Elephants and cricketers have similarities

I am going off the beaten track a bit to highlight something that came to mind recently after reading a holiday story from a mate. For some strange reason highlighted to me how the majority of us as cricketers think and stay in our safe comfortable little shelters. Very briefly the story pans out with the family going on a wonderful holiday in a certain part of Thailand. One adventure they undertook was a ride on tamed elephants. Not going to go into the details but I am sure one day I'm going over there with my family to do the same. It sounded amazing from his descriptions.

The part that amazed me most was where the leader stopped the party and hopped off and went for a walk. Not so amazing I know but; he was in charge of the elephant with a young boy on this huge animals back. As he disembarked this 5 tonne beast he produced a metre long stick and slammed it into the ground then attached the elephants collar to the pole. The pole would of been pulled out of the ground by my son who is 2 years old and 10kg in weight. So why did the giant animal quietly stay there and wait for his master to come back when he could of taken off any time it desired. It is conditioned to do as it has always done. After initially being tied to huge trees that wouldn't budge the elephant doesn't bother to try anything different again and try to get loose.

Although not related to elephants us cricketers tend to have the same mentality. Our conditioning means we go along with what has been done before. After all it is a very old, traditional game that has seen some very highly successful cricketers play the game with great skill. Why change that? But every where you look the vast majority of cricketers get fit by running long distances slowly; time and time again. Cricketers constantly train to be slow without doing any specific resistance training or high intensity skills training. The frustrating thing to me is that as soon as I put my point across to them they all agree without exception that the way they prepare for the game is not the best for them. But I am still met with, "this is the way we have always done it". So my point is that we are not breaking free and discovering new methods and techniques to prepare for cricket.

So we are no better than the elephant held by a 5kg stick meekly implanted in the ground.Wouldn't change be interesting and stimulating?