More cricket and more training is not the fastest route to cricket success.

It's easy to think so at first glance. We already know that it takes around 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of any cricket skill. The simple maths is that the more hours you log the faster you improve. That logic is sound but it's far from the whole story.

If you are a young player or coach of young players who want to be pros you may be reading this wondering if I am advocating training less to achieve more?

Balance in life: Balance in cricket

For me it's about finding a balance. Life is an exciting, complicated and varied thing. Nobody knows what will come your way tomorrow. It's because of the unknown that it's important we all gain a wide and varied experience beyond cricket.

For the young cricketer with a passionate desire to play at the highest level this could be keeping up with school studies, playing other sports, travelling and meeting new people. For an older club player it might be spending time with the family.

This has a series of benefits to your cricket:

• Dealing with pressure. It's hard to be phased by the pressures of the cricket field if you have felt other life pressures. To give an extreme example, the great fast bowler Harold Larwood literally worked down a mine as a boy risking his life every day.
• More rounded. The ability to think laterally (or make links between unlinked ideas) and creatively is a skill that cricketers, especially captains need. The only way to develop this skill is to learn some of the ideas outside of cricket and then apply them back to the game.
• Confidence. If you have other strings to your bow cricket success becomes less about defining who you are as a person. You can put it into perspective which allows you to bounce back from a bad game more quickly with confidence.

I know from personal experience that if you let cricket define who you are you tense up because it becomes so important in your mind. So to focus totally on cricket beyond anything else is self defeating.

What happens when you retire?

The other critical factor in finding balance is this: Nobody can play cricket forever. Most players are finished professionally by the age of 35. You might perhaps go on to your 40s or 50s in the club game. What happens after that?

Here in the UK, the Professional Cricketer's Association has a "Performance Lifestyle" program. Within this all players on professional county contracts have access to advice on playing while learning new skills outside the game. This is because the PCA knows you have to retire some time. So why not have a successful career when you do?

Many club players play at a high standard on the field and also enjoy well paid and interesting jobs too.

You may not be a professional and cricket is still something you do in your spare time. However, I know it's still possible to focus on cricket too much. I could still lead an unbalanced life playing 4-5 times a week and training most days. I know that this would do more harm than good: Making me too focused, less creative and more tensed up.

I remember someone I used to play club cricket with a few years ago. He was a very serious and intense man who opened the batting aiming to block his way to a decent but dull score. This particular year he got married and took a couple of weeks off in the summer to go on honeymoon. On his return he was, for a week at least, a transformed man. He blazed a quick-fire hundred with a couple of unheard of sixes. That's the power of getting the balance right.

If you can find your balance you will not only enjoy the game and improve your chances on the pitch, you will make your life away from cricket happier.

What are your experiences with your balance between cricket and other parts of your life? Do you see it as just a game and no more or is it the central focus of who you are? Leave a comment and let us know.

Image credit: Kleinz1