Brain training exercises

Forget the fact that South Africa became the seventh team to come back from a one-nil deficit to win a three match test series.

That was the easy part. Graeme Smith's team were a lot further behind than one-nil when they went to Durban for the second test.

Villified after the 123-run defeat at the Wanderers and castigated for the decision to rest so many key players from the preceding round of SuperSport Series matches despite not playing first-class cricket for over five months, defeat at Kingsmead - or Newlands, for that matter - might have had catastrophic consequences for the careers of several senior players. Not to mention the effect it would have had on the country's supporters.

Though it may sound dramatic in the warm afterglow of a magnificent, against-all-odds triumph, it is worth remembering that the line between triumph and disaster has probably never been finer in South Africa's cricketing history.

Whereas Shaun Pollock represented the epitome of allround skill needed to bounce back from the verge of the abyss, and Smith showed the bare, white-knuckled determination to do so, Jacques Kallis and Ashwell Prince displayed the mental strength needed when the series was at its most precariously placed.

Coming together at 132-4 with another 79 needed for victory, they never blinked once, let alone floundered or buckled under the intensity of what was at stake. Coincidence? Perhaps, but they share something in common. Or rather, someone. As does Gary Kirsten.

In the last year of Kirsten's international career he scored five test centuries and averaged 72. He began that year by making an appointment with an old school friend and a one-time colleague in the national team, a man who used to specialise in ensuring that men like Kirsten were as physically strong and fit as they could possible be. Kirsten worked with his old mate in his new capacity, as a 'brain trainer', throughout his final year in national colours.

Inspired by what Kirsten achieved, Kallis made an appointment to see if the big muscle in his head could be conditioned as well as the others in his body. The result, almost immediately, was five centuries in five consecutive tests.

Intrigued and inspired by what Kallis had achieved, Prince sought the 'secret' and made an appointment with Kirsten's old buddy from Rondebosch Boys' High and began work training the grey matter in his head last season. He finished 2006 as his country's leading test run scorer, better even than Kallis.

It's all very well for coaches and players to say "concentrate" when they do something silly, but that's no different to saying "time the ball".

If you don't know what that means, it's useless.

Paddy Upton used to be the national team's biokineticist under the Hansie Cronje-Bob Woolmer regime. He was instrumental in making the team the fittest in the world. But it wasn't enough for him. He could see that mental fitness was the ingredient which made the difference between the good players and the great ones, and the good teams and the great ones.

So he resigned from his position and dedicated the next six years of his life studying a subject with which he was both passionate and obsessed. He believed a cricketer's brain could be trained as surely and as successfully as his biceps, quadriceps and all his other 'ceps. Kirsten, Kallis and Prince would appear to be reasonable evidence that Upton's theory was correct.

Might it be worth a few other national players talking to him? Just a thought.