Overthinking a very simple game?

I am positive that I am not the only one who frequents these forums who is guilty of this. There are pros and cons to being conscious about how you play, it shows a willingness to work. However, the downside of this is that you are constantly analysing what you are doing, and, through this, you try to identity every fault in your particularly technique. The upshot of this is that the you as the player can be deflated and have a negative mental attitude - which is never something good.

Thoughts?

Just like me - just when I thought my batting was sorted out, I got a 2 ball duck a few days ago. Still forgetting to watch the ball all the way and I was doing it for the past few weeks in the nets.

 It's about balance. If you're a batsman who's had a run of low scores you're bound to question your technique , especially if you're a youngster.  You'll forget the two jaffas that saw you off and in trying to tighten your defence , could well lessen your abilty to score.
         If you're not taking wickets it's slightly different. Are you beating the bat ? Are your mates dropping catches ?  Is the captain throwing the ball to someone your think a weaker bowler than yourself?  If the answer to thsoe three questions is , no , no, yes , then you need some help!   If it's  yes , yes , yes , then the captain's not very good !
         With experience , players accept the ups and downs of form more pragmatically.  It happens to the best and if you've succeeded in the past , it'll come back - as long as you're not my age!
          Obviously being left out of the side is a major blow - then it's back to the 2nds/nets and work hard - don't go changing something if it's not broken - form fluctuates.

I tend not to think a lot about the way I'm playing and if I'm in a run (which I seem to spend a lot of time having, or maybe I'm just rubbish) I try not to look to hard on the way I'm playing. An example on how little i look at my game is up until halfway through last season i stood with my feet together then moved as the ball was released. I definitely think overthinking is a problem, technically at my school last season I think I was probably one of the worst players, but i scored 175 runs in 6 innings, 100 more than the next person, I genuinely think that was because they were thinking too much about the way they were playing, by the end of the season most people were getting so many throwdowns beforehand and looking so critically that by the time they got out there they had already convinced themsleves that they weren't going to get any runs

Originally posted by spin wizard Just like me - just when I thought my batting was sorted out, I got a 2 ball duck a few days ago.

Edited by BackFoot Master - 02 November 2007 at 3:08am

Some people say to me that cricket is a simple sport. Hit the ball and run. But obviously there's a lot more to it then that. Just like life, you're in 'real time' you don't have any time to judge your next move. Take this instinct into cricket and react to what you see. If you keep getting out doing the same mistake, then practice on it.

By the way Kallis Fan are you a batsman or a bowler?

Overthinking while playing is bad an now this topic got started, it made me realise. I was over thinking before bowling in training today to get the wrist and everything in position and I wasn't bowling very good. After a couple overs, I just moved with the flow and started to bowl excellently!!

Thanks Kallis Fan for the thread.

If you have a plan or a goal then the chances of implementation are greater than if you don't. But, like anything, over-thinking can detract from concentration of the essence of the task, thus causing mental dissonance.

I used to overthink my bowling a fair bit quite a while ago. I just told myself to bowl and just let it occur naturally, after that, everything was working out nicely. The same goes with batting.

When you overthink your bowling especially if you're a fast bowler, lots of things can go wrong, when you think of getting your "arm high", your delivery stride gets ruined, then when you think of that you start leaning away and losing pace and its all a bad mixture, the way forward is to just bowl and let it come naturally, you'll be bowling better and quicker.


Edited by RightHandBat - 19 November 2007 at 7:35am