Factors that affect a Relationship

 

"I DON'T play GAMES": understanding what this really means

 

A level Economics: Starting Fair and Dealing with Luck: Comparing Monopoly and Real Economies

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Think about Monopoly, the game where you buy properties and compete to win. Now, let's compare it with how the real world works when it comes to money, businesses, and luck.

In Monopoly, every player starts with the same amount of money. This makes sure that nobody gets an advantage right away. It's like starting a race with everyone on the same line. This makes the game about skills and strategy.

But in real life, things can be different. Some people start with more money or better chances. It's like some players in Monopoly starting ahead with better properties. This isn't fair, and it's how it is in the real world sometimes.

In Monopoly, luck comes into play with the roll of dice and the cards you draw. Sometimes you land on good spots, and sometimes not. Luck can make a big difference in the game. Similarly, real life has surprises too. New inventions, what people want to buy, and unexpected events can change how well businesses and people do.

But here's where they're not the same. In Monopoly, luck only matters during the game. In real life, luck is just one piece of the puzzle. Real life is more complicated. It's not just about luck – it's about how things are made, what people like, and rules set by governments. All of these things make the real world much harder to predict than a game.

So, in Monopoly, luck follows the game's rules. In real life, luck mixes with many other things, making it more complex. The comparison between Monopoly and real life reminds us that the real world is unfair and trickier.

A Level Economics 44: Oligopoly and Game Theory

Game theory is a powerful tool for understanding the interdependent behavior of firms in oligopolistic markets. It helps analyze strategic decision-making where each firm's actions directly impact its competitors' choices. One essential concept in game theory is the Nash equilibrium, where no firm can improve its position by unilaterally changing its strategy.

Example: The Prisoner's Dilemma

Let's consider a classic example of the Prisoner's Dilemma to illustrate the interdependent behavior of firms in an oligopolistic market. Imagine two major airlines, Airline A and Airline B, competing on a popular route.

1. If Both Airlines Charge High Prices:

   • In this scenario, both airlines pursue profit maximization by charging high ticket prices. Both firms earn substantial profits individually.
   • However, since the prices are high, fewer passengers choose to fly, leading to lower total demand in the market.
   • As a result, both airlines experience a reduction in overall revenue and profits due to the limited number of customers.

2. 
   

3. If Both Airlines Charge Low Prices:

   • In this case, both airlines try to attract more passengers by offering lower ticket prices. As a result, the number of passengers increases for both airlines.
   • However, the aggressive price competition leads to reduced profits for both airlines due to lower ticket revenues.

4. 
   

5. If One Airline Charges High, While the Other Charges Low:

   • If Airline A decides to charge high prices while Airline B opts for low prices, Airline A may gain a larger market share since some passengers might prefer the lower prices of Airline B.
   • Airline B, on the other hand, may attract more customers but will earn lower profits due to the lower ticket prices.
   • In this situation, Airline A may experience higher profits than Airline B.

Nash Equilibrium in the Prisoner's Dilemma: The Nash equilibrium occurs when both airlines choose to charge high prices (Scenario 1). In this situation, neither airline can improve its profits by unilaterally changing its pricing strategy. If one airline deviates from high prices to low prices, it risks losing revenue to the competitor, leading to lower profits.

This outcome is a classic illustration of the Nash equilibrium, where each firm's strategy is the best response to the other firm's strategy. Despite both airlines earning higher profits individually by charging low prices (Scenario 2), they end up in a situation where neither wants to deviate from high prices due to the fear of losing market share and potential revenue.

Observation of Nash Equilibrium: In the Nash equilibrium, neither firm has an incentive to change its strategy given its competitor's choice. The airlines reach a stable situation where they are interdependent, and their profits are maximized under the current circumstances.

This example demonstrates how game theory and the concept of Nash equilibrium help understand the interdependent behavior of firms in oligopolistic markets. It shows that even when both firms could potentially benefit from different strategies, they often settle into a stable equilibrium where they are mutually dependent on each other's decisions.

The Confidence Game .....3

 The confidence game has existed long before the term itself was first used, likely in 1849, during the trial of William Thompson. The elegant Thompson, according to the New York Herald, would approach passersby on the streets of Manhattan, start up a conversation, and then come forward with a unique request. “Have you confidence in me to truste me with your watch until tomorrow?” Faced with such a quixotic question, and one that hinged directly on respectability, many a stranger proceeded to part with his timepiece. And so the confidence man was born: The person who uses others’ trust in him for his own private purposes.

Have you confidence in me? What will you give me to prove it?

Cons come in all guises. Long cons that take time and ingenuity to build up: From impostor schemes to Ponzis to the building of outright new realities - a new country, a new technology, a new cure - that have found a comfortable home in the world of the Internet, and remain as well, safely ensconced in their old offline guises.

The con is the oldest game there is. But it’s also one that is remarkably well suited to the modern age. If anything, the whirlwind advance of technology heralds a new golden age of the grift. Cons thrive in times of transition and fast change, when new things are happening and old ways of looking at the world no longer suffice. That’s why they flourish during revolutions, wars and political upheavals. Transition is the confidence game’s greatest ally, because transition breeds uncertainty. There’s nothing a con artist likes better than exploiting the sense of unease we feel when it appears that the world as we know it is about to change. We may cling cautiously to the past, but we also find ourselves open to things that are new and not quite expected. Who’s to say this new way of doing business isn’t the wave of the future?

The Confidence Game......2

 There’s a likely apocryphal story about the French poet Jacques Prevert. One day he was walking past a blind man who held up a sign “Blind man without a pension”. He stopped to chat. How was it going? Were people helpful? “Not great”, the man replied.

Could I borrow your sign?” Prevert asked. The blind man nodded.

The poet took the sign, flipped it over and wrote a message.

The next day, he again walked past the blind man, “How is it going now?” he asked. “Incredible,” the man replied. “I’ve never received so much money in my life.”

On the sign, Prevert had written: “Spring is coming, but I won’t see it.”

Give us a compelling story, and we open up. Scepticism gives way to belief. The same approach that makes a blind man’s cup overflow with donations can make us more receptive to almost any persuasive message, for good or for ill.

When we step into a magic show, we come in actively wanting to be fooled. We  want deception to cover our eyes and make our world a tiny bit more fantastical, more awesome than it was before. And the magician, in many ways, uses the exact same approaches as the confidence man - only without the destruction of the con’s end game. “Magic is a kind of a conscious, willing con,” says Michael Shermer, a science historian and writer. “You’re not being foolish to fall for it. If you don’t fall for it, the magician is doing something wrong.” 

At their root, magic tricks and confidence games share the same fundamental principle: a manipulation of our beliefs. Magic operates at the most basic level of visual perception, manipulating how we see and experience reality. It changes for an instant what we think possible, quite literally taking advantage of our eyes’ and brains’ foibles to create an alternative version of the world. A con does the same thing, but can go much deeper. Long cons, the kind that take weeks, months or even years to unfold, manipulate reality at a higher level, playing with our most basic beliefs about humanity and the world.

The real confidence game feeds on the desire for magic, exploiting our endless taste for an existence that is more extraordinary and somehow more meaningful.

When we fall for a con, we aren’t actively seeking deception - or at least we don’t think we are. As long as the desire for magic, for a reality that is somehow greater than our everyday existence remains, the confidence game will thrive.

Extracted from The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova

Shane Watson: 'In teams that focus on results instead of processes, players start playing for themselves'

Shane Watson in Cricinfo

There are environments where the leaders talk about how big this game is, how important this game is, and say, "If we lose this game we are out." I have been in plenty of these team environments. There are also environments where leaders talk about how performance in this game will dictate selection, and that underperformance might lead to players getting dropped. I have heard from leaders of a number of teams that I have played in say things like, "Spots are up for grabs in the game" or "If you don't perform, you will get dropped."

So guess what people are thinking in those environments? "Don't lose. I really need to perform today. I need to score runs. We need to win. Don't get out. Don't bowl badly. Don't stuff up, otherwise I might be gone." All of these focus on results and fear of failure.

These environments can work for a shorter period of time, where fear of failure can drive individuals to be ready to lock in for one very important game. But these environments are not sustainable at all as stress and anxiety builds up to a point where the whole team implodes and I have been a part of these environments on a few occasions too. The telltale signs are that everyone starts to only play for themselves, for their individual spots, and as long as they do enough to get picked for the next game, they are happy. This always leads to an incredibly toxic team environment where the enjoyment factor of playing the game that you love evaporates and it turns into every person for themselves. We should be doing all that we can to do the opposite of this, as the best and most successful team environments always have a fun and enjoyment aspect to them as a very important undercurrent to all that they do.

Other environments I have been a part of are ones where there is a clear focus on the process and leaders ask the players to just bring the best version of themselves every time and to do it over and over again. They reiterate that if we all do this, we give ourselves the best chance of coming out on top. This is exactly what a championship mindset looks like!

This is what made Ricky Ponting such a good captain. He always said to the team in the lead-up to big games that the team whose individuals do the basics better and for longer will be the team that will come out on top. It focused our minds on the process, on doing the basics, controlling the A factors.

Paddy Upton for Rajasthan Royals built a process-driven environment that took all of the anxiety and stress out of a very pressurised tournament where performance and results were so important. The other team environment where this was done incredibly well was at Chennai Super Kings in the IPL under captain MS Dhoni and coach Stephen Fleming. I never heard either of them say, "We need to win this game today", or "If you don't score runs today or take wickets, you will be getting dropped."

My second year with CSK really stuck with me. There was no chopping and changing in selection. In other teams I had been with, players were turned over constantly. If a player didn't perform for a couple of games, selectors would think he wasn't good enough and would replace him immediately. This meant that everyone started looking over their shoulders and thinking, "Gosh, if I don't perform in a couple of games, then I could be gone too."

No matter who we are, we are always going to have times in our lives where we are in a "results-focused" environment. By understanding the mental-skills framework in this book, we know that this is the opposite of where we want to be mentally for us to be at our best both individually and collectively. We need to listen to what is being said by the leaders in this environment and we need to redirect their words ourselves to say, "I am not going to let their results focus influence the correct mindset I need for me to be at my best." This can be much easier said than done when players are being chopped and changed from one game to the next without any rhyme or reason, apart from someone not performing in one game. But understanding this will be a powerful tool for you to use throughout your life to ensure a negative environment doesn't infiltrate your thinking and pull you out of your high-performance mindset.

I've been a victim of a negative team environment. After the retirement of Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey, the Australian team drifted significantly. Pressure to perform began to affect confidence and consistency. Players, myself included, began to look over our shoulders. I didn't have knowledge of the mental skills I needed to redirect my thoughts to the right things at the right times to consistently bring the best version of myself into every performance, instead of being overcome with fear and overwhelmed by a need for results, which saw my performances go downhill throughout that time. And this was all at a time where I was in my prime, performing really well in the IPL in an incredibly enjoyable, process-driven team environment. But as soon as I went back into this other environment, my kryptonite, my performances started to tank again and the enjoyment factor of playing the game that I loved evaporated very quickly.



When Watson was able to let go of the negative mindset that gripped the team, he was able to play with freedom and the results automatically followed•Craig Golding/AFP/Getty Images


My last three months with the Australia T20 team from early January 2016 through to the T20 World Cup in India was another example of one of those environments. We played India in a three-match T20 International series, where the selectors picked a really big squad and chopped and changed the team significantly from game to game, and then this flowed on to a T20 series in South Africa before we headed to India for the T20 World Cup. The conversations and actions around the group from the leaders - that being the coach, captain, selectors - were consistent messaging like, "All spots are up for grabs if you want to play in the T20 World Cup" and "You need to perform in this game as you might only have one opportunity to press your claim."

As soon as I heard and saw this, I immediately acknowledged in my own mind what this ridiculous situation was creating. This time I opted out. I knew the importance of preparation and focus. The result was that I bowled as well as I had in T20 cricket for Australia, played one of the games of my life at the SCG as captain, and retired at the end of the T20 World Cup as the No. 1 T20I allrounder in the world.

Surprise surprise, we lost to India in the quarter final knockout game. We left a few runs on the table and didn't execute that well with the ball against an Indian team that had barely changed their XI from the first game that we played against them during the series in Australia, three months before.

But the attitudes I saw in that T20 World Cup are everywhere. I saw it recently in a game of junior cricket. The result of the match was important as a place in the grand final was riding on it. A number of the parents had really built this game up as being a knockout game and had stressed to the kids how important it was to win to make the final. Then one of the calmest kids in the team went out to bat with two overs to go and one of the parents said, "Don't get out, otherwise we will lose" as he walked out to bat. And guess what happened. This poor young kid ended up getting out, and because of all of the build-up of importance for this game by the parents and kids around him, the calmest child on the field lost the plot, throwing their gear everywhere in disappointment of letting the team down. It was so sad to see and something that should never happen if the parents around the team simply understood the fundamentals of how to create the optimal environment. Reinforcement of the correct mindset would then filter down to all of the young kids.

It is so easy to allow the "live or die by results" environment to infiltrate your mindset and start to corrupt it. It is easy to start to move your thinking to fear of failure and how important it is to perform and get the results. But by understanding all of the mental skills in this book, you will be armed with all that you need to be mentally tough enough to create a super-strong cocoon around yourself, to just direct your thoughts to continually creating your optimal mental environment to bring the best version of you, no matter what team environment that you are in.

We need to do all that we can in our power to help with creating the best team environment possible, so that individuals don't have to feel like they are rebelling against the team leadership just to stay process-driven, to bring their best A game possible, game in game out. I'm convinced that more and more teams should be open to allowing players to manage their own mental and physical preparation. Everyone is different; everyone comes to know what best suits them; just as a lot of cricket is individual, so should a lot of the preparation be too. Understanding this will create so many more high-performing team environments, higher-performing individuals and most importantly, much more enjoyable team environments too, so that we never lose the fun and joy that we get playing the game that we love.

Don’t date anybody if you only want positive results! Life is poker not chess

Abridged and adapted from Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

Suppose someone says, “I flipped a coin and it landed heads four times in a row. How likely is that to occur?”

It feels that should be a pretty easy question to answer. Once we do the maths on the probability of heads on four consecutive 50-50 flips, we can determine that would happen 6.25% of the time (0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0,.5).

The problem is that we came to this answer without knowing anything about the coin or the person flipping it. Is it a two-sided coin or three-sided or four? If it is two-sided, is it a two-headed coin? Even if the coin is two sided, is the coin weighted to land on heads more often than tails? Is the coin flipper a magician who is capable of influencing how the coin lands? This information is all incomplete, yet we answered the question as if we had examined the coin and knew everything about it.

Now if that person flipped the coin 10,000 times, giving us a sufficiently large sample size, we could figure out, with some certainty, whether the coin is fair. Four flips simply isn’t enough to determine much about the coin

We make this same mistake when we look for lessons in life’s results. Our lives are too short to collect enough data from our own experience to make it easy to dig down into decision quality from the small set of results we experience. If we buy a house, fix it up a little, and sell it three years later for 50% more than we paid. Does that mean we are smart at buying and selling property, or at fixing up houses? It could, but it could also mean there was a big upward trend in the market and buying almost any piece of property would have made just as much money. Bitcoin buyers may now wonder about the wisdom of their decisions.

The hazards of resulting

Take a moment to imagine your best decision or your worst decision. I’m willing to bet that your best decision preceded a good result and the worst decision preceded a bad result. This is a safe bet for me because we deduce an overly tight relationship between our decisions and the consequent results. 

There is an imperfect relationship between results and decision quality. I never seem to come across anyone who identifies a bad decision when they got lucky with the result, or a well reasoned decision that didn’t work out. We are uncomfortable with the idea that luck plays a significant role in our lives. We assume causation when there is only a correlation and tend to cherry-pick data to confirm the narrative we prefer.

Poker and decisions

Poker is a game that mimics human decision making. Every poker hand requires making at least one decision (to fold or to stay) and some hands can require up to twenty decisions. During a poker game players get in about thirty hands per hour. This means a poker player makes hundreds of decisions at breakneck speed with every hand having immediate financial consequences. 

It is a game of decision making with incomplete information. Valuable information remains hidden. There is also an element of luck in any outcome. You could make the best possible decision at every point and still lose the hand, because you don’t know what new cards will be dealt and revealed.

In addition, once the game is over, poker players must learn from that jumbled mass of decisions and outcomes, separating the luck from the skill, and guarding against using results to justify/criticise decisions made,

The quality of our lives is the sum of decision quality plus luck. Poker is a mirror to life and helps us recognise the mistakes we never spot because we win the hand anyway or the leeway to do everything right, still lose, and treat the losing result as proof that we made a mistake,

Decisions are bets on the future

Decisions aren’t ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ based on whether they turn out well on any particular iteration. An unwanted result doesn’t make our decision wrong if we had thought about the alternatives and probabilities in advance and made our decisions accordingly. 

Our world is structured to give us lots of opportunities to feel bad about being wrong if we want to measure ourselves by outcomes. Don’t fall in love or even date anybody if you want only positive results.

3 lessons on decision-making from a poker champion | Liv Boeree

 

Taliban is behind Kabul bombs

 

Ye khel kya hai…. by Javed Akhtar

Mere mukhaalif ne chaal chal di hai
Aur ab
Meri chaal ke intezaar mein hai
Magar main kab se
Safed khaanon
Siyaah khaanon mein rakkhe
Kaale safed mohron ko dekhta hoon
Main sochta hoon
Ye mohre kya hain

Agar main samjhoon
Ki ye jo mohre hain
Sirf lakdi ke hain khilone
To jeetna kya hai haarna kya
Na ye zaroori
Na vo aham hai
Agar khushi hai na jeetne ki
Na haarne ka bhi koi gham hai
To khel kya hai
Main sochta hoon
Jo khelna hai
To apne dil mein yaqeen kar lon
Ye mohre sach-much ke baadshah-o-vazeer
Sach-much ke hain piyaade
Aur in kea age hai
Dushmanon ki vo fauj
Rakhti hai jo mujh ko tabaah karne ke
Saare mansoobe
Sab iraade
Magar main aisa jo maan bhi loon
To sochta hoon
Yeh khel kab hai
Ye jang hai jis ko jeetna hai
Ye jang hai jis mein sab hai jaayaz
Koi ye kehta hai jaise mujh se
Ye jang bhi hai
Ye khel bhi hai
Ye jang hai par khiladiyon ki
Ye khel hai jang ki tarah ka
Main sochta hoon
Jo khel hai
Is mein ir tarah ka usool kyon hai
Ki koi mohra rah eke jaaye
Magar jo hai baadshah
Us par kabhi koi aanch bhi na aaye
Vazeer hi ko hai bas ijaazat
Ke jis taraf bhi vo chaahe jaaye

Main sochta hoon
Jo khel hai
Is mein is tarah ka usool kyon hai
Piyaada jab apne ghar se nikle
Palat ke vaapas na aane paaye
Main sochta hoon
Agar yahoo hai usool
To phir usool kya hai
Agar yahi hai ye khel
To phir ye khel kya hai
Main in savaalon se aane kab se ulajh raha hoon
Mere mukhalif ne chaal chal di hai
Aur ab meri chaal ke intezaar mein hai

The English translation is below:
What Game is It?

My opponent has made a move
And now
Awaits mine.
But for ages
I stare at the black and white pieces
That lie on white and black squares
And I think
What are these pieces?

Were I to assume
That these pieces
Are no more than wooden toys
Then what is a victory or a loss?
If in winnings there are no joys
Nor sorrows in losing
What is the game?
I think
If I must play
Then I must believe
That these pieces are indeed king and minister
Indeed these are foot soldiers
And arrayed before them
Is that enemy army
Which harbours all plans evil
All schemes sinister
To destroy me
But were I to believe this
Then is this a game any longer?
This is a war that must be won
A war in which all is fair
It is as if somebody explains:
This is a war
And a game as well
It is a war, but between players
A game between warriors
I think
If it is a game
Then why does it have a rule
That whether a foot solder stays or goes
The one who is king
Must always be protected?
That only the minster has the freedom
To move any which way?

I think
Why does this game
Have a rule
That once a foot solder leaves home
He can never return?
I think
If this is the rule
Then what is a rule?
If this is the game
Then what is the name of the game?
I have been wrestling for ages with these questions
But my opponent has made a move
And awaits mine.

Advice to cricketers: get a life

Having a pastime outside the game - say, writing a diary - can set you free from the tyranny of results and often make you a better player

Ed Smith

November 7, 2011

I'd like to tell you a story about two cricketers preparing for a new season. It's a true story, but it's also a parable about success and failure. 

The first player gives up almost everything outside cricket. There will be no distractions, he has told himself. He has decided that this will be his breakthrough season; everything else must be relegated to the status of an irrelevant distraction. Cricket is not just the main thing, it is the only thing. He becomes fitter than ever, he spends all his days in the nets and studying televised cricket matches; he even obsesses about the bowlers he will face in the first match, weeks before the game arrives. His quest is to become a machine-like player. He is so eager to learn that he soaks up every piece of advice he can find. Everyone praises his "professionalism".

The second player approaches the season in a more shambolic, human state. He moves house just before the season begins, and spends the first night in his new home without even a lightbulb to help him find his toothbrush. He breaks up with his girlfriend and finds for the first time that he is relying on the warmth of the team life, with its mischief and mickey-taking. Previously he has always been very self-contained; strangely, he is happy to find himself less so. Off the field, he is busy and engaged, having agreed to write a book. The arrival of the season - what season? - comes almost as a surprise, before he is quite in control of his life. He finds that uncertainty - am I ready or not? - energising rather than depressing. Above all, he knows that a life fully lived will make for a good book. He desperately wants to succeed, but he knows that even failure will have its uses.

The first player scores 415 first-class runs at an average of 23. The second player scores 1534 runs at 53. That doesn't prove anything, I hear you say. But what if I told you that they were the same player? It was me - first in 2000, when I dropped off the map as a promising player, then in 2003, when I scored seven hundreds in nine innings and played for England. I learnt my lesson the hard way. I had to feel alive to play cricket properly. I needed a life outside the game to play at my best. The player derives from the man; the man does not emerge from the player.

I am not the only cricketer to have had a purple patch while engaging with life beyond the boundary. Steve Waugh told me that writing a diary coincided with his best seasons. Peter Roebuck produced his best season (1702 runs with seven hundreds) in the year he wrote It Never Rains. Mark Wagh was one of only five Englishmen to score 1000 runs in the first division in 2008, while he was writing Pavilion to Crease… and Back.

And now, best of all, the Tasmania and Australia A opening batsman Ed Cowan has produced a happy ending to top the lot. He kept a diary of his 2010-11 season for Tasmania, now published as In the Firing Line. I'm not spoiling the ending (the scorecard is just a click away on ESPNcricinfo) when I let on that the last page of the book describes Tasmania winning the Shield final. Man of the Match? EJM Cowan, with 133. Both Cowan and his publishers would have settled for that narrative arc when they agreed the deal.

It's also a very good book - honest, analytical, perceptive and brave. You get to know the author and you come to like him. He is not falsely modest, but he looks for the good in others. In years to come, when he reopens his own book, he may find he was a little too generous - but that is all part of the book's warmth and spirit.

	What is it about writing a diary that helps cricketers play at their best? You might expect it to lead to over-analysis and too much self-absorption. Paradoxically, writing a diary has the opposite effect: it seems to set cricketers free. Instead of a burden, writing becomes an exorcism

He embraces the tensions that every reflective sportsman must face - between growing up and staying immature, between self-obsession and team-spiritedness, between honesty and denial, between clear-eyed analysis and the wilful illusion of mastery and control.

I couldn't resist a smile of recognition at one inconsistency. Cowan describes his admiration for Nassim Taleb's books on randomness and the power of forces outside our control. Then he goes out to bat in his lucky socks, having had a lucky haircut, eaten at his lucky Italian restaurant, drunk lucky coffee made for him by his wife (did he choose the wife on the grounds that she was lucky, one wonders!). Analytically Cowan understands randomness. In practice, he clings to superstition. Madness? Maybe. Perhaps we all need to be a little bit crazy, especially if you are an opening batsman.

What is it about writing a diary that helps cricketers play at their best? You might expect it to lead to over-analysis and too much self-absorption. Paradoxically, writing a diary has the opposite effect: it seems to set cricketers free. Instead of a burden, writing becomes an exorcism.

There is an even broader point. Every sportsman lives on the knife-edge of outcomes. He either wins or loses, on a daily basis. For the writer, it is very different. All experience, however uncomfortable, contributes to the well of his material. A writer is necessarily an alchemist, and no metal is too dull for him to turn into gold.

Here's a radical thought. Perhaps every sportsman should try to find the pastime that releases him from the tyranny of results. Writing will only work for very few. But almost every athlete, I suspect, would benefit from a complementary challenge of some kind. Michael Bevan told me that once you are a seasoned cricketer, poor form is almost never caused by technical failings. Instead, the root cause is always emotional. So you've got to sort out how you are feeling before the backswing can be corrected.

Professionalism, when it is properly understood, is having the discipline to attend to your whole personality as well as your game. They are, after all, inextricably intertwined - as Ed Cowan has shown us once again.

Former England, Kent and Middlesex batsman Ed Smith is a writer with the Times.