NERVES? THEY CAN BE WORSE OFF THE FIELD
THE modest attendance at Lord’s last weekend, at what used to be one of the highlights of the season, the September cup final, got a friend asking me if it was the size of the crowd that made a player nervous, or the size of the occasion.
It is an interesting question though what makes some players nervous, a roaring crowd say, can feed the egos of others to the point of inspiration – think Shane Warne or Virat Kohli.
Everyone is different, which may be why any advice or therapy needs to be specifically tailored. Just saying, “stay calm and do your best”, will not cut it with everyone.
They say nothing prepares you for playing in front of a big crowd, but I never found that to be a problem. It has probably been exceeded since, but I played a one-day match against Australia at the MCG in 1983, and also the World Cup final there in 1992 – two of the largest crowds ever gathered for a cricket match. And what two very different experiences they were.
Mostly I could shut the crowd out, which I did in 1992. But the one in 1983 was raucous and very anti-Pom. Also there was a percussive element which, whenever Australia’s batsmen hit a boundary, you felt in your gut, as tens of thousands struck the advertising boards simultaneously baying for blood. It was the first and only time where my ‘flight’ instinct was roused on a cricket field. Unsurprisingly, we lost.
Nerves betray themselves in different ways. For Leicestershire’s Scott Boswell, whose Lord’s final in 2001 ended in complete meltdown as his bowling radar went awry, it manifest itself in wides, of which he sent down eight in his second, and final, over of the match. The incident broke him and in an interview he did with The Guardian in 2013, he reckoned it took him ten years to recover his self-esteem.
For Neil Williams, a fine fast bowler for Middlesex, Essex and once for England, the bigger the occasion, the more likely he was to get injured. Nerves meant he got cramp, and taut muscles pull more easily.
Often, the waiting or watching, especially when you are powerless to intervene, is more nerve-wracking than actually performing. Keith Fletcher, Essex’s captain in the 1970s and 80s, used to lock himself in the toilet when run-chases got tight. Mind you, he demanded updates as to what was going on. It was just that he couldn’t bear to watch.
Obviously, there have always been those whose nerves make them sick before taking the field, though an antidote to that might be to have nothing to eat before you do so.
As Clive Lloyd once said when asked why he’d only ever taken coffee before a day’s play in the 1975/6 series against Australia: “One did not breakfast easily knowing that one was about to face Jeff Thomson later that morning.”
Most of us bowlers felt the same about sending them down at Viv Richards. The difference was we needed the energy of a good breakfast, and so had to keep it down.