Mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton feels that players who thrive on external motivation and pressure are “really going to struggle” at IPL 2020, while some of the “mid-range” players will outperform the big names. Upton also said there could be more cases similar to Suresh Raina, who withdrew from the IPL after arriving in the United Arab Emirates and returned to India on Saturday.
The thirteenth edition of the IPL will be unprecedented as most matches are expected to be played behind closed doors, with players living in biosecure bubbles for nearly three months after most teams arrived in the UAE. United about four weeks before the start of the tournament. Living strictly in team bubbles, mostly without families and up to 13 staff members testing positive for Covid-19 at Chennai Super Kings camp are new factors players will have to deal with this time.
According to Upton, who has coached multiple teams in the IPL, BBL and PSL, “fun things” could happen at this year’s IPL, and teams that handle them well will do significantly better than others.
“Hot-tempered players from big games do well when there’s pressure, when there’s a lot of people around,” Upton told ESPNcricinfo Newsroom. “The fact that now you are going to have games in front of empty stadiums, you just won’t have that level of pressure. So players who rely on the temperament of big games to deliver results … Someone like Virat Kohli, ¿? will continue Will you be as good when you eliminate external stimulation, noise and pressure? You will find players who normally fall when the pressure increases. They will be able to keep hitting because there will be no physical presence of the public.
“Athletes who are driven internally, who find the motivation within themselves, are going to do well, they will do well. Your typical confident players, who seek motivation, inspiration or validation from the outside, really go to their optimists. They’ll do much better. Your pessimists are going to struggle. So it depends on how many introverts, internally driven, optimists you have on your team. The more you have, the luckier you are. “
Upton also said teams needed to take more care of players who relied on external motivation to be in a better state of mind during games.
“[Teams need] to understand who are the extroverts, the trusted players, the externally motivated players, the risk averse, the fear based, the pessimistic. Those are the players we really need to nurture to get them to a place where they can feel comfortable in their own lives, comfortable on their own in their hotel rooms without that external validation and stimulation and how can we get those players down to the ground. and being able to focus on the game and deliver results in front of empty stadiums. “
‘There are other players who are in the same boat as Raina’
Upton also warned that we could witness more cases similar to Raina’s in the coming days, and he hoped teams were preparing for those situations. The batsman decided to lose the tournament due to “personal reasons”, and it later emerged that apprehensions about living in a biosecure environment for the duration of the IPL, players and officials at his camp tested positive for Covid-19, and a It was understood that personal tragedy was the reason for his decision.
“There are other players who are in the same boat as Suresh Raina and I just hope the teams are aware of that and are preparing for it,” Upton said. “There are coaches who are going to be fighting, there are support staff who are going to be fighting in that three-month bio-bubble.
“When we get there already exhausted, having sailed, being locked inside, we are going to find players who have not been exercising, we will see some strange overweight players, we will see players out of nick. I know that some players have been lucky to be able to get into the networks, so they will move on.
“We need to predict these strange things and not have a knee-jerk reaction. When all of a sudden Suresh Raina goes home, we get this knee-jerk reaction and weird comments in the media. Funny things will happen. Smart teams will predict them, put things on her place and have that support system cushion to be able to support the players. The teams that do better are going to be way ahead of the other teams that really don’t do that well and they [who don’t do that] they are going to fall, unfortunately, in this IPL. “
Upton said a factor like money might not have been a “strong consideration” in Raina’s departure, adding that her decision should be respected.
“There are very few players who when they cross the rope are motivated by money,” Upton said. “Yeah, it’s part of the motivation, but I don’t think it’s a huge consideration for Suresh. Whatever he goes home is more important than the large amount of money he’s not going to make. So it’s probably not ideal for him. draw that analogy and say ‘look, how much money is missing?’ He knows he has made a decision and we have to really respect it. “
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