School coaches shown pathway to achieving The Winning Mindset (Changed)

The Cricketer presented the live webinar with Sporting Edge to a packed virtual audience of school coaches

The Cricketer recently presented The Winning Mindset, a webinar hosted by ex-England cricketer and now eminent psychologist Jeremy Snape. The event highlighted how important mindset is in optimising performance at all levels of the game, especially in younger players regardless of whether they aspire to reach the professional game.

Snape is the founder of high-performance consultancy Sporting Edge and drew upon exclusive insights from some of the biggest names in sport to present a fascinating evening of learning and discussion.

While still captaining Leicestershire, Snape embarked on a Master’s degree in Sports Psychology at Loughborough University and has since set up Sporting Edge, a company dedicated to helping anyone reach their maximum potential, whatever their field, through strengthening their mindset in sport and business.

The webinar further demonstrated The Cricketer’s support for schools cricket, with attendees including coaches from private, prep, state and all-girls schools. They were treated to exclusive insight via interviews Snape has conducted with star names such as Stuart Broad, Shane Warne, Sir Dave Brailsford, Ade Adepitan, Fran Halsall, Kate Richardson-Walsh and Professor Carol Dweck from Stanford University.

One of the many takeaways from the night came from World Cup, Ashes and Indian Premier League winner Shane Warne on how to deal with pressure. Warne reflected on the 1999 World Cup semi-final, where he led Australia to victory against South Africa using simple techniques to maintain composure. 

“Steve Waugh brought me on to break the partnership. I remember taking a couple of breaths and took longer than I would normally take to deliver the ball. I asked myself, how am I getting him out? I’m going to try and get him to hit through midwicket. It’s as simple as that. I’m not worried about the score.”

Warne snared three wickets in two overs and suddenly South Africa were 53 for 3. Shortly after, Daryll Cullinan was run out, such was the impact Warne’s spell had on the opposition.

“People talk about how do you get into that zone? What is the zone? To me the zone is 100% concentration on what you’re about to do. And that is clearing your mind of everything, the crowd, everything,” Warne explains.

“That was something I was really proud of because I overcame nerves and that helped me for the rest of my career because it was just something I did.”

Following the Warne clip Snape addressed the audience, “I worked with Warnie for six years and he is one of the most incredible people I’ve met under pressure. Absolutely phenomenal.

“He slowed down his physiology. He took a wider walk around his run up and took a big deep breath in. That does two things. Firstly that relaxes our physiology. The next thing is, when considering fight or flight, our flight breath is shallow and fast. If you’re breathing deep in your diaphragm it sends a signal to your head to say the sabre tooth tiger’s gone and it opens up our vision more and we can read the game.

“That ability to focus in on the moment, not what the papers are going to write tomorrow, not what the crowd are saying, that’s out of my control.

“Warne is back in control and executes his skill."

Snape concluded that while Warne showed unrivalled physical skill throughout his career he was only able to showcase his talents because his mindset was strong enough to let him.

Following the presentation, the Q&A session was packed with questions on how best to apply these learnings to school pupils. The interactive nature of the webinar provided the chance to converse one-on-one with the expert, providing a fascinating conclusion to the evening.  

This is the first of a series of webinars The Cricketer will run with Snape. For more information, please contact Ed at The Cricketer via: ed.krarup@thecricketer.com.

To find out more on the mindset of champions, visit Sporting Edge’s vast library of clips here. Use the code CRICKET21 for one month’s free access