The art and science of winning: professional cricket coaching as transdisciplinary practice

This context statement examines the thirty-year evolution of my coaching and leadership in professional sport through my work in the public domain. It focuses on how to optimally coach and manage teams to win across multiple formats in professional cricket. Examining and reflecting on the process of how this took place: the campaigns, the engagement with the team and performer, with the ultimate goal of optimizing (designing) team performance to win leagues and championships.
To do this, I began by utilising my training in education. I designed a coaching and performance programme, which I divided into a time phased performance curriculum. Over time I began to see the holistic nature of performance and I evolved this thinking into a coaching system bringing together the mental, technical, physical and strategic aspects of performance, into the overarching design of 'winning' performance for individuals and teams. The system was centred both on the individual performer and the team, coaching them to set clear, precise performance goals, with the aim that they would go on to proactively take responsibility for their own learning process. The coaching and performance system evolved through research and constant testing with different teams and players.
A ‘thought architecture’ (a term I coined) emerged, which is a design process to attain a goal or objective. The ‘thought architecture’ evolved into a specific coaching approach focused on performance design to create the neural circuitry of optimal performance. The goal was for the learning process to become unconscious thinking and action, both individually and collectively within the team. This submission examines and summarises the stages of learning, the role of mentors, the championships won and lost, the evolution of the transdisciplinary coaching model and the optimal performance system. This text analyses the professional context in which this work took place with reference to the theoretical frameworks that informed this study. I conclude by looking at both the applications of optimal performance in other professional fields and the implications of this practice.