Seven Key Steps

[Zeeshan]

Hey friends! It's your beloved Gopalda again. Here I wrote my first article...no not the article 'A'....roflmao....get it article article... ANYHOO, here it goes:

Seven Key Ideas to Improve Performance of Bangladesh Cricket Team

If the defeat of Bangladesh by Ireland brought any lucky charms, then they can only be the following seven ideas which should be implemented to improve the performance of the team:

1. Short-Term Contract. Not only captain need to be sacked, but BCB need to revise their policy on their contracted players. Instead of signing up players for indefinite terms, it is of utmost necessity to recruit players on short-term basis with apportioned salaries and to renew the contracts, if required, based on performances. This should put the players under more pressure to perform in the field since many of them tend to exhibit lax attitude as their notion of playing for the country seems to be a walk away in the park because of existing on an untaxed life support.

2. Infrastructure. There have been numerous talks on improving the infrastructure of domestic cricket. However, a derivative of the above mentioned initiave in the previous step should be the introduction of atheletic grants and scholarship program in colleges and universities funded by government. Despite having talents, many aspiring citizens cannot afford to pursue athletic career in an economically undeveloped country. In addition to providing incentives, the scholarships will also serve as a pecuniary insurance should they fail to reach full potential.

3. Transparency. There should be three-way checks and balance system between the public, the government and the BCB. Day to day report delineating the spending of budget and the implementation of certain policies shall be uploaded in the team's website for the direct access of the public and more authority should be given to the public for nominating or voting the suitable staffs for the board based on intelligent decisions upon reviewing their backgrounds instead of a full-fledged government driven agency.

4. Physical literacy. No, it does not mean reading tomes of encyclopedias on athletics; rather it is the creation of a well-rounded athlete. According to the article Physical Literacy and Sport Performance in Orienteering published by Latvian Academy of Sport Education of University of Latvia coaches should consider an athlete as a whole because "one of the aims of long term athlete development is physically literate athlete. Physically literate athlete is a person who has the skills, knowledge, and dispositions to support continual lifelong engagement in meaningful physical activity." For an improved synchronization of the team as a whole, during off season the national players should keep themselves busy with varied lateral physical activities such as orienteering which "may provide means to practice a holistic education" as the "sport performance in orienteering has multiple complex system perspectives that encompass both the parts and the whole in dynamic interaction." The authors maintain that "it means paying more attention to cumulativity. The trans-disciplinary approach sets forth for consideration a multi-dimensional reality, structured by multiple levels replacing the single level of classical thought - one-dimensional reality."

In addition to such team orientated sports, instead of specializing in one specific area an athlete should develop other areas of brain by picking up different sports such as volleyball or Greco-Roman wrestling for coordination training, or pursue other activities like marksmanship or fencing for a balanced, well-rounded physical education. Wilt Chamberlain himself mentioned in his autobiography how in later stages of life he could dominate any given court. In their article Dynamic Asymmetry of the Simple Reaction Time in Female Fencers, Tatiana Polishchuk and Monika Lampkowska of Academy of Physical Education of Jozef Pilsudski in Warsaw states how findings suggest "that an individual who processes information more rapidly in time, is more efficient and effective in various types of motor behavior." They further note that "in fencing the ability of quick reaction is very often decisive in achieving high sport results. In the course of events, in changeable conditions, complex reactions predominate in the sport fight."

Lastly, in a country that struggles in most sporting activities and impoverished in kinesthetic abilities, an encouragement of kinematics and sports literacy need to be emphasized. Government should initiate a Physical Activity Awareness Program (PactAp) for developing fine motor skills from earlier level of childhood to a structured physical education mandatory in all schools a la developed countries. It is very unfortunate that reading and writing is highly emphasized strictly for materialistic gains understandably due to the poor economic backdrop but no measures are being taken to promote development of movement skills in childhood which is essential for development of child's psychological as well as well-being of health.

5. Equipment. A decade has brought forth many changes. Not only the economy of Bangladesh has ameliorated but the government have more funds at their disposal for the country sporting development. And if the sport is not privatized then the government should at least invest in proper equipments like ball machines or certain inexpensive equipments such as Professional Motion Analysis System of baseball. Needless to mention working in cahoots with American baseball coaches to further improve the gaming strategy can be incorporated in the team as the kernel of both system of sports is essentially congruent.

6. Sports Psychologist. It is imperative BCB need to set aside some funds to hire a sports psychologist. Richard Hadlee himself mentioned that ninety-percent of the game is mental and it seems that certain habit forming mistakes are being executed over and over. If a game were to held where players where the players of both teams wore ski-mask in a homogeneous uniform one could easily separate the Bangladeshi players from their trademark mistakes of shot execution from the other superlative teams.

Authors K. Bach and A. Hökelmann of Otto-von-Guericke-University, Institute of Sport Science, Magdeburg, Germany in the article The Connection between Cognitive Movement Representations and Movement Implementation puts forward that "mental training aims to improve the foundation for cognitive regulation of complex movement performance. The cognitive regulation is based on a movement representation. When mental representation of a sport skill is improved with the aid of systematic techniques, performance is enhanced considerably." Furthermore, they reinstated that "in cooperation with the department of Computational Visualistics and Music Science, a computer aided tool “Gymnastic-Mental” has been developed, which allows controlling the build up of mental representations for sporting techniques.The build-up of movement representations is of particular importance for technique training. Therefore, the mental training should be applied as a supplement during the first phase of the learning process" The experimental subjects had to learn a complex gymnastics movement called “Grand ècart en arrière”. The cognitive and motor components examined during pre- and post-tests showed significant improvement with the actual practice was supplemented with mental techniques.

Bangladesh captain Mohammad Ashraful himself admitted how following Tendulkar's advise of visualization galvanized him to produce his famous test century the following day. Visualization in meditation is no longer regarded as a New Age pseudoscience but a fact established and exploited by many top-notch Olympians. However, in order to augment their techniques proper and necessary guidance is requisite from a certified sports psychologist who can help them with certain positive goal setting trends.

Even if Bangladesh were to beat either Ireland or India and proceed to Super Eight in the T20 World Cup in England the team as a whole would still have a lingering self-defeating attitude in the back of their mind. The train of thoughts would process in a manner similar to "even if we reach Super Eight, we know we will lose, and even if we make it to the semi-final, we know we will not make it to the next stage. And even if were to win the cup, that would do us no good because statistically we are still inferior team and it would be decades before we become a competitive team on regular basis." Such sort of debilitating, negative thought persists and other than a proper sports psychologist nor can they be exorcised or eradicated especially when the coach envisions a mediocre goal of only qualifying for the Super Eights.

Siddons' idea "realistic goals" did no good to no one if not for civilization. Progress would be standstill if Leonarda da Vinci was being "realistic" and didn't design helicopter aiming for the sky. Siddons' quota of scoring 240 runs in ODI does no good to fire those neurons if the aim is only to reach the level of mediocrity. Part of coach's job is to motivate his team. If an individual sets record breaking goal of scoring 13 ball 50 per se in T20 then there should be a distinct shift of mental energy, body language and enthusiasm. Of course, it it goes without saying that the individual goals need to be "unrealistically realistic" and tailor made to suit the given situation and obviously cannot be implemented if say 4 wickets are down. Thus and therefore, the key is to make high energy producing goals that will trigger positive body language which many times seem to reveal that the game becomes a chore for the Bangladeshi team whereas players such as the South Africans, who are known for defending low totals, live in the Now and embrace obstacles as challenges. In conclusion, none of these above exploitations can be achieved without the guidance of the sports psychologist.

7. Test Status. Finally, this step cannot be implemented by the national side itself and it is upto the ICC to take an initiative to give an ultimatum to strip test status of under performing teams. Deadline is important in all facets of life and for the interest of my team's improvement, I personally believe that ICC should give green light to proceed with the termination of the status. If it fails to rectify the problem then progressively the countries should be further stripped of ODI status. Such draconian step is the last straw to put reins in an otherwise maniacal streak of losses. Bangladesh had sufficient time to rise up to the a respectable status, statistics do not lie and I believe we can all agree that it is better we see a team of coordinated super athletes who are on par with the opponent than a team who gets lambasted in the field.

A big shout out to Tehsin da, rojoboda , Dr. Zed and amarda for giving me the platform to write this. I salute you. *cue Hail to the chief*

Cheerios.