Alastair Cook Quotes

You have to forget you are playing against your idol, because the guy on the other side also wants to play better than you and beat you. I don't think you should allow yourself to think like this when you go against any player.

They always say baseball is 90 percent mental, 10 percent physical, whatever that saying is. I don't even think I know it. But this game is already a game of failure. Going into it not feeling good, battling whatever injuries, tests you even more.

You go through mental preparation the night before the game and prepare for moments of trauma in a game when it happens.

It happens with every batsman; sometimes, despite feeling good in the nets, you don't score runs in the match.

Once you graduate from the Under-19 level, no one really gives you technical advice. It is all about making mental adjustments.

After a big defeat, any player feels affected - it is about how long he needs to recover.

Usually if you haven't figured out how you want to play tennis yourself, it is hard to accept the failures of playing five sets.

I learn how to put myself in situations at practice that cause me to zone in on what I'm trying to accomplish at meets. I try to make my practice surrounding as close to competition pressure to focus on what I need to do on the big stage.

Because you can't change results - I would change my losses, and I would definitely like to see on-court coaching.

Some days you really don't feel like racing and you have a great performance, some days you feel great and you have a mediocre performance.

I used a lot of sports psychologists when I was younger... sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn't.

Most of my best games were when I felt crap - I could hardly move on the morning of the World Cup semi-final in 1990 - but there's a thing called adrenaline that gets you through.

When you don't play those big matches for a few years, it's tough to play back-to-back after that.

There's no private side to acting, which some people find hard. I've drawn inspiration from athletes. They manage to be themselves under the pressure of public scrutiny, and they have it much harder - they have to perform with people yelling at them.

As cricketers we fail all the time. You score a hundred every now and again but you get out between nought and 20 far more often. If you get 50, you feel bad because you should have got a hundred. Even if you get a hundred, you feel you should have got 150. So you're always failing.

I went from being one of the best players, batting .550, to not being able to do it mentally, hitting .200. I thought I was mentally tough. But I couldn't hit the ball.

When I set my eyes on the gold at the world championships, I was able to maintain that focus that whole day. That's what I aim to do in Rio - my focus is gold, so I can keep in that good state; I can't get too complacent. I can't relax; I can't be content. I need to be 100 per cent switched on.

People might think it's all about getting up for a game but it's often the opposite.

That competitive nature comes out when I feel like I'm playing bad and when things aren't going right.

In the last two World Cups, I realised that when you put a lot of pressure on yourself, it does not work.

If I get annoyed because I'm not in the headlines and don't do well in training, I won't do well if I have to go in. I've to be prepared because the World Cup isn't easy.

It's taken me a long, long time to figure out how to deal with negativity, because it used to really upset me. I was always that girl that, if I was performing in the club and there was one person not paying attention or not liking me, the whole club could be packed with people loving me, but I'd be obsessed with that one person.

You grow up always thinking you'd be in pressure situations all the time, and that's why I put pressure on myself in practice, so when those situations come in the game I feel I can be successful.

Every professional athlete has fear, doubts and negative thoughts. But people expect you to just ignore them and move forward.

And, honestly, tennis is such a tough sport as it is, it's only you on court, so you've got to deal with a lot of different pressures and expectations and when things aren't going well.