Do We Need to Change Our Thinking?

During the last decade, the coaching of cricket has undergone many changes, some good and others not so good. The pendulum has swung dramatically from old and proven methods to a new and exciting scientific approach. As a result, cricket development and performance have more or less been taken over by sports scientists and academics. Former test players are being sidelined and are losing their power base and position of influence.

The sports scientists say that the old methods were good in their day. But, they claim that they are now inadequate in today?s highly complex and competitive cricket environment. Science and technology have become very important to them and they feel that these two tools will take cricket to a much higher level. Some of these coaches have even adopted an elitist attitude.

Former cricketers counter by saying that some of these new scientific methods do have a part to play in cricket but they feel that these methods sometimes ignore the human being inside each player. They caution that although they are impressively packaged and are accepted by administrators without question, their effectiveness is yet to be proven. They add that cricket is still basically about people and about the emotions and behaviour of people. They stress that in competition, human qualities such as heart, courage, attitude, discipline, pressure, confidence, thinking, concentration and motivation are still of paramount importance in performance.

These former players also complain that since most of the sports scientists have had little or no exposure to the game at the highest level they will have difficulty in fully appreciating the finer points of the game and understanding the intense physical and psychological warfare that are waged in competition at that level.

Clearly there are very different points of view about the way forward for cricket and the way cricket ought to be taught. Some of the new cricket elite have framed the debate rather cleverly as the new vs the old, or progress vs stagnation. Time will tell which side is right and which is wrong. But does it need to be like that? Let us look at the principal thinking behind this type of stance ? adversarial thinking.

Adversarial thinking dominates our education and culture. The purpose of this system is to win the argument or debate by defeating and discrediting your opponent. That's why opposing views argue and fight it out to see who wins and who loses. As one side attacks, the other defends. Emotions then rise, people stop listening to each other, opposing points of view grow stronger and positions become more inflexible. The purpose of the discussion is then forgotten as egos take over. Much energy and resources are wasted in this process. Eventually, one side wins and is happy and the other side loses and is bitter. The strongest or loudest arguments often triumph. But we know that strength and loudness of argument are not the same as correctness of argument.

This clash system of thinking has become the major vehicle for instituting change and settling different points of view. But, it is clearly inadequate for those purposes. Creative ideas seldom emerge from that type of thinking.

To change an idea or system, proponents of this type of thinking use clever arguments, first to attack the system and its personnel, prove them wrong and then to discredit them. But, if you destroy a proven method before finding a better one, what happens if your new method doesn?t turn out the way you expect it to? What do you go back to? Proving the other method wrong does not mean that yours is right. They might both be wrong. Nor does discrediting a particular system give credit to your own.

The most damaging part of this negative and adversarial system of thinking is the destruction of good ideas and systems. In an effort to win the debate or battle, attention is focused on the negative aspects of the opponent?s idea or method, which might in fact be 80% right or effective and 20% wrong or ineffective. Using a positive system of thinking, people will correct the 20% and strengthen the 80%. But, adversarial thinkers do the opposite because they have a different motive. They highlight the inadequacy and stupidity of the 20% and then claim that since 20% is wrong, the other 80% must also be wrong. Lawyers use this tactic in court to entrap witnesses into telling one or two lies and to impress the jury that the rest of the testimony must therefore be lies.

Clearly, to institute meaningful change and improve on what we have, we must play down the adversarial system and look for a better way of thinking that will help us to capitalize on different points of view and approaches. Design or exploratory thinking fits that bill. The key to design thinking is to create a purpose and then to design the best fit.

In design thinking, the emphasis is first on asking the right questions. Later the focus is on searching for the right answers to those questions. We can use questions such as: what do we want to achieve, what are the important demands in the situation, what are the first important priorities, how can we tailor our resources effectively to meet those demands and achieve our goals, what are the alternative approaches, and which of these approaches best fits these demands, and how do we implement and monitor this process?

A wise professor once told me that when you are certain about a particular course of action, you should always look for a second and a third. The point that he was trying to make to me was that certainty, overconfidence and arrogance are often a prescription for mistakes and failure. I wish to pass on the same advice to current cricket thinkers who believe so strongly in the correctness of their approach. If they take heed of this advice they are unlikely to get trapped in a narrow perceptual box. Searching for alternatives will take them outside that box, broaden their vision and help them to see things from different perspectives.

Your perception and beliefs largely determine what you see, how you feel and how you behave. Someone once said that wisdom is the capacity to see and understand things from different perspectives.

Perception is how we look at things. And processing is what we do with that perception. The first phase of thinking is about perception and the second is about processing. Most of our thinking mistakes are made in the first phase which is often ignored or played down. What?s the difference between these phases? You might know all the strokes and be an excellent stroke player, for example, but that does not mean that you will play the right strokes at the right time or select the strokes that the game situations demand. In this instance, excellence in stroke play is equivalent to ?processing? and the selection of the right stroke to ?perception?. Excellence in processing cannot make up for weaknesses in perception.

The computer is very good at the second phase but not so good at the first. In fact it is a superb processor. But, with its advent the importance of the perceptual phase of thinking has been emphasized. What do they say? Rubbish in, rubbish out.

Technology in cricket is a tremendous processing tool which gives instant information feedback. There is no doubt that it has had and will continue to have an impact on the way we learn and play the game. But, like every good thing, it has its limitations. So, we must be careful not to overemphasize its importance and run the risk of losing our perceptual thinking skills. We must avoid the situation where players know how to play all of the shots in the book but don?t know how to read the game - intuitively and non-intuitively - and how, when and where to select the right shots. In fact the more dependent we become on this technology, the more attention we will need to devote to perceptual thinking and to the people and interpersonal skills. Now more than ever, we must create the right situations and learning environments that will expose our players to those thinking skills and people skills.

To move forward with our cricket, the various stakeholders must now sit down together, get rid of their adversarial thinking and engage in creative and design thinking. They must first use exploratory or map-making thinking about the game. And then create an accurate map of the cricket terrain. Having done so they ought to fill in the different routes and identify the best routes on the map that will take them to their destinations. They should then go through an exercise of simplification and clarification and imprint these images in their minds to create a powerful and compelling vision of what they want to achieve.

Someone once said that if you have a vision of the future that is clearer, larger and more powerful than that of your current state, you will automatically be drawn towards that objective, overcoming any obstacles or setbacks along the way. But if your vision of the future is not much stronger than that of current reality, the moment you encounter an obstacle or set back, even with the best of intentions, you are more than likely to go back to the status quo.

By changing their thinking and perspectives about the game, stakeholders and decision makers might end up blending the best of the old with the most promising of the new. That would be a significant achievement which could then be used as a stepping stone for more innovative and effective approaches to teaching, learning and enhancing performance. It is worth a try.

* Dr. Rudi Webster is a former first class cricketer who now serves as Director of the Shell Cricket Academy of St. George's University. This article appears by special arrangement with the ChappellWay Web site.