A Comparative Analysis of Will to Win and Mental Toughness Among Various Levels of Cricketers According to Their Playing Experience

Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to generally cope better than your opponents with the many demands (e.g., competition, training, lifestyle) that are placed on you as a performer. Specifically, to be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident, resilient, and in control under pressure (Jones et al, 2002) Sport at the highest level is heavily characterised by a demand to excel at superior levels and perform under conditions that are considered extremely demanding and testing (Jones, Hanton, & Connaughton, 2007, p. 243). For this reason, psychological attributes such as Mental Toughness construct, are becoming commonly accepted as major contributors to overcoming adversity and achieving performance success. An additional form of pressure that athletes come into contact with stems from the desire for success and achieving a ‘win’. Athletes’ lives change drastically after they experience their first significant win: they experience additional demands and heightened expectations, and their free time becomes scarce with outside pressure from the media, sponsors, fans and the public, all wanting to be involved in their lives in some way (Kreiner-Phillips & Orlick, 1993). Numerous studies have demonstrated the impact of psychological factors “mental toughness” and “will to win”on sports performance.

The present study was conducted on male cricketers and based on the playing experience ,they were further divided into three groups. Purposive sampling was used for the study. The present study was conducted on male sportsmen and based on their playing experience ,they were further divided into two groups. The cricketers who had represented at least three universities were categorized into advanced players, the cricketers who had represented one university were categorized into intermediate players and further those who were in B.PEd first year and had no experience of playing universities were categorized into beginners. Purposive sampling was used for the study. The data was collected in Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education, Gwalior. 30 subjects were selected for the present study, which were further students selected for the present study was delimited to 18 – 28 years.

TOOLS:

Will to win and mental toughness questionnaires were used to measure the psychological constructs of will to win and mental toughness of cricketers of various levels.

Table 1 - Anova among beginners, intermediate and advanced levels of players with regard to Concentration ability. In table the F-value 4.117 is significant for confidence ability at 5% level because its p value (=.028) is less than .05. In table the F-value is significant for concentration ability at 5% level because its p value its p value (=.002) is less than .01. In table 1 the F-value .037 is insignificant at 5% level because its p value (=.963) is more than .05. In table 1 the F-value 8.211for reboundness is significant at 1% level because its p value (=.007) is less than .01. Thus the null hypothesis of no difference is rejected at 5% level hence the post hoc LSD test will be applied. Table 2- post-hoc test among beginners, intermediate and advanced levels of players with regard to Concentration ability. The post hoc LSD reveals that the advanced players are significantly better than intermediate and beginners with regard to concentration ability, confidence ability, handling pressure, reboundness, mental toughness(total). On the other hand the intermediate players are also significantly better than the beginners with regard to concentration ability ,confidence ability, handling pressure, reboundness, mental toughness(total).

In table 2, the F-value .472 is insignificant at 5% level because its p value (=.629) is more than .05. Thus the null hypothesis of no difference is fail to be rejected at 5% level hence the post hoc LSD test will not be applied. Hence it shows that there is no significant difference between the groups with regard to will to win.

Graph 1- depicting the mean values of the three groups on the mental toughness factor. Graph 2- depicting the mean values of the three groups on the will to win factor

GOLDBERG (1992 e 1998) described that ability to bounce back from setbacks and handle competitive pressures helps to improve the sports performance. CONNAUGHTON et al., (2008) pointed out that commitment to goal achievement. Rathore et al. (2009) wherein they found that the team game players were more mentally tough as compared to individual game players on the variable mental toughness. Mohammad et al. (2009) found that Malaysian professional football players are at excellent level in mental toughness. The results of table-7 shows that there is no significant difference between the groups with regard to motivation. It would be because of fact that the scores in motivation were high among the groups stressing the fact that the players of the various levels were equally motivated to play. The results of table-12 shows that there is no significant difference with regard to will to win among the groups PANT et al., (2013) within the limitation of the study it was concluded that there was no difference on will to win among individual and team game male players at university level and further pointed out that at given level that means they are almost same on this psychological attribute at the university level.

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