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Can we be the first to accuse them of that? People reflexively go the other way, accusing losing teams of lacking commitment, determination or heart, but it’s almost always the exact opposite.
As we’ve written before, passion is not a cure-all. Passion drives you to things like losing all perspective, obsessing, never resting and eventually having a mental breakdown.
According to Alastair Cook this week: “Trevor Bayliss is cancelling practice sessions after three and a half/four hours. He’s saying: ‘You’ve go to stop now; you’re wasting energy; you’ve got to save it for the Test.’”
Trevor Bayliss is probably right, but for a certain sort of person (players, coaches and fans) the answer is always more work.
Part of the problem is that there always has to be an avoidable reason for defeat. To not be as good as the opposition in their home conditions is simply not acceptable. Defeats must be the consequence of some major character flaw, like laziness.
However, players fail for different reasons and at any given time more work is just as likely to compound a problem as resolve it.
Players like Cook and Kevin Pietersen are methodical and like to address specific problems with specific drills. Cook himself describes the secret of his success thus: “I try my bollocks off really; it’s as simple as that.”
In contrast, someone like David Gower took a broader, more rhythmic view of batting. His view was that he should spend more time in the nets when he was already in form as this would help him groove good movements and timing. Conversely, he saw practice when out of form as being counterproductive as it would come to make poor habits second nature.
Jonathan Trott is the classic case against ‘practice makes perfect’. Trott essentially lost the ability to switch off. His response to failure was to work himself harder and harder – even though all he was really succeeding in doing was eroding his capacity to work hard.
Some of this England squad will benefit from doing a little more work. A lot of them won’t, but hopefully none of them are guilty of the biggest crime of all.
There is a temptation, in a losing team, to do not what’s best for you, but what’s perceived to be good by others – essentially a reputational damage limitation exercise having already accepted defeat.
It’s unlikely anyone’s going down that road – not least because one person who’d be decidedly unimpressed with the effort is the coach.
I’m reminded of Joe Hart in the tunnel, shouting and hitting his hands together, rallying the meeker troops for the big push. Before letting in three half-scuffed goals.
Working even harder is not a bad mantra in avenues that do not have many variables – billiards, weightlifting, or darts for example. In such cases, there really is a causal effect between effort and output. In any ball-bat sport, it might not be possible to get out of a rut simply by doing more of what’s bothering you, mostly because it is not really straightforward to understand exactly what is bothering you. That paragraph about Gower is actually quite interesting.
Gower often counters common wisdom in interesting ways. There was a huge amount of logical reasoning behind what was perceived as a lackadaisical approach to the game. What’s annoying is that his achievements are still entirely ascribed to ‘natural talent’ and not his lateral thinking or approach to batting. His reputation was set early and even years later, few people take his method as seriously as they should.
Ah, Hope, how nice to see you again. How long will you be staying this time?
Hope set to depart tomorrow on the 3.30am train
Scarily accurate.