Bangladeshi-origin Canadian sports psychologist Ali Azhar Khan attempted to create a positive frame of mind among the players in his first session with the members of national cricket team in Dhaka on Thursday. The Bangladesh Cricket Board recruited Khan for three days of counselling for Tigers in the wake of a disastrous performance in the recent ICC World Twenty20 at home and in the preceding matches.
Khan, a former student of BKSP, who completed his graduation in sports management in the UK before moving to Canada, used some special tools to help Tigers think positive in a pressure situation.
‘Mental toughness comes from positive mental state,’ Khan told reporters after his opening session at the BCB academy building. ‘This is not something you can buy from a market. You need to have focus to achieve it.
‘You have to use your body accordingly and change the language pattern. Mental state is a combination of these three elements. We are trying to take the players to a situation from where they can think better than they usually do. So we are doing some exercise with music to take their confidence level to a high state.
Khan, who is also a qualified tennis coach, described some physical conditions that can affect the players physiologically.
‘If you look below, some chemicals that exist in your body will go missing and stress hormone will come instead. [But] if you stand up straight some adrenaline will come. Simultaneously if you listen to music and feel charming, happy chemical will be produced. These happy chemicals will help you perform better,’ he said.
In his class, attended by most of the national cricketers, Khan told the players to use the word ‘yes’ more often in order to create a positive vive.
‘Yes is a positive word,’ said Khan. ‘When you use the word ‘yes’ with music and, at the same time, use your body perfectly you will feel good. Sometimes these exercises are done before the match in the dressing room. They make the players mentally strong so that they can put in a high performance.
‘You have to improve your vision, set a high goal. You have to set a vision for something that you could not achieve yet.’
Khan said before his first class he held some individual sessions with some senior cricketers like Tamim Iqbal, Mushfiqur Rahim and Nasir Hossain and found that all three had some common problems.
‘They all have a common problem. They are getting nervous because of pressure from the media, pressure of expectation, and pressure for career. But you just cannot get rid of these things. You have to focus in right way on all these elements,’ said Khan.
Khan, a life coach and neuro-linguistic practitioner, said he is a keen follower of the Bangladesh cricket team and thus is aware of their recent matches in which they struggled after losing momentum in most cases.
‘Struggling after losing momentum is just not a pressure of Bangladesh cricket team. It is a common pattern,’ said Khan who has received life coaching certification from ‘Robbin-Madaness Training USA, the most prominent and effective life coaching institute of the world.
‘A world class player cannot forget his skill in five minutes or five days. He may lose his confidence because of mental stress. It eats up his performance. We need to be trained to avoid it,’ he said.
The players believe if they can take the lesson perfectly it will definitely help them.
‘It cannot change us overnight. But if we can take the lesson and implement it in the field this will definitely be a help,’ said batsman Anamul Haque. ‘Top players can do this and this is why they are best.’
Left-arm spinner Abdur Razzak said these sessions will help them overcome the mental fatigue.
‘If you play continuously for a long period, you can lose your motivation,’ said Razzak. ‘These are the sessions which help you overcome this. I don’t know if it will have any impact on our performance, but these will surely make us more relaxed.’
-With New Age input
