Waugh’s mind games crafted to defeat India: Psychologist

Waugh’s mind games crafted to defeat India: Psychologist
Agence France Presse

Sydney, February 14: Every word in Steve Waugh’s verbal assault on the Indian cricket team was a carefully crafted weapon to out-psyche them, a leading Australian sport psychologist said today.

Australian Institute of Sport psychologist Jeff Bond said the Aussie skipper was a master at mental warfare.

And Waugh’s verbal stoushing with his Indian counterpart Sourav Ganguly could decide who won the February-March series, he said.

These tactics, as well as sledging, are what Waugh in the past has called ‘‘mental disintegration.’’

Australia are bidding to win their first Test series in India in 30 years and Bond thinks mind games could be the way to do it.

And he agreed with Waugh that putting the boot into the Indian team in the first of the three Tests could do untold damage to the home side.

‘‘The Australians are going in there with a sort of proactive front foot,’’ he said.‘‘The Indians are going to be a bit hesitant as to how good the Australians are and if the Australians nail them first off, their confidence gets dented, and the thing cycles itself.

‘‘They get into a negative spiral which is exactly what happened to the West Indies.

‘‘It’d be the first thing you’d want to do - sink the boot in.’’

Bond also said Waugh had an exceptional ability to prevent overconfidence in his charges.

Part of that meant keeping the team fresh and not being afraid to drop even high performing players, such as leg-spinner Stuart MacGill, who was a notable omission from the India tour.

‘‘That’s where I think Steve Waugh might be a master strategist because I think he’s shown the ability to get them to keep going, to keep resetting the goals, keep setting the bar a little bit higher so there hasn’t been a great deal of evidence of complacency,’’ he said.

‘‘He’s certainly very very strong in (psyching out opponents) and I think that’s one of the reasons the team’s doing as well as it is.

‘‘He strikes me as the sort of person who doesn’t say or do anything unless he’s really thought about it and he’s doing it for a reason.’’

Bond said under Waugh’s leadership the whole Australian team had a huge psychological edge.

‘‘During the big performance it’s what’s between the ears that’s the most important thing and Australia seems to have a pretty good bunch of things going on between their ears,’’ he said. ‘‘There’s a culture of professionalism and consistency and keeping the pressure on and making people crack and they’ve become pretty good at it.’’

BCCI defends ban on Azhar
HYDERABAD: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) today filed its counter-affidavit in the city civil court here, defending the ban imposed by it on former captain Mohd Azharuddin.

Board’s counsel Narotham Reddy filed the reply before the second Additional Chief Judge J Shyamsundar Rao justifying and upholding all the actions of BCCI on Azharuddin, including the imposition of life ban following his alleged involvement in the match-fixing scandal.

However, BCCI President A C Muthiah and its anti-corruption commissioner K Madhavan, who have also been named as respondents in a suit filed here by Azharuddin, could not file their counter-affidavits today and sought more time.The judge gave time to both of them to file their replies by February 26 after which the date for detailed hearing of the arguments would be announced.