After a highly stressful series both mentally and physically, India had to now face another top quality team, England. With India and England battling out for the position in finals, we saw a rather different approach from the teams. England was playing after their recent tour to Sri Lanka and India was playing after their recent tour to Australia which was comparatively more stressful for the players.
“Celebrate wins, learn from losses and smile through both.”
While England would be celebrating a good cricket win, India will be learning from it and how they can possibly come back stronger in the next game. There are several thing that played a role in this loss for India, the toss, the pitch, and the lack of consistency in performance. Well as we cannot be dependent on the external factors to yield results, what could we possible understand and learn from this?
Role of performance pressure:
After the victory in Australia, India were in the grind again after a few days off. As a team, most of the players were the same for the England tour which meant they were playing the same roles and the expectation from them were high now.
Did the players have any performance pressure? Not sure but what it looked from outside was that India was under more pressure to perform their best than the England team as they had to stay by the level they had set and were expected to do the same. Somewhere they might have had the same expectations from themselves to secure the position in the squad.
Performance pressure is basically a feeling that makes a person think that they need to perform at a high level. It is very common thing to experience in life. While performance pressure can motivate some people, for others, it may lead to stress and less productivity levels in them. Here, self-regulation, which is ability to regulate one’s emotions and behaviors under stressful situations plays a vital role.
| If perceived as a challenge | If perceived as threat |
| More likely to go an extra mile at work also being helpful to other, being courteous etc. | More likely to be less motivated also may be rude at workplace due to lack of management ability |
| Higher self-regulation | Low self-regulation |
| More attempts to perform better and accept failure on the way | Less attempts to participate in the work and fear failure due to shame or other reasons |
What happens when one is experiencing performance pressure and is not able to manage it?
One, you do not push beyond your skill set and ability as you see the pressure to be a threat . You also tend to take more blind risks than calculating them as per your abilities at the moment in order to get over it. Often, the need to perform overlooks the current situation and blocks the mind from thinking more efficiently resulting in higher stress levels.
We did see glimpses of this happening in the game where along with good bowling, there was a certain amount to stress hovering on the team to chase the target and do it quickly too. Somewhere they hoped to perform at the same level as the previous series.
Think: What is a pressure situation to you? If you see it as something negative or a threat, you are more likely to engage in negative thought process. Recognize what happens when you feel under pressure. Being aware of it helps in finding ways to manage it and help work through the pressure better. Learn how you can reframe from negative to positive outlook towards pressure situation through different activities and self-affirmations.
Importance of stress and workload management.
Usually players are trained to play longer innings, bowl longer spells and build stamina for it. But what about the levels of stress that the game offers to the players? Playing about 8 Tests, 6 ODIs, and 8 T20Is from November to March end, India has a schedule pretty tight and facing top 2 quality teams in the cricket world. While England on the other hand has a similar tight schedule with two tours, their work management and rotation policy of player playing multiple formats has seemed to be working well in their favor.
Why stress and workload management?
So much exertion, less recovery time and playing multiple formats can lead to weariness in the body and a lot of mental exhaustion too. The body may experience fatigue due to the physical exertion leading to slower recovery speed than normal. This may result in low performance levels, less concentration levels and more space for errors. Not just in sports but in our daily lives too, it is important to have a stress and workload management plan to have better productivity and performance level even under pressure/stressful situations.
Often due to fear of losing the job or a spot in the team, people push through the phase leading to more errors and less productivity. The fear is understandable but in order to stay by it and perform better, one needs to have the coping skills and ability to manage the stress. Spacing out the work can help reduce fatigue and burnout and lead to healthy mind and body.
It is important to have a good routine and schedule for work to reduce stress level and work more efficiently. It is also important to recognize when you feel stressed out and how you can cope through it. Like Captain Kohli says, its is a learning process, we never stop learning what we can do better and how we can achieve it.
Performance pressure and workload is understandably high in Indian side but resilience is also very high. We wait for the next match to see how the team responds to the pressure and like England, we hope team India also has a rotation policy and a sports psychologist to manage the workload on the players both mentally and physically.
Urvi Shah (Author, Beyond the matches)
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