The Cricket Mentoring Podcast · Cricket Mentoring

Corey Rocchiccioli: 'PROCESS Over OUTCOME' - The Most Insightful Chat We've EVER Had! (Part 2)

·51 min·3 clips

He built a blue-brain and red-brain system to manage pressure after being dropped.

Corey Rocchiccioli starts with the blunt truth of spin bowling. Some days are messy. Some days are solid and still do not bring wickets, so he says the main job is to control the inner world. He uses a poor outing from his second year on contract as an example. That game began with 1 for 140 from 37 overs, and Travis Head had a field day. Rather than hiding from it, he treats that sort of day as part of the job. He then explains how he prepares before the match. The day before, he walks to where he expects to end his run-up and looks around so the ground is already familiar. He wants the stimulus of the place in his head before the pressure of the game arrives. Visualisation is part of that work. So is the heavier lifting he describes from when he was 17, 18, and 19, when he was not just bowling in the nets and was working hard to get as fit as he could while studying at university. He says that preparation has to cover the mental, technical, and physical sides at once. He also talks about the need to stay relaxed without drifting into overthinking. That balance matters because he does not want to play the game in his head before he gets there. To manage that, he and psychologist Tom Parker worked on a "curiosity dial." He turns it down 24 to 48 hours before a game and shifts his attention to something outside cricket, like a finance podcast. The point is not to stop caring. The point is to build enough trust in the work that he can stand at the top of his mark and simply bowl.

As heard by us

A spinner's lesson in preparation, trust, and staying steady when the wickets do not come.

This is less about the scoreboard than the state of mind behind it. The spinner reflects on a 1 for 140 spell from 37 overs, but the sharper detail is how he keeps himself ready anyway: walking the ground before the game, trusting the work, and staying calm enough to bowl to…

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