Ken Borland

The mental weaknesses of the Proteas cricket team, especially on the subcontinent, are well-known with even coach Mark Boucher pointing to them in the last week as an ongoing problem following their 2-0 Test series defeat in Pakistan. And Jeremy Snape is a former England cricketer turned sports psychologist who is well-acquainted with how it feels to crumble under pressure.

Snape, an off-spinner and useful lower-order batsman, tells the story of how he became interested in sports psychology.

“It was at Eden Gardens in Kolkata in front of 120 000 fans playing an ODI for England in 2002 and I ran out Freddie Flintoff. My mind just went blank in a tight run-chase; there were all those people screaming at me and not for me, but the voice in my head was still the loudest of all. That’s when I started to become fascinated with the psychology of sport,” Snape told Saturday Citizen.

He completed his Masters degree in sports psychology and one of his first jobs as a performance coach was with the South African cricket team, between 2008 and 2010. Which just so happens to be the time when Mickey Arthur and Graeme Smith took the Proteas to the pinnacle of world cricket; it is arguably the most glorious period in South Africa’s cricket history.

So Snape is well-acquainted too with the South African psyche. As someone who played in that triumphant 2008-2010 period, Boucher will also be aware of Snape’s philosophies.

The 47-year-old founder of the Sporting Edge performance consultancy describes the current Proteas as probably being too focused on the pressures of achieving a certain outcome rather than just focusing on the process.

“The mental game is the final frontier for cricket after improving fitness levels to those of real athletes and the era of analytics that has really made techniques transparent. Cricketers spend days after days in the nets practising their drives and pulls, but hardly any time on the mental game, and yet it is your mindset that defines your success.

“Cricket is the same as golf in that a round of golf takes four hours but you’re only actually playing, on the ball, for 22 minutes. But the key is in the routine as you approach the ball and it’s the time between deliveries that’s most important in cricket as well. The mental challenges are obviously what you don’t see watching the game and pressure does crazy things.

“It’s like when you lose your car keys and you start looking in the most stupid places for them; your brain gets scrambled and you can’t think clearly. And we need to remember we are dealing with humans, they are not computers wearing Proteas shirts. The humanity is what makes for the incredible stories of sport, but the frustrations as well,” Snape said.

As the old cliché goes: take it ball-by-ball.

“There’s a lot of emotion in South African sport around the outcome of matches and that incredible passion fuels commitment and drive. But you need the players to be calm and in control, so it’s like two opposites. They need to focus on the process of what they’re doing rather than the outcome, they need to take the emotion out of it and then they will be much more in control and consistent.

“They need to be in a clear, objective state and not contaminated by their history on the subcontinent. The new challenge is just that one ball, the next ball. You need like a volume control that you can drop down, mental toughness is about being able to dial up and down. You still need an end target because that’s what winning is about, but it’s about zooming back and being able to manage what is important right now,” Snape said.

Being patient is also a key quality, especially when you are out of your comfort zone.

“On the subcontinent, the biggest threat is your own frustration. So I devised a practical exercise – a 10×10 matrix which was a grid of numbers, a bit like a bingo card. The numbers from one to 100 were randomly arranged and the players have to complete finding each number in order. The first few are found generally quite quickly, but then it takes more time to find the others.

“It’s a metaphor for Test cricket when runs are often hard to come by; times when you have to absorb pressure, be patient and over-ride your frustration. T20 cricket is obviously different – that’s about being able to switch between two rooms in your mind: your strategy room where you look at where the fielders are, the wind direction, the shorter boundary, but then when you step into your crease you are in the next room, you stop thinking and you just react to what you see,” Snape, who helped Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals to the IPL title, explains.

It would seem the mental side of the game is just as important for this current Proteas team to get right as the technical if they are to return to being a force in world cricket again.

*Jeremy Snape’s Sporting Edge consultancy provides keynote events as well as digital learning experiences through a series of videos and podcasts, that members can subscribe to, going inside the minds of champions. See https://www.sportingedge.com/

Proteas coach Mark Boucher said he was pleased with the bravery of the South African batting line-up despite their faltering performances in the T20 series which saw them crash to 65 for seven in the decisive third match on Sunday and ultimately lose by four wickets.

The Proteas only made a match of the third T20 thanks to David Miller’s tremendous 85 not out off 45 balls, one of the best innings of his long career, taking them to 164-8. Miller’s defiant knock was only South Africa’s second half-century of the series with opener Reeza Hendricks being the only other batsman to pass 50. Miller was also the only Proteas batsman to score more than 100 runs in the series.

“We’ve played some good cricket this series, been in strong positions but just not been able to pull it off. The second game [which they won by six wickets] is the brand of cricket we want to play. we showed more intent, especially with the bat. We need to be more proactive and not reactive, we need the bravery we showed in that second match.

“But today we needed to be more smarter, although we were in trouble and we still managed to get a decent total, we were in the game until the last couple of overs. But losing four wickets in three overs in this game put us under lots of pressure. But David Miller played a great knock and it was good to see him back in the runs,” Boucher said.

The fact that South Africa were in the game defending 165 was largely thanks to the outstanding spin bowling of Tabraiz Shamsi, who took a career-best four for 25. But from needing 47 off the last five overs when Shamsi finished his four overs, Pakistan sped to victory with eight balls remaining and batsmen seven and eight at the crease.

South Africa’s quick bowlers were poor, with Dwaine Pretorius conceding 33 runs in three overs, Lutho Sipamla 23 in two and Andile Phehlukwayo having 37 runs bashed off his 2.4 overs. And it is not an isolated incident because over the last couple of years South Africa have conceded the second-most runs in the last four overs of T20 Internationals.

“We’re bowling a lot of yorkers in training and the death bowling is something we continue to work at. There was a lot of dew tonight so it was difficult and Pakistan’s death bowling wasn’t particularly good either to be fair. We want quite a few options for the death and the only way that is going to happen is by putting guys in that situation.

“Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje have shown in the IPL that they are fantastic at the death and so we’ve tried out one or two other options in this series. The way Dwaine Pretorius bowled in the second game was fantastic and it’s something we will keep working on and hopefully get better at, we’re working hard on it in training,” Boucher said.

Not making use of the facilities at your disposal is one of the serious crimes of the sporting world, and Proteas captain Heinrich Klaasen said his team wasting a handful of their 20 overs cost them the match in the first T20 against Pakistan and is what they have to put right in the games on Saturday and Sunday in Lahore if they are to win the series.

South Africa fell three runs short in the first T20 in a gutsy effort, but they would have expected to chase down 170 on a good pitch for batting. But having been 51 without loss after the six powerplay overs, the Proteas then lost their way, but the next six overs saw them slip to 83 for three, leaving them to score 87 runs off 48 balls. Which was too steep a task.

“I thought that Pakistan were 10 runs short and I was very happy with our effort in the field and to be chasing 170. But it was just four or five overs in the middle where we made life very difficult for ourselves. Usman Qadir bowled two overs and had two for four in that middle phase and that put us on the back foot in the middle overs.

“Hopefully we can lift our intensity in that middle phase and then we’ll get over the line. Our standards are high, we don’t like losing although we played a good game of cricket. One or two bowling things didn’t go to plan, we need to reassess one or two overs, but I was generally very pleased with how the bowling went, and I was quite pleased with the fielding, but not the two dropped catches at the end,” Klaasen said after his first match as Proteas captain.

Among the positives in the batting was that Janneman Malan and Reeza Hendricks came off as an opening pair. Malan blazed his way to 44 off 29 balls before becoming Qadir’s first victim as he was made to look silly by a superb delivery, while Hendricks batted as the anchor and made it through to the 18^th over, scoring 54 off 42 balls. Some critics have described Hendricks’ innings as being too slow, but with wickets tumbling at the other end he obviously saw his role as being to bat for as long as possible until someone could form another partnership with him.

“I was very happy with the start and Reeza only faced 12 balls in the first seven overs, so Janneman was always going to score more quickly. Unfortunately Janneman got out when we could have completely taken the powerplay away from them, then we lost the game between overs seven and 10. We didn’t do too badly tonight, but we just slipped up in the crucial moments.

“But that’s part of the learning process and the key this weekend is to be patient and take control of those moments. Hopefully the new guys will use the opportunity to showcase their skills, we need to be adaptable and we will chop and change a few things,” Klaasen said.

Quality spin bowling once again served as South Africa’s bete noir in the first T20 against Pakistan in Lahore on Thursday night as the Proteas fell three runs short of their target of 170.

That was in the main due to a thrilling spell of leg-spin trickery from Usman Qadir, son of the great Abdul, who took two for 21 in his four overs. But he was well-supported by left-armer Mohammad Nawaz, who also conceded just 21 runs in his four-over quota. With Khushdil Shah’s single over costing just six runs, it meant the spinners bowled nine overs for just 48 runs in the South African innings.

Qadir came into the attack after the Proteas had made a great start in the powerplay, reaching 51 without loss in the first six overs, mostly due to Janneman Malan’s pugnacious 44 off 29 balls. The 27-year-old leggie took just five balls to strike though as he bowled Malan with a superb delivery that drifted in and then turned sharply to hit off-stump.

Debutant Jacques Snyman was also bowled and put out of his misery by Qadir after scoring just two off six deliveries.

Malan’s opening partner Reeza Hendricks served as the anchor of the innings, as he fought his way to 54 off 42 deliveries, which was a welcome return to form since the Imperial Lions batsman has only scored 62 runs in his last seven innings.

But the seam bowlers returned and took care of David Miller (6), Heinrich Klaasen (12) and Andile Phehlukwayo (14), and Hendricks was run out in the 18^th over. Dwaine Pretorius (15* off 6) and Bjorn Fortuin (17* off 9) added an unbeaten 27 but were left needing six off the last ball to win, with Fortuin only able to dig a fine delivery in the blockhole  from Faheem Ashraf to the square-leg boundary for two.

South Africa had earlier been brutalised again by the bat of Mohammad Rizwan, who followed up his superb century in the final Test by stroking a superbly-paced 104 not out off just 64 balls, becoming only the second wicketkeeper after New Zealand great Brendon McCullum to score a hundred in all three formats.

Having been sent in to bat by the Proteas, Pakistan posted 169 for six, recovering from a shaky start after kingpin Babar Azam was run out first ball by a brilliant piece of fielding off his own bowling by Fortuin, and Hussain Talat (15) was given out stumped off Tabraiz Shamsi by the TV umpire when he had clearly got his foot back down in time.

No-one else scored more than Haider Ali’s hard-hit 21, but Rizwan just kept going and by the end of his innings was hitting the ball as well as anyone, hammering seven sixes and six fours.

Wrist-spinner Shamsi was the pick of the South African bowlers with one for 20 in his four overs, but Phehlukwayo bowled decently to take two for 33 and Fortuin, Pretorius and Lutho Sipamla also bowled tidily.