• Expert sports psychologist emphasises the need to train SLC officials, coaches, cricketers in cutting edge sport science/psychology techniques, instead of tinkering with coaches/systems
• Essential for SLC to provide cricketers with comprehensive, intense mental skills training to overcome fear to change

As far as sports psychology is concerned, what Sri Lanka needs to do above everything else is to overcome the fear that it has and the perceived stigma associated with the words “psychology” and “psychologist”. In fact, due to the outdated and narrow notion that sports is a mere physical activity, as well as the sports-related authorities having limited sports science-based education, the country’s efforts in developing its sports sector, especially cricket, is confined largely to traditional physical training. 

Overcoming this situation will help the country’s sports sector grow substantially, and certain specific sports such as cricket to regain their lost glory.

New Zealand born Adrian McInman, who has worked as a sports psychologist with 14 international cricket associations, including Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and the national cricket associations of Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, and also 15 non-cricket sports associations throughout the world, agrees with this assessment. He opined that mental skills training is essential for people involved in sport (e.g. cricketers, coaches, administrators) to reach their full potential. He made these remarks in an interview with The Daily Morning. 

The following are excerpts from the interview:

What is sports psychology?

Sports psychology is the science of the behaviour of people involved in sports.

In Sri Lanka, there seems to be a considerable lack of understanding about what sports psychology is, and sports psychology receives significantly less attention compared to physical fitness or sports specific training. What is your opinion about this situation?

Many people intimately associated with the sports industry, don’t know, what sports psychology is, what it can do, and how easy it is to improve performance substantially using sports psychology-based information and techniques. They often confuse sport psychologists with sport physiotherapists or sports physiologists. Part of the reason for this is that so many people in positions of power in the cricket world and other sporting worlds, including head coaches, chief executive officers (CEOs), and administrative and management board members, have no university-based sports science training whatsoever. Usually, their sports science-related understanding, including that of sports psychology, is extremely limited. This is especially the case in developing countries. As a result, certain second tier international level teams don’t have sports psychologists on long term contracts. If organisations like SLC want to improve their international ranking, then they need to become more educated about 2023 sports science and in particular 2023 sports psychology, and then use highly experienced cricket psychologists. SLC hires and then supports highly experienced coaches. They need to do the same with highly experienced cricket psychologists. 

Non-international athletes believe that the mental aspects of their sport contribute to at least 50% of whether they win. They usually believe that all the other factors such as skills training and facilities contribute less than 50% to the success. Elite athletes such as international cricketers however believe that 70%-90% of what is required to win a match is mental. Likewise, most head coaches say the same thing. In fact, last month (October) a well known head coach of one of the top cricket teams on the planet told me that he believes that 95% of whether his cricketers win or lose is determined by mental factors.

As a person who has served in Sri Lanka’s sports sector, especially cricket, what do you identify as constraints that prevent Sri Lanka from paying more attention to sports psychology in order to improve its national level sports?

It is ironic how every international cricketer that I have ever spoken to has told me that mental things are the biggest contributor to whether they win or lose and yet they spend no, or very little time, in formal mental skills training. Instead, they spend all, or almost all of their time on something that they say has only a small impact on whether they win (e.g. training in the nets and training in the gym). Surely, that is insanity, which Narcotics Anonymous defines as “repeating the same thing and expecting different results”. Sri Lankan cricketers need to come to terms with the reality that if something has a huge impact on whether they win or lose, then they need to train for it and not be scared of or dismissive of such training.

To take Sri Lanka to the top of the International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings in any version of the game is not going to be easy and requires a multi-dimensional approach. However, it can be done quicker than you might imagine. The barriers in the way are oftentimes just our inbuilt resistance to change. For example, I trained the Sri Lankan men’s team for 75 minutes on 25 July 2015, and a further 15 minutes the next day. They had just lost both the test and one day international series to Pakistan and yet straight after my training, they scored 100 runs more than they had in quite some time (368 for four wickets) and then bowled Pakistan out in only 37.2 overs. Sri Lanka’s cricket team did not improve their cricket skills in 24 hours. Instead, they improved their level of optimism about the world and their futures, and behaved accordingly. Likewise, in the recent match against India, the Sri Lankan men almost certainly did not lose because of a lack of technical cricket skills, as they had already beaten two teams in the tournament. Instead, they probably had not trained their mental skills sufficiently for the challenge. All the Sri Lankan cricketers that I trained in 2015, which included the A team (with Dasun Shanaka), the women’s team (with Chamari Athapaththu), and the under-19 team, said that the mental side of cricket is the biggest contributor to success or failure. Yet, most of the cricketers and coaches struggled with allocating enough time to train in it. 

It is very easy to blame players. But, it is not their fault. Sri Lanka is like a few other cricketing nations, such as Zimbabwe and the West Indies, which are slowly but surely declining in rankings, partly because many in power (e.g. coaches, administrators, and board members) are unwilling to embrace modern 2023 sports science. Instead, they want to tinker with different coaches or domestic systems. In other words, they want to pursue things that are inside their comfort zones and perhaps inside their oftentimes limited sports science education. So, let me re-emphasise my point: Sri Lankan administrators, coaches, and cricketers need to overcome their fear and natural inbuilt resistance to change and train for the part of cricket that they all say contributes the most to success, the mental side of the sport. So, that means that they need to embrace change and not hire staff who simply seamlessly fit in with the status quo of the SLC outfit. 

Another constraint that Sri Lankans have imposed unnecessarily on sports psychologists is the length of time that they have to be successful. Sure, the SLC hires a cricket psychologist once in a while, but the cricket administration usually does not set him/her up for success. Such training needs to be mandatory and the psychologist’s contract has to be long term, so that everyone gets the message that the culture of the national men’s team is going to change. Obviously, a team culture change is currently needed. You cannot shower young men with lots of money and then expect them to miraculously be perfect model citizens. They need to be challenged to think about what they would do in various situations. They need to be trained to become better teammates, before, during, and after a match, in cricket training, in the gym, and crucially, away from cricket. Hence, this mental skills training needs to be intense, comprehensive, and frequent.

The Sri Lanka men’s cricket team is currently facing severe criticism over its recent match losses. What is your analysis of the importance of sports psychology in the men’s team’s performance?

Cricket teams like Sri Lanka, the West Indies, and Zimbabwe can all do substantially better and relatively quickly if they implemented state of the art cricket psychology training methods based on research and international cricket team experience, and allowed such psychologists to guide changes in the team culture. For instance, I have talked to the general managers of the hotels that the big international teams stay in, and I know who drinks the most alcohol, who stays awake the longest, and who has the most females turning up late at night. You cannot expect to be number one in the world if you party more seriously than you train. A Sri Lankan cricketer was arrested for having heroin in his car. I am very pleased to see that SLC has given him a second chance. But, the question remains, how much mental skills training has he for example been provided so that he does not make bad decisions again? They need help learning techniques to make good decisions. Then they need to be provided with hypothetical situations and asked how they would handle these situations and what would be the likely outcome of their decisions. 

You also need to have coaches that have the courage to change. Sadly, many coaches are too scared to move out of their comfort zones. In addition, they tend to be uneducated with regard to sports science. Likewise, many board members and administrators are scared of change. Sometimes, they don’t make the necessary decisions that they know they should. That is one of the biggest problems with Sri Lanka’s cricket team. You need to train cultures and players mentally, so that they learn to make good decisions, and that requires administrators and coaches to step out of their comfort zones and hire cricket psychologists, an area that they know nothing about, to make that happen.

In Sri Lanka, many do not view sports as something that can be a part of day to day life, and instead, see it mostly as a hobby or a profession. Even in schools, sports generally remain an extra-curricular activity, and therefore, receive less attention. What is your opinion about this?

Elite sports should not be a hobby or just a profession. Athletes need to consider Cristiano Ronaldo’s approach and become highly professional. Sure, have fun. Smile, laugh, and enjoy life. But, at the same time, make good decisions, not just for your personal short term, but, take into consideration other people, your teammates, and the longer-term future. So, focusing on fulfilling day to day activities effectively is important. 

Being both conscientious and proactive, and also focusing daily on nutrition, exercise, sleep, thinking, and social support (NESTS), is crucial. These five factors are not rocket science. Your grandmother probably told you to do them. Unfortunately, far less than 1% of the population does all five well. Athletes, and cricketers are no different. When I was with SLC, I was so surprised at how little sleep that the cricketers and administrators got. But, once they saw the research, many changed. Cricketers like Shanaka and Hasini Perera took steps to get more sleep once they saw the research showing that athletic performance improves substantially with increased sleep. 

Change in Sri Lanka is not as hard as it initially appears. And, I should point out that I met some very professional people at SLC. The then coach of the A Team, Romesh Kaluwitharana and the then Manager of Women’s Cricket, Vanessa de Silva, were both the epitome of professionalism and sufficiently open minded that they changed once they saw convincing research findings.

Through the perspective of a sports psychologist, can you tell us what steps can you recommend for Sri Lanka in order to improve national level sports?

Firstly, Sri Lanka should provide athletes with consistent mental skills training that is mandatory. Secondly, the sport psychologist’s contract should be long-term. Thirdly, Sri Lanka needs to embrace training their brain. Fourthly, especially at the elite level, mental skills training needs to be intense, comprehensive, and frequent. 

Even though sports education has a place in the country’s education system, there is a widespread notion that it does not receive adequate attention and support. What is your opinion about the importance of sports education, especially in Sri Lanka?

Let me answer that by asking you and your readers a question: What percentage of Sri Lankan coaches has at least a bachelor’s degree in physical education or sports science? Sadly, the percentage is extremely small. The percentage with a master’s degree in sports science or physical education is smaller. So, there is a massive need for more sports education, especially at the elite level, and there needs to be financial advantages upon graduation.

One of the problems Sri Lanka has is that it views being an ex-player as an essential criterion for being a coach. Ex-players are highly revered in the Sri Lankan society. You hire ex-players assuming that they will be good coaches, but that is not always true. After all, what is a coach? Fundamentally, a coach should be somebody who helps people change. But, many coaches are little more than ex-players. As a result, they don’t necessarily have the ideal attributes needed to train change. For instance, research has shown that you need as many as 12 personal factors to help someone else change (e.g. open-minded, empathic). One of them is being a risk taker. If you are a coach or sports administrator who is too scared to change, then, you are not going to motivate a high school student or an international cricketer to change, regardless of how good an athlete you used to be.

At present, I am in Saint Lucia (in the West Indies), which is experiencing high rates of obesity and type two diabetes. Many people simply don’t move enough. A lack of sufficient sports education, physical education, and lifestyle decision making skills is significantly contributing to this. Sri Lanka has the same issues in terms of the lack of sports science education. For instance, when I went to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Sports to donate my time, a staff member had big problems trying to get his colleagues to use such free services, as his colleagues simply didn’t know what sports psychology was, what it could do, how to spell it, and confused it with sports physiology. 

Sri Lanka does some things extremely well. Life expectancy, the average number of years that a person can expect to live in full health from birth, and also literacy rates, are all above the global average. Likewise, it is a beautiful country with many very nice people. However, when it comes to sports, exercise, and life education, you could do better.  Take sex education as an example, how knowledgeable is the average Sri Lankan? Internationally, Sri Lanka lags behind the world in sex education. Why? Partly because of the fear of change. May be it is time for Sri Lankans involved in sports to overcome their fears.