A bad start can feel like your season is ruined barely after it has begun.

And sure, your dreams of scoring 1000 runs while taking 50 wickets are on the slide, there's plenty of time to recover and finish strong. Yet, we often forget that imperfect is not the same as disastrous.

The problem comes about when a player has put in a lot of hard work in the winter, only to find failure in the heat of competition. He assumes everything he has done has been a waste of time. That new backswing is even worse than the old one!

It's perfectly natural to decide to write off the whole season, or even write off playing cricket in the face of evidence that you are not up to scratch. I have seen many fall by the wayside after a weak early season.

But that line of thinking puts too much emphasis on being perfect from the first ball.

Perfection is impossible no matter how hard you have worked in the winter. You can't possibly account for all factors, both controllable (like your technique) and uncontrollable (like conditions and opposition strength).

So, take a run of bad play in the early season as a challenge to be overcome rather than proof you are a has been or a never was. Review what happened and decide what you can do to overcome the issue.

Create a feedback loop.

Sometimes you will realise that the failure was nothing to do with you. Sometimes you will find an adjustment you need to make to training or tactics that you can take to the next match. There's always something at the root of the issue. Good players are good at spotting and handling these things.

But above all, remember that a bad start is not the death of your season.

Trophies are won at the end of the year. The best players are adaptable to the challenges that a chaotic summer brings, not perfect cricket machines.