Where was the application of sport psychology during the Ashes cricket debacle

I have been told that the ECB did not send or allow a sport psychologist to accompany the team to Australia. Can anyone confirm this? Steve Bull has done this in the past ie. performed the role of sport psychologist to the England cricket team. If this is true does anyone have any input into why this occurred?

I think our profession is more concerned with technniques and tools than basic mindset. That's ultimately what matters...

Just updating this: I guess the World Cup wasn't any better. Cricket is such a mental game, if so many players are out of sorts then there has to be a climate problem. If the next coach gets a marked improvement in performance, that would tend to back up that hpothesis.

Hi Keith. sorry to get off on a negative note, but I do have some concern with your article, because I think as sport psych professionals we shouldn’t be conjecturing publicly about the performance of our professional colleagues, especially if we don’t know the full facts, and if we do know the full facts then confidentiality would not allow any comment. It would be completely different as members of the public. If I was the England psych I would be very unhappy to read what you wrote given that you are a colleague…….However I would be fine to discuss it one to one or in a professional setting I’m very happy to discuss this – what do you think?

William, I welcome your remarks though I fear they miss the point. I raise questions throughout which need discussion which cannot be addressed if we continue to hide behind the fear of questioning fellow professionals though my questions were directed at structure rather than an any individual. My view was meant to represent the perception that anyone of would have formed looking at what happened. An inside view perhaps would have prevented me from making such comments. Anyway the bottom line is sport psychology appeared ineffective and my comments were directed at the overall result. If you disagree then I will be surprised but that is the point. We discuss PR and how the media views sport psychology etc etc and your view would be to suppress the very questions we ought to be asking. Sport psychology can do a great job but only if the structure allows it to do so assuming delivery is in the right hands in the first place. Ethics can be a major issue particularly regarding team matters but it certainly is not my intention to dilute or underemphasise its importance.

Keith, when you say "So why is it that in areas where it seems so obviously important has sport psychology been so abjectly represented" this sounds more like a like a criticism of the sport psychologist than the structure. I guess my concern is that there is so much we don’t know. 1. What brief/ contact with the team was the sport psychologist given? 2. What impact did the absence of key senior pro’s have on the whole team’s morale. 3. I think we need to separate the tests from the world cup 4. I think that a sport psychologist can only be really effective in harness with a coach doing a good job. We have no idea how closely they were in harness. 5. In making public comments as sport psych’s I think we need to ask ourselves if we would be happy to say those comments face to face to the coach/athlete/ sport psych in question, and generally I would only give that psych feedback if it was asked for. 6. We also need to ask whether we would expect them to work with us in the future given what we have said about them, and given that trust is a critical part of sport psych especially when public figures in sport are not surprisingly wary of trusting people who are supposedly trying to help. 7. Of course we should be asking searching questions – of each other when we work together, and of ourselves all the time, and maybe conjecturally in the pub etc as we all have opinions; but I would say not in a public open domain unless we are journalists.

This is an interesting debate. On the ethical side, we can't without evidence suggest that an individual (or team of, for all I know) sport psychologists has failed in their duty. But when one of our most prominent National sports teams fails so abjectly to perform when we know that they have the essential physical skills to do better, we have to be able to ask questions. A coach (from any sport), for example, might read in the news that there is a sport psychologist in the England camp and think, "well, I'll not be bothering then". I think that if we are leading the debate then it can help raise the credibility of the field in the game rather than dampen it. However, we do have to be careful about defining the terms of the debate. One entirely legitimate question to ask is "does sport psychology actually work?". As a sport psychologists currently working on the "outside" primarily in business, I think that this raises problems with conventional notions of what "sport psychology" is. The first issue I'd raise is with the focus of sport psychology (on the whole). As a profession we tend to focus the vast majority of our attention on the athletes. Well, why wouldn't we? Well, at Apter International we use something we call the Performance Equation to guide our work on performance. Now this isn't an exact mathematical equation, nor is it empirically tested, but from our experience it has high 'face validity': P = A x M x O Where P is performance, A is Ability, M is Mindset, and O is Opportunity. Now, ability is fairly self explanatory and refers to the required technical and interpersonal skills of the individual (in sport I think you could add mental skills e.g. imagery, goal setting, concentration). Mindset is about awareness of is takes to perform, connection with that (motivation if you like) and the confidence to execute. Opportunity, however, is the structures, the processes, the culture and the climate. Most of Opportunity lies "under the iceberg" in the non-rational and emotional realm. The point of the Performance Equation is that without any of these A, M or O, performance will suffer. My view of sport psychology (mainstream) is that it is concered most of all with A x M, which is a limited view of performance that is limited in its effectiveness. Indeed, in the sports world, with limited budgets, if you want "bang for your buck", the greatest impact is to be had on the 'O' of Opportunity. We've done research in business organisations that suggests that leadership style (climate), for example, is accountable for almost one half of employee engagement (positive feeling towards the company and its goals - something that is well researched in relation to performance). Our qualitative and quantitative research also suggests that management competence (people skills), structures and processes can have a huge impact. So, in a world where resources are scarce, there is an argument that it would be more effective to start not with the athletes, but with the coaching team and upwards into the management of the sport. The second argument that I would make is about the content of mainstream sport psychology (I think that the same arguments can be made about psychology in general) that is academically driven. My contention would be that we are creating sport psychologists, through our academic institutions, that don't really understand emotions, even motivation. The bill of fare tends to include such delights as "multidimensional state anxiety", of which only one dimension is actually an emotional response (cognitive anxiety), while the other two ("physiological anxiety" or, in other words, "arousal", and confidence) are merely related. Not only are we dealing with constructs that are questionable in structure, but there's also a silo mentality - there's no relationship with other emotions. My problem with psychology in general is that it has looked for easy answers to difficult questions (using easy methods) and come up with poor explanations. Of course there's good psychology out there, but also a lot of tosh. Unfortunately it is my belief that there is more tosh in sport psychology (pound for pound) than in other areas of psychology. Indeed, when I was working more actively in sport, I realised that none of the frameworks that I worked with on a regular basis came from the field of sport psychology but from clinical, educational, and occupational psychology for example. Maybe I would say that, because my day-to-day work uses Reversal Theory which I would class as 'good psychology' that has never made in into the mainstream, but I do think there is a debate to be had and if we don't, we'll progress at the same snail's pace as we have for the last 20 years or so.

OK, so did sport psychology add anything to England’s team performance against Australia in the Ashes series? At times it may have but it in terms of the overall result then no. Raising questions about structure is the starting point. If the sport psychology support was good then the structure didn't allow it to be effective. If the sport psychology support was to support individuals then it couldn't be effective at team level re. planning, goal setting, preparation, group work, selection, motivation etc. (ethics may prevent someone working with individuals to work at team level). Did the ECB have a framework that ensured sport psychology would be effective by making this part of the Coach's remit? This raises other questions about the qualifications or otherwise of the coach. Perhaps coach is a misnomer as this position is responsible for success ie. getting results. He/she should be the best person for the job and have the management/support team with the right credentials to support him/her. It seems widely accepted that playing competitive sport is widely quoted as being at least 80% in the head so why when it comes to playing under pressure with its associated demands for mental toughness do coaches (managers) seem to get their jobs because of their technical qualifications and not for their abilities to inspire, lead and mentally prepare teams. This surely suggests that they should be proven leaders (who don’t necessarily need to be technically qualified) that enable teams to play collectively at their best when the pressure is greatest. Technical resources such as fitness coaching, batting coaches, bowling coaches etc. could be part of the support team (which I realise they presently are). Of course if the structure allows the coach with say just technical expertise to be autonomous then you don't know to what extent the mental aspect of the game has been addressed. I realise this is somewhat simplistic and that the reality is not as clear cut but the point I am making is that the person responsible for getting results needs to operate within the most appropriate framework and does not always have to be an ex-player or a coach in the technical sense. This does not mean that it is OK for such a person to have no understanding of the game either as that would be ludicrous. If the structure or framework is not there then the ECB must have a long hard look at itself so that the remit given to the person responsible for getting results has access to the resources to do just that. If it was there, then on the basis of the Ashes result alone the coach should have been sacked and if sport psychology was an integral part of the support team management (which I don't think it was) then the sport psychologist should have been sacked as well. If sport science is going to have more influence then it needs to be accountable. For the record this blog was written in January and well before the World Cup - relating to the comment that there should be separation between the Ashes and the World Cup. And as for discussing things in the pub – when did that ever change anything? This is a serious discussion and it needs to be had and not just here. The ashes result has not helped the promotion of sport psychology because it was clearly lacking. If it wasn't allowed to be effective then sport psychology needs to be defended. As I said in my original piece I hope that the enquiry into the Ashes loss looks at this very seriously.

Further to my second last para in my original post (at the top of this page) on Flintoff's ankle injury, I add the following from the BBC: England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff is highly unlikely to play again in 2007 as he battles to overcome a worrying ankle problem, BBC Sport understands. He has had further scans to assess the injury and is waiting for the results before deciding what action to take. Flintoff, 29, had a third operation in June in a bid to get himself fully fit but is still in pain when he bowls. I don't know but has anyone raised the subject of getting Flintoff to change his action or has this already been tried?

Do England have a sports psychologist? If they do should they have more than one - one to operate at individual level on a confidential basis and one to operate at team level - how could that work?

Keith
Keith Irving
iStadia

What role for sport psychology during the current situation, as a poorly prepared England, faced with external pressures, travel to play a very strong India side? I think that this is where sport psychologists may be able to deliver real value, but how many would be equipped to?

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Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com

The first step is for the coach and captain to step up to the plate. Pieterson has certainly done that - he possesses the potential for being a true leader. The motivation to follow him is there; he's done most of the job himself. The sp psychs role is to find and work with those that have just said yes because they think it's the right thing to do and are more worried about letting the team down. This should start now because there will be some that will not be able to deliver and shouldn't go - Harmison would be a great worry for me but under Pieterson he's been a changed man. This will leave those that will need support when they get out there but inevitably this is something that given my original blog may be difficult to achieve because of the structure and how working confidentially with individuals may conflict with influencing who plays and who doesn't.

Keith
Keith Irving
iStadia

Interesting comment about having one psychologist for individuals and one for the team. My view is that performance-focused work needs to be done WITH the coach, and indeed BY the coach with support from a sport psychologist. My ideal view of a sport psychologist's role, therefore is that they are the coach's coach. That isn't to say that they could be doing some 1:1 work, but even then I'd suggest 1:1:1 with the coach. The athlete need to have a mechanism for having a confidential conversation, but if the coach is blind to performance issues then they can't really do their job. Some psychologists will see this as problematic, but in my view that's because we are still dominated by a patholological view of psychology and a consulting model that emphasises clinical considerations, even though our role (in most cases is not a clinical one).

Anyway, I intended just to comment by asking where England stand in relation to the upcoming Ashes (my goodness, this blog is over 2 years old!).

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Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com

Interestingly still relevant though! There are several specialist coaches in a team these days and why not an equal number of sport psychologists balancing the physical/technical with the mentaI. I am playing devils advocate here but no-one ever seems to step back far enough to see the whole picture and look at things differently.
I think both could work (sport psychs working with the coach at a team level but working indedpendently with players) but do agree that directing it through the coach would be best but this would depend on any given structure - something I keep banging on about (see above) but I would also question why the coach (read chief honcho) has to have a technical/physical background. I would go along with this if everytime a coach was hired if he clearly had man-management experience (read motivational experience) to prepare a team mentally.

Keith

Keith Irving
iStadia