Negative thoughts will more readily come to mind so you have to recognise what is bad and be prepared to replace it with good thinking, or at least something which is neutral. This then becomes part of your mental preparation.

Once you have established your physical skills the greatest advancement you will make will be in your mental skills, hence the need to put as much time, probably more, into your mental preparation for the season, practice sessions and matches.

The Season:

Every cricketer wants to have a good season. What constitutes a good season? The maximum number of runs or wickets or wicket keeping performances commensurate with your skill level/potential. By way of example let's assume that 1000 runs for the season is your target. As a bald statistic that can be a bit daunting, even a little unrealistic, but if you break it down to game by game targets it becomes more achievable- Say there are ten games in the season the target becomes 100 per game, much more achievable. Then break down the games into say 1.5 times at bat or 15 innings for the season and your target becomes 66.66 per innings, which is achievable for someone with the proven skills. My target for each innings was 100 but I broke it down to 10 lots of ten to take the pressure off, then broke each ten down into 10 lots of one. Obviously I didn't score all my runs in singles but it did take a lot of pressure off and allowed me to concentrate on the season one ball at a time.

Practice Sessions:

It is laughable to think that most top class cricketers only practice their skills a few times a week for 15-20 minutes at a time. That can only be enough if you fully utilise the time by proper mental preparation. Quality rather than quantity.

I decided that the best way to utilise my time was to treat the first 10-15 minutes of each session as if it were the first 15-30 minutes of an innings, which I deemed to be the most important part of each innings. Survive that and you increase your chance of achieving your targets.

Survival does not mean just playing defensively but it does mean fierce concentration on each delivery to avoid getting out. It does teach you to concentrate on each ball which is practicing the mental skills you need for a match. The last 5-10 minutes of each session is spent trying to pick up the tempo as you would in a match, but with the same degree of fierce concentration on not getting out . By concentrating as hard on each delivery you will remove much of the anxiety and fear which creeps into your mind to undermine your concentration. It may help to get each bowler to nominate his field placing so as to make the session more realistic.

Preparation for a limited overs match varies slightly from the above in that you look to pick up the tempo a little earlier in the session but the same basic principles apply. Practice thinking of hitting each ball out of the end of the net along the ground even for one-dayers for it is good mental training. Obviously not every ball will go out the end of the net or along the ground but at least if you are thinking like that it prevents pre-determining each shot which invariably brings about most dismissals. As we can't stop ourselves thinking, by at least thinking about playing straight it promotes neutral thinking which helps you to play a lot straighter.

Matches:

My mental preparation £or matches started 3-4 days before the game. Apart from the practice sessions I spent half an hour or so each day picturing myself playing successfully. Replaying in my mind successful innings. I had played in the past. If I had batted against the bowlers before on the same ground I replayed these innings and embellished them with more success if necessary. Had I not seen the bowlers before I just replayed other good innings.

By replaying the bowlers I had seen before I often learnt something about their style which was of benefit to me. I would always watch a bowler's face as he ran in to bowl, for often their expression would betray their thinking. I switched to watching the ball as the bowler hit his delivery stride.

On the morning of a match I tried to get into a routine, for doing that gave me time to get my thinking right. Getting to the ground with time to organise myself physically gave me time to check my thinking. I liked to have10 minutes or so to myself at the ground, before warm-ups and practice just to prepare my mind for the day ahead.

To find the right mental preparation for yourself think back over matches from the past. You should be able to establish a pattern. The good days will have had a very different pattern from the bad - I hope. Your thinking will have been better organised than on the bad - although it is possible that you failed on a good thinking day - when your thinking was probably heavily weighted with anxiety and fear of failure.

You should be able to recognise a vast difference for on the good days you will more than likely have been more relaxed with a clearer mind and more positive attitude. If you can recreate that type of thinking by practice, you will not guarantee success each day, but you will increase your chances of success. By practice you can build your confidence from within and stop anxiety from preventing you from reaching your potential. As a way of getting into the right mental condition start planning each day the night before by writing down what you intend to do the next day. It is much easier to think properly if you know what it is you intend to achieve. Writing it down gives you a recipe to follow. Once you have trained yourself you may find it unnecessary to write it down but it is essential to start with. The first step you have to take to be successful is to plan for success. Most people don't plan for success and wonder why they don't succeed. By not planning to succeed you are really planning to fail.

Concentration:

It is impossible to concentrate flat out all day. You need to save the mental energy for when you need it most. I believe there are three levels of concentration, ALERT, FINE FOCUS AND FIERCE. ALERT is from when you wake up in the morning and start preparing yourself to play, through waiting to bat and between balls. It is the time when you are aware of your surroundings and you are controlling your thought pat terns. Negative thoughts, anxiety and fear of failure have no place in your mind. By controlling your thinking you can keep yourself more relaxed, and with training you can achieve this state of preparedness nearly every day you play. A word of warning some days no matter how hard you try you will not achieve the optimum in attitude and thinking. Learn to accept that, and ride with it for if you can, often your thinking will come right as the day unfolds.

FINE FOCUS is as the bowler starts his run up or reaches his mark in the case of a short run up. Your concentration should now fine down from the relaxed state of mind which is aware of your surroundings to something about the size of a TV screen which in my case basically held the bowlers face. I found by watching his face 1 often got information on what his intentions were. As he ran in I said to myself, "Play straight, Play straight and watch the bail" over and over again. By doing this I prevented other thoughts from leaping into my mind uninvited. Thoughts like if he pitches it up on my pads I'll hit it through the gap in front of square leg. By allowing these thoughts into your mind it allows your mind to organise your feet to play that shot, often with disastrous results. You might override your mind the first of second time but eventually this mental mistake will lead to a physical mistake and dismissal. The play straight, play straight central is a demonstration of the "neutral" thinking. I talked about. At least by thinking straight my body was prepared to play straight. My natural ability and years of training would handle the rest and allow me to play each ball on its merits whether it was half-volley on the pads or a long-hop outside off stump.

The final stage of FIERCE concentration was when the bowler hit his delivery stride. All my powers of concentration were focused on a screen the size of the cricket ball. All I saw as the ball left the bowlers hand was the ball. This allowed my brain to start computing the flight, line and length from the angle the ball left the bowlers hand. All this information helps you get your feet into position more quickly.

Once the ball was played and the result determined I returned to the Alert stage of being aware of everything around me again such as field placing, score board etc, without allowing my mind to wander onto negative things. When the bowler reached his mark it was back to Fine Focus and so on.

Two books I would suggest you read to elaborate on the above would be "Think & Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill and "Inner Golf" by W Timothy Gallwey. Don't worry about the titles they are both excellent books, the first for attitudes for success and the second for thinking and trusting your ability.