Unsurprisingly, Michael Yardy has the makings of a fine coach

NICK FRIEND: Yardy was a fine batsman at county level and a resourceful left-arm spinner for England. Since retiring, he has thrown himself into sports psychology and coaching. He opens up on battling depression and the mental side of the game

Perhaps, it should come as no surprise that Michael Yardy is fascinating company.

“People often ask whether touring affected me,” he says at one stage, conversation having moved to international cricket’s present diet of bio-secure bubbles and how he might have fared. It was during the 2011 World Cup that Yardy flew home from India, suffering from clinical depression. He never played for England again.

“I think there was an element of it,” he reflects, “but I look at it as a balance: there is part of me as a human that maybe doesn’t like being away from my family, which is normal.

“But probably my mistake was that I put so much emphasis on the idea that if I was away from my family, then I had to be performing. Otherwise, what’s the point? If it’s not going well and I’m away, then you start to put so much pressure on the result: ‘You have to perform well. You should be doing this.’

“If I look back now, that’s probably where I was at. I was away from my family and I didn’t necessarily like being away from my family, so the way I was going to deal with that was by putting so much emphasis on having to do well, but then you put yourself in a really tough position. You might then perform well and go: ‘Okay, that worked.’ But long-term, you can’t keep on doing that.”

Over the course of a 40-minute phone call, there are several moments like this, where Yardy’s introspection takes over and you listen on in a kind of captivated awe.

We very rarely touch on his own playing career, only really to mark out Matt Prior, Kevin Pietersen and Mushtaq Ahmed as among the best of his teammates when it came to separating sport from everything else.

“What I’ve explained there is not an even perspective,” he says, pointing back to his state of mind at the time of his World Cup nadir. “I think of someone like Paul Collingwood; he was unbelievable at how he dealt with his highs and his lows.

“In my experience of him, nothing he did would change whether he was performing well or not: ‘I’m going to go and play golf today.’ And if he’d got two noughts, it wouldn’t make a difference to him. That’s what he was going to do and that’s why he had such a successful career.

“I think there are a lot of players like that. It comes back down to identity – the ability to go: ‘You know what, I’ve had a couple of bad days,’ but the best way to deal with it is to take the mind off it and do something else instead of sitting in a hotel room and beating yourself up.”

^{Michael Yardy played a key role in England's 2010 World T20 win}

He has carried that belief into coaching; he is Kent’s batting coach – a job he has earned via similar positions with Sussex, England Young Lions, Sydney Thunder and New South Wales.

And initially, that is the plan for this interview: a discussion of that pathway and the transition from player to coach, as well as everything in between.

But Yardy has an undergraduate degree in sports psychology and is working towards a masters, a route he initially sought out as he looked to understand his own encounter with mental illness. And so, this becomes far more a discussion about those studies and how they have informed his coaching in the time since his retirement in 2015.

“I would say it’s more important to keep perspective than actually to start tinkering with your technique,” he explains, knowing now what he does. “I’d say that, 100 per cent. This is going to seem quite strange, but sometimes it’s more important when you haven’t scored runs in a game to have a beer afterwards to celebrate a win or someone’s success, rather than celebrating your own hundred with a beer and then not performing in the next game, beating yourself up about it and going to the gym.

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“Or vice versa: if you want to go to the gym, go to the gym every day. But keep the consistency in what you do – don’t let that be affected by your performance.

“It’s a bit like social media, isn’t it? Well, if you’re okay to be on social media, then I think you should be comfortable to accept that people will criticise you and say how great you are. You have to take both, or don’t be on it. That’s how I look at it. You have to be consistent in your behaviour – whether your performances are how you want them or not. That will get you consistency over time.”

As Sussex captain, Yardy was a doughty stalwart of the county game. With a shuffling, idiosyncratic setup, he became a churner of 23 first-class centuries. For his country, he was a left-arm spinner, valued for his unusual skillset as a white-ball cricketer.

A year before his final international appearance in Chennai, he was a fundamental part of England’s World T20 win in the Caribbean. Throughout it all – a professional career spanning 528 games – he remained a highly respected figure, revered for his quality as a man.

"If I was a young player going to spend three weeks with Virat Kohli, I wouldn't be bombarding him with technical questions - I'd be bombarding him with questions about his mindset"

When he first left the game, he did so with the intention of becoming a sports psychologist “because it would open up the opportunity to work in all sports”. And that thought process has never really changed. Put simply, he loves professional sport – the companionship, yes, but also far more than that. After all, he points out, he can refuel on camaraderie with a five-a-side kickabout or in club cricket.

“I think it’s the passion,” he suggests when pressed on what it is that makes him tick. “I imagine it’s the same with music. It’s something you’ve worked for, where people have worked all their life and have loved it and have done it since the age of 10. It’s not just a job – there’s so much personal investment in it.

“I think it’s a real balance; I think there are a lot of us out there, where unfortunately it becomes people’s identity and they judge themselves as a person on how they perform in their sport, which is not ideal.

“I think I went through that, but I think a number of sportspeople go through it. You can think people are judging you as a person because you got nought, and that’s not a great place to be. Or you bowl badly and people say that you’re not this or you’re not that. At my lowest ebb, I think that’s what I felt.

“When I came back from the World Cup, people made some comments about me coming back and that really hurt. With all due respect to myself, I was a bits-and-pieces player for England – in and out of the team. Sometimes, it was easy for me to feel in my mind – and I’m not saying this is what people were doing – that people didn’t value me as much.

“I’m not saying that people did that but, when you are depressed and you’re feeling in a low place, you can feel like that and like people are judging you. That’s also the illness talking.”

^{Yardy in County Championship action for Sussex}

Coaching didn’t so much come as a calling; rather, he fell into it and has been learning ever since. “You go in there as a young coach with a lot of ideas and a lot of things you think are right or wrong. But what I’ve found is that it’s better to take the time to get to know people and understand how they work and what their motivations are and what makes them tick and what they’ve gone through.

“Technique is very black and white, isn’t it? If you put your head in the right position or you lead with your front arm with your bowling and keep your head skill, it’s very clear. It’s like: ‘Well, you didn’t do this and you didn’t do that. Your head fell over, your front arm fell away.’ It’s so easy to go down that route.

”But actually, why did it happen? Was he not clear in his plans? Was he thinking about what had happened previously? Was he worried about losing the game? Was he worried about what people were thinking? Was he worried about not getting it right and what the outcome would be? There are so many questions to it that I think will ultimately impact on how someone gets it right or wrong.”

His studies have helped – “I think there’s so much to it, there’s so much scope to make people better,” he says. Initially, he wonders whether he subconsciously avoided delving into the game’s psychological side when talking to his protégés – the idea that his job as a batting coach was to hand out technical and tactical advice because “that’s what in the short-term gets results”, that it “wasn’t necessarily my role” to explore its mental features.

Looking back now, more established in the job, he knows – and thinks – differently: “It was my role, but it wasn’t fundamentally my role as other people see it,” he clarifies. “Long-term, if guys want to be the best in the world and really want to get the best out of themselves, they have to understand and create the right mental game and mindset.

“I think we’re so programmed to think about technique but actually there are very little improvements you can make to your technique when you’re 21 or 22 – you can make slight improvements, but I think you can make massive gains in terms of how your mindset is or how you think about the game. I think that’s where the big difference is to make.”

"It sounds really simple and an easy thing to say, but when you get so caught up in winning and being desperate to do well, you forget that actually today just might not be your day"

Those who followed Yardy’s playing career more closely through his England exploits might look at him as an unlikely batting coach: a stance that was far from classical and, ultimately, picked on account of his work with the ball.

That quirk, though – of reaching the top with his secondary skill – has become a strength, and his mannerisms at the crease are a constant reminder that no two players are the same. “The one thing I’d like to think as a coach I’d take from my playing is that I don’t ever take anything off the table, if that makes sense,” he explains. “I’d never think there was one right or wrong way of batting – that’s just through my own experiences.”

His game, more than most, offered a nod to the value of resourcefulness – take his left-arm darts, for example, perfected to home in on the stumps and cramp batsmen for room in limited-over cricket. And with the bat, his calling card was an exaggerated trigger that took him right across the crease.

“I think it’s really dangerous to see the best player in the world and go: ‘Right, I’m going to bat like him,’” he continues.

“Actually, if I had the opportunity to spend time with the best player in the world, I’d be asking how they tactically go about their game, how they think about the game, how they adapt, how they see different situations, how they go about setting up against different bowlers.

“If I was a young player going to spend three weeks with Virat Kohli, that’s what I’d be doing. I wouldn’t be bombarding him with technical questions. I’d bombard him with questions about his mindset and how he goes about his day-to-day life and how he thinks about the game. That would be my advice to any young player.

“I think it’s important to understand how you think, because you can always adapt how you think.”

All this comes with the benefit of personal experience and soul-searching. What if he’d understood a decade ago what sports psychology has taught him since?

"You can think people are judging you as a person because you got nought, and that's not a great place to be. At my lowest ebb, I think that's what I felt"

He laughs: “I look back now and think: ‘God, there are times when I really complicated stuff.’ I think the one thing I’ve learnt from studying is that actually, you’ve got to become comfortable with the outcome, even though the outcome will sometimes not be right. Sometimes, you’re not going to do well.

“But we hold onto the outcome so much that you’re so desperate to do well, and you can’t even accept that it might not go right. That’s when you get so analytical and it becomes a bit too formulaic. People think: ‘If I do this, this and this, I’ll get this.’ But cricket’s not like that – and life’s not like that either, is it?

“You need a slight process and a few things in place, but you have to also accept that things don’t always go right. And if they don’t go right, you don’t have to go through a really extensive analytical debrief of what’s gone wrong. Yes, go through what’s happened and what maybe you did well and what you could have done better, but don’t break it down too much.”

Because the more pieces that analysis is broken into, the greater the puzzle that needs putting back together and the longer that process then takes. As Yardy looks at it, in periods of struggle, it is why those at the top turn around their form fastest.

“The best players go through a very simple process. They’re able to ditch stuff a lot quicker, where other players hang onto things,” he believes. Or, put another way, it is why those at the peak of the game seemingly spend less time out of nick.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” he adds, “but the best players I played with, I always felt they were good technically and had the fundamentals. But I just reckon that became the case because they were so clear in their thinking, and that then allowed them to show off their skills more.

“That was my experience: those players just thought about the game a little bit better and quicker, and they were able to make better decisions than people who weren’t thinking clearly.

^{Yardy (left) during the 2011 World Cup, where he would play his final game for England}

“It comes back to people having an even perspective,” he says, returning to a central theme. “Some people accept that some of the game’s about success and some of it’s about failure.

“It’s about being able to say: ‘Okay, it wasn’t my day today.’ It sounds really simple and an easy thing to say, but I think when you get so caught up in winning and being desperate to do well, you forget that although you have a certain amount of control over what’s going to happen today, actually today just might not be your day. And you have to live with that.”

With that thought in mind, the Olympics are of particular interest to Yardy – he returns often to their point of difference. Not necessarily the events themselves, but the mentality behind such a cutthroat pinnacle: a four-year plan, three places at the podium, one opportunity to get it right. “It’s amazing to be able to keep that mindset when it is all for that one event,” he says.

Nail it and reap the rewards – a medal to show for a lifetime of hard work and dreams. “But if it doesn’t work or someone’s slightly better than you, you have to wait four more years to have another go. I think there’s something absolutely, completely unique about that.

“In cricket, you get out and you can have another go in a few days’ time. You watch any other sport; yes, there are big games, but there’s another big game just around the corner.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like for an Olympian, who works all that time for that one event. A lot of people will watch it on TV and define that person by that one race or whatever it is.”

Yardy’s own experiences have taught him to know better than that, however. All of which make him a captivating proposition as a young coach.

Only 40 years of age, this time should still count as the beginning of his journey, even if his future ambitions are broad and extend beyond working solely with batsmen: the draw of sports psychology continues to hover in the background. “I still think that in time, I hope I’ll be working in sport, but not necessarily in cricket,” he muses.

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It is easy to imagine a world in the near future where England might come calling in some capacity; he is highly regarded, having already worked with the women’s side and at youth level, while his experiences as a player and his studies since mean he has far too much to give not to be utilised.

“I’d really be upset if a player said I didn’t show much empathy,” he says of his manner as a coach, having built up a valuable sense of compassion through his playing career.

“Of course, there would be moments when I’d be frustrated with players if they could have done more in terms of their preparation or something around it, but there aren’t too many people when they cross that white line who are not going out there and trying their absolute hardest.

“Yes, players will make stupid decisions or stupid mistakes. But there is no one who gets more frustrated than the player himself.

“People are trying. It just comes across in different ways: people can look very languid and like they’re not trying. Other people show frustration, get angry and lose their cool. That’s another way of doing it.

“I’d like to think I show empathy towards players and have an understanding. But then, it’s for me to understand how to get them better and performing at their best.”

The more he talks, the more you’d back him to achieve that goal. Unsurprisingly, Michael Yardy sounds like a fine coach.

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