BCCI recently hired mental conditioning expert Paddy Upton to help the Indian players prepare for the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia later this year.
Upton was previously associated with the Indian team from 2008 to 2011. He was part of the Gary Kirsten-led support staff and played a key role in helping India win the ODI World Cup in 2011 at home.
Recalling his first stint with the Indian side, Upton narrated an incident before the 2011 World Cup win, in which the management thought that the team wasn’t ready to win the mega event.
"It was on the morning of the Asia Cup final, 10 months before the 2011 World Cup final. We were preparing to play Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka. The question that Gary Kirsten asked was, if this is a World Cup final, are we ready as a team to go out and win? Gary and I, along with Eric Simmons (bowling consultant), all of us said, 'No, we aren't ready to win a World Cup final'," Upton said in a video uploaded by cricket.com/tv YouTube channel.
"The thinking was that because of the amount of the home pressure, and when we extrapolated that, it was very clear that playing the final at Wankhede, which is one of the noisiest stadiums, and Sachin Tendulkar's last World Cup game, there would be higher pressure than what any of those players had played under or would play under in the rest of their lives."
"We had to prepare for the highest pressure situations that any player would have played under."
Upton further revealed that after that incident in all the team meetings, the support staff would ensure that they talked about India playing the 2011 World Cup final at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.
"Every single team meeting, we would start with, 'When we play the final in Mumbai' or 'When we play the final on the 2nd of April'. So that by the time we got to that place, it had been on the players' minds over and over."
"Going into that final, we probably experienced less pressure than what most teams have experienced going into final because we were so mentally prepared for that moment."
"Half the battle is won if you can arrive at a moment that big and not be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the situation. A fair degree of winning that game had already been done before we arrived."
Team India had defeated Sri Lanka by six wickets to lift the coveted 2011 World Cup title. Former opener Gautam Gambhir and then captain MS Dhoni were the heroes in the final as they scored 97 and 91* respectively while chasing Sri Lanka’s stiff target of 275.
