Do not just ask to be patient

[sharifk]

I will start the thread with a parable that P. Senge has used in “The Fifth Discipline” to illustrate the impact of gradual changes:

If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to scramble out. But if you place the frog in room temperature water, and don’t scare him, he’ll stay put. Now, if the pot sits on a heat source, and if you gradually turn up the temperature, something very interesting happens. As the temperature rises from 70 to 80 degrees F, the frog will do nothing. In fact, he will show every sign of enjoying himself. As the temperature gradually increases, the frog will become groggier and groggier, until he is unable to climb out of the pot. Though there is nothing restraining him, the frog will sit there and boil. Why? Because the frog’s internal apparatus for sensing threats to survival is geared to sudden changes in his environment, not to slow, gradual changes.

Although Senge uses this story to illustrate the impact of “gradual changes” to corporations and the importance of “trend analysis” to tackle the “gradual changes,” we can learn other things from it as well.

As I have stated in many threads, our numbers and quality of available talented players of today are many more and better than that of a few years back. But it almost seems that our Test teams of those days used to perform better (even if not a lot better) than the way our current Test team is performing. Another noticeable matter is that, whereas our young ODI team can consistently score over 200 against any top teams, our current Test team has been struggling to cross 100 sometimes. These tell me something about the mentality of the players of the current team. Since the young guys possess talents, what’s lacking is the mental ability to use their talents to the desired or even to the capable level. We should also remember that when 1, 2 or 3 players fail to perform, we can blame the failing player(s). But when everyone fails, our system must assume the responsibility. Therefore, it’s our system that’s inadvertently creating this mental inability that our talented players are failing. As there can be many reasons behind it, and I have stated a few in the “Do not point to wrong reasons” (http://www.banglacricket.com/alochon...ad.php?t=22419) thread, BCB must perform a root cause analysis to identify the appropriate reason(s). One possible reason can be that we are asking our players to alter their natural playing styles. For example, our old generation players weren’t confident enough nor did they have the necessary skills to win, so the players were asked to play extremely defensively and it was the natural style of the most players. So they performed to their potentials and there weren’t too many all out for 100 types of scores. But if we are asking our young talented players to play with the same style, which isn’t their natural style, we are asking them to alter their natural games and we are killing their intrinsic desires to win games. And that could provide very negative outcomes. I believe that we are succeeding in ODIs because we are allowing each player’s natural games in ODIs. However, without knowing inside facts, we can’t assume for sure that this is the case. If this is not the case, BCB must seek professional help from appropriate Psychologists.

In case the above scenario is true that our management is asking to alter our players’ natural playing styles, I would like to re-visit the above parable. Let’s just think that we would like to cook a live frog, whose instinct is to jump out of danger. Yet we would like the frog to remain in the water while cooking. Should we throw the frog in the boiling water, or should we put the frog in comfortable water before starting to cook? Patience and aggressiveness need to be treated as instinctive skills, and therefore they need to be taught using tools and methods and not by just stating to be patient or aggressive. If our management thinks that a player will need to improve a patience skill for a specific type of play, he should be provided with appropriate tools and technique so that over time, he can improve such skills. At no point, a player should be asked to change his playing style over night because due to the player’s instinct, he won’t be able to tolerate the change right away just the way a frog won’t be able to tolerate the boiling water and jump out of it. However, with appropriate methods and tools and given enough time, you can change a player’s attitude without damaging his confidence and other skills just the way you can cook a live frog by slowly increasing the temperature of the water. For this, a system must have performance measurement system and tools in place to measure each skill and quality of it quantitatively as I have written in this thread:

http://www.banglacricket.com/alochon...ad.php?t=22518

Once the quality elements can be captured, a baseline performance of each skill of each player needs to be identified. To identify true baseline, all players must be allowed to play with one’s natural style for the “reliability” and “validity” factors of the data. Improvements can only be made from this baseline. By calculating the current skill level of each player for an element, quality improvement can be measured and controlled as needed. Until a player has reached at the desired level, our selection process needs to select the appropriate individuals for the correct positions and skills. But we shouldn’t select a player of one style and just ask him to change his style or ask him to be patient or aggressive.