I also realised that no matter how good my technique this ratio would never change. What I decided was that I had to improve my mental skills so that I could delay the inevitable for as long as possible to give me a greater chance of making runs.