How
do you keep a long run of outs firmly in perspective
and resist the urge to "panic bet"?
Former champion Australian
cricket opening batsman, Matthew Hayden, was interviewed
this morning on one of the local radio stations.
He was relating the story
of a time in his career (and what a career it
was!) of how he found himself in a long form
slump that, no matter what he did, no matter how hard
he worked on his style, how many people he listened
to, he simply could not escape its clutches. He was
playing like a rank amateur and he knew it. (Have
you found yourself in the same punting situation?)
At this time, the Australian
team was playing at the SCG and Hayden, luckily according
to some, was in the team. The Australians were fielding
and Hayden was at deep mid off and the Sydney crowd
was "giving it to him" as only Sydney crowds
can if you are from Queensland!
"Normally you
can't hear individual comments from the crowd. It's
normally just a dull roar but for some reason I could
hear this bloke up on the top deck really clearly
above the hubbub. Every word he said was clear as
a bell and I found myself listening to him.
He yelled out 'you're
playing rubbish Hayden' and I thought, well, tell
me something I don't know. Then he absolutely flawed
me. He yelled out 'and your chicken casserole tastes
like sh**'."
When the game was over
Hayden returned immediately to his beloved Queensland.
Did he hit the practise wicket and work like crazy
on his batting style trying to iron out every imperfection
in what he hard worked so hard to develop over years
of practise?
No. He re-cooked the
chicken casserole recipe from his cookbook. Just to
be sure.
That's keeping it in
perspective.
Perhaps we should all
adopt the same approach when the punting side of things
just isn't right. And it can be not right for any
number of reasons that we have expanded on in other
parts of this site.
Don't panic. Keep it
in perspective. Accept that things won't always go
perfectly - sometimes atrociously - and be positive
in the knowledge that your long term approach is as
good as you can get it.
