Josh Kennedy: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Cricket Matters podcast. Today's episode is all about the mental struggles nobody talks about in women's cricket. However, uh, before we dive into that, I just wanna say a quick thank you, uh, to all our subscribers. We are now over 6,000 subscribers on the, uh, cricket Matters YouTube channel, so thank you very much.

That's great in it, James. It's great. 

James Breese: And also thank you for pointing out a mistake that we made in the last podcast as a result. And that is the other. Thank you. All 

Josh Kennedy: good 

James Breese: You. Dive 

Josh Kennedy: into 

James Breese: what, what 

Josh Kennedy: the, uh, unintentional era in the last podcast. 

James Breese: Yeah. For those, those, the listening in about the what's a Good club, cricket Batting average, um, we talked about Joe Root and how he was an outlier.

Well, the reason he was a massive outlier was because, um, we. Literally put the wrong stat in for the number of innings played, right. It was the same as his number of matches played and I didn't pick it up, so that is on me. It was a human error. However, J root stats are still awesome. I being I was gonna say, you still, like, you still stands out as an awesome batsman, right?

Yeah, exactly. You still, [00:01:00] the high levels of the top 10 batsman of all time at 36.3% of conversions of per 10 innings, or 50 or more runs. As opposed to 48%, which we put down as, which is just, he's awesome. And a slightly maybe as confirmation bias towards us being in England, fans in the cricket team. Who knows?

Maybe, maybe we'll see. Who knows. Exactly. 

Josh Kennedy: There go slight era, slight error. Anyway. Um, yeah. So moving on, mental struggles in the, in the women's game. What has been your experience so far working with, uh, female cricketers? James? In terms of yes. Specific stuff that they struggle with. Is it, is it preparation off field, on field?

How? How does it manifest itself? 

James Breese: It's interesting. I think it comes down to very simply self-confidence and self-belief. Mm-hmm. Now that sounds crazy. They're always self-doubting ideas, self-doubting their. Technique, their ability, their ideas, their judgment. I think it's a case of society in general. I think it reflects back onto, yeah, but also I think the women's [00:02:00] game is still developing.

Yeah, so particularly at Cardiff working with the women here, the biggest thing I've seen, and the biggest thing I'm trying to help them improve is having them, giving them the confidence to make better decisions out in the field. They're already making the right decisions. They don't have the confidence to go and execute them For fear of failure.

Yeah, fear of judgment. I was gonna say, do you think 

Josh Kennedy: they're potentially in the female psyche perhaps looking for more approval from people? 

James Breese: Yes. Reassurance I think is, is a, is a big part of it from what I'm seeing. So there's a multitude of factors going on, but while everyone wants to focus a lot in the women's Gable technique, I think you can develop them and make them better cricketers.

By just instilling this confidence and this fearless mindset of going out onto the field. And I can share some of the things we've been doing with the women at Cardiff and some of the other female athletes we, we've been working with, but something as simple as running between wickets. Mm-hmm. [00:03:00] So very, very, more than not the women hit the ball, but they're scared of being run out.

Yeah, because they're not used to making these, these, these decisions, these judgments. So what we've done is we've been just practicing and trying to give 'em the confidence, saying, Hey, it's okay to make a mistake. I want you to run harder between the witts to put pressure on the fielders in whilst batting and they did it.

The women at Carter have recently beat one their, one of their rivals who actually smashed them last year. We run 'em into the ground, actually run 'em into the ground, and then they did, they bowl poorer balls, worse balls, four balls, essentially. Yeah. And they will smash them to the boundary. So they checked down 250 and 28 overs and a 40 over game by running them literally.

Into the ground. Wow. Nice. And because they had the confidence and they, there was no fear of like retrieval or like judgment or anything at all. It's like, no, we want, that's the part of the plan. It's okay to go make a mistake. And they did it and they executed. Absolutely. I couldn't be more proud of them for doing it.

But you, you, they [00:04:00] go into the game carrying a lot of baggage sometimes from life. Mm-hmm. It could be from exams, from university, from family, from friends, injuries, all these different things. It weighs on top of them. And you compound onto that lack of experience sometimes in playing cricket or lack of experience, cricketers around them.

'cause in the men's game you have a lot. You, you start playing 12, 13, 14. There's lots of adults who play cricket for 20, 30 years to help you through the process was in the women's game. They don't always have that. Yeah, they're all quite young and enthusiastic and wanna play, but there's no confidence around them to help build, to build them up.

So it's the, I talk about the hidden struggles in the women's game. It's the confidence and self-belief. To go and do things and no fear of reprisal because there's a, there's a fearful mindset a lot of the time they're trying to take that away, which is a very difficult thing to do. Mm-hmm. And it's gonna take time and it's, you know, like I said, if you go out to bat or to bowl, and the biggest thing you might, you on [00:05:00] your mind is, oh, I'm scared of getting out.

Yeah, well, it's a double negative. You are gonna get yourself out essentially, you know, it happens all the time. Well, as we've talked about before, everyone gets out. So just, uh, just let that go. It is, it is, or everyone will go wide at some point, but it's like, it's having that fearful, it's like no reassurance, confidence.

But the one thing I will say is though coaching women is far easier and better than coaching men. Now, for all the men out there, all the men out there are gonna get upset now. I hope so. I really hope so. The difference is. A lot of the men think they can do it themselves. Yeah. Or they don't really listen.

That sounds, that's a Jeep general sweeping, sweeping generalization. That's the word I'm trying to say. Yeah. Right. The women show traits of a high performance mindset of the top athletes we work with who are open-minded and willing to listen and have conversation. They want to know why. They want to know why they need to do something, and we explain to them why they get it, and they input as soon as they possibly can.[00:06:00]

Or was men a bit more difficult than this? 

Josh Kennedy: Well, we've, we've found that with all the, with the male and female teams we're training, right. The female, they'll ask questions. The men Yeah. Hardly ever hear from them. No. 

James Breese: You know what I mean? So nothing at all get on with it. Head down. Yeah. Crack on with it. It was it, but like I said, it's just showing it's ways.

There's the girls are card. If, if they're listing, they'll understand what starfish means, right? Because that's what they coined this phrase. Where remember, remember them Perry's, um, arms out trick He did per Nichols them from Stop Chasing Pain. Yeah. Was sort the mindset of things. So you try and hold your hands at High.

High, yeah. Think of the best time of your life and then you go, yeah. Some really strong and powerful. But the moment you go to the worst time in your life where you almost wanna cry, just collapse. You have no hope. The hands climbs down and it's the same way you wanna carry on onto the field. So if there's one thing we can try and talk about there for any coaches, for any female athletes out there, for parents who listen in as well, the most important thing is reassuring the female athlete's saying it's okay.

'cause [00:07:00] they have a lot of self-doubt, self worry. If they don't perform well, they beat themselves up for a long time about it and we've gotta try and encourage 'em to stay with it and stay confident and enjoy the game as much as possible. Yeah, because it'll affect them on the field and instill the sense, set this feel of confidence and also giving the tools to practice in training that instills this confidence to, so I would argue that yes, technique's important.

But I'd say in the women's game, the best way we seem to beat other teams is to work on their athleticism, right? To run them into the ground, to make them fitter, but to instill this belief and this confidence in them to it's okay to fail and it's okay to go out and have fun and express themselves as much as possible.

It's all about that positive mindset, right? It is. Unfortunately it is. Yeah. Easier said than 

Josh Kennedy: done. A hundred percent easier said than done. But again, on previous podcast we've talked about mental preparation, having routines. Right? Because [00:08:00] that helps massively. 

James Breese: Yes, absolutely. So it's, but they don't have all these routines and they don't have all these things.

'cause they, they haven't, they're, they're not being brought up in the same way away around adults, men's cricket. 

Josh Kennedy: Yeah, 

James Breese: and they're developing around themselves. So as coaches and as as parents, we need to support them. That little things. I've learned that in setting, setting up the tee, setting up the pitches, so be around, present to help 'em, show 'em how to take the covers off, how to put the covers on, how to set up, how to make tees to putting up the stumps, marking out the pitch.

It's little things like that, that, but when you're showing them, yeah, so it's, it adds all that to the confidence. Once they know how to do it, they take charge and they go and, and they go and do it. So. It's more of a philosophy idea today, more a topic piece. Yeah. But confidence and fearless mindset and self-belief I think is far more important in the women's game than actual technique.

Right? Particularly lower levels. 

Josh Kennedy: Yeah, indeed. So ladies, work on that fearless mindset. That is it for today. Please don, forget to rate, review, and subscribe. And [00:09:00] if you would like our free training plan, then go to cricket matters.com/train. And remember, our goal is to make you a better cricketer.