Abstract:
Psychological skills related to positional play are evident in sport. It is believed that specific
demands associated with playing position or role within a team sport require a unique set of
psychological skills. This study examined the relationship between psychological skills and
specialised role amongst 127 South African cricket players. The subjects were divided into 4
primary role groupings namely batsman (n=30), bowler (n=32), all-rounder (n=61) and wicket
keeper (n=4). The wicket keeper group’s results were excluded from the analysis due to an
underrepresentation of wicketkeepers in the sample. Psychological skills were assessed by means
of the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory-28 (Smith et al., 1995) and Bull’s Mental Skills
Questionnaire (Bull et al., 1996). One-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) indicated no
significant differences between the psychological skills of the various role groupings. However,
there were tendencies for all-rounders to be more psychologically skilled than bowlers and
batsmen. It was concluded that there is no distinctive psychological profile for classifying cricket
players into performing specialised roles in the sport.
