Bangladeshi cricketers have started to realise and feel the importance of psychological skill development as they lined up for individual sessions with their Canadian sports psychologist of Bangladeshi origin, Ali Azhar Khan, at the BCB academy building at Mirpur on Friday. The Bangladesh Cricket Board has recruited Khan for a three-day of counselling for the Tigers after their disastrous performance in the recently-concluded ICC World Twenty20 at home and in the preceding matches.
‘Yesterday (Thursday) morning they thought perhaps it will be good, while in the afternoon they thought that it makes sense and in the evening they started to feel it will be good if they can follow the guideline, but today (Friday) they are saying that they should do it. And that was the change,’ Khan told New Age, pointing out the response from the players on the second day of the counselling session.
Out-of-form all-rounder Nasir Hossain was ecstatic after his individual session with Khan and said that he was looking forward to getting out of the bad patch by implementing some of the tips the psychologist gave him on Friday.
‘Earlier we did not know what to do when someone is going through a bad patch,’ Nasir told reporters.
‘After attending the class my confidence level has increased and the same applies for those who were present in the class,’ said Nasir.
‘Confidence is such a thing, when you have it everything works well and when you don’t have it all goes wrong. So, we have discussed everything with him, how to improve the confidence level,’ Nasir added.
Players like Shahriar Nafees, Abdur Razzak, Nasir Hossain and Mashrafee bin Murtaza have had their individual session with Khan before lunch while the others were waiting in and around the venue for their turn, where they were to discuss several personal issues.
Khan said that the players need to develop a pattern that will help them concentrate and stay focused on and off the pitch during the matches.
‘Most of the time we don’t understand the difference between focus and concentration. In every game you have to concentrate and at the same time you will have to focus on and off the ground,’ said Khan, explaining his programme module.
‘We have to develop this on and off pattern,’ said Khan.
‘Concentration is a general topic while focus is absolutely on the bulls-eye by staying on the present.
‘At times it gets distracted and that is where we need to put our effort,’ said Khan.
‘When a batsman takes his stance, sometimes his concentration goes back to the past and at the same time thinks what will happen if he gets out, whereas he should be focusing on the next delivery,’ said Khan.
‘As you are not staying on the present, you are getting into all sorts of trouble and that is the reason you need to improve your focus,’ said Khan.
‘I have presented them with some work plans that will help them improve their focus and from these they will track down whether their focus has increased or not. I am just giving some basic tasks so they don’t get overloaded,’ he added.
Khan is also providing the national cricketers a Visual-Motto-Rehearsal, a psychological programme, to help them minimise the technical errors.
‘By imagination you can do your practice and the subconscious mind understands the difference. Off-the-pitch, if you do this session and later add that along with your practice session onto the pitch, you will get the result very fast,’ said Khan.
‘It maximises the performance by adding value to it that has been proved in several researches,’ he concluded.
-With New Age input
