Not everyone in franchise cricket is desperate to be at his best — that is a mentality I eradicate as coach: Shane Watson Premium

Shane Watson, a cricket legend, discusses mental health, career reflections, Masters leagues, and coaching challenges in a candid interview.

Two World Cups. IPL titles with multiple teams. Franchise-cricket coach. And mental health advocate and expert. Shane Watson takes pride in every phase of his professional life on and around a cricket field. The burly all-rounder, currently representing Australia Masters in the International Masters League, opened up on various facets of cricket. Excerpts:

Why does mental health matter so much, especially at the highest level?

It matters across all aspects of our life and not just at the highest level. I only got taught this in 2015, so right towards the back-end — I had retired from Test cricket and One-Day cricket — and then I applied these mental skills from 2016 onwards. It’s changed my life. It turned me around from being about to retire to then, over the next four years or so, having some of the best

performances in my career. 

Now the people that I teach this information to, or who read my book (The Winner’s Mindset) or learn it through my online course (shanewatson.au), are having the same impact. They are finally understanding that we are actually in control of our thoughts and want to take control, have the right thoughts at the right time to be able to access all those skills that we spend so much time developing.

How different would Shane Watson’s career have been if you had been made aware of these aspects earlier?

I get asked that question quite a lot, and it’s interesting because from a results perspective, I had a lot of very good results throughout my career. And we can’t control results, even though we’d love to control results, we can’t. So I am not sure if the results would have been any different. I am confident they would have been, but I am not sure. When it comes to dealing with performance, stress, anxiety and worry in the lead-up to games or a big series or a big tournament and then after a performance didn’t go well, there is no doubt that things would have been very different. I wouldn’t have had anywhere near as much performance anxiety.