Don Draper, the brooding lead character in the award-winning TV show Mad Men, is quite the chap to look up to: Handsome, intelligent, masculine.

But what’s that got to do with being a cricketer?

He may be a fictional character from a bygone era, but he has more to do with bowling, batting and fielding than you might think.

Here are two things you can learn about being an exceptional player from everyone’s favourite womanising advertising genius:

Imagine standing at the top of your mark on a warm summer day. The batsman is ready, the keeper and slips are way back in the distance.

You are the one with the ball; all the batsman can do is respond to what you deliver. What happens next is up to you.

But it’s how you view the batsman that is all important to your personality (and success) as a bowler.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but most cricket teams fail to reach their expectations. Yours included.

It’s not because you want to fail, or that the side is untalented. It’s certainly not bad luck. These are handy excuses. Ways we use to justify our failure after the event.

“Cricketing excellence lies beyond physical talent. Sporting success emanates from the whole person within – his temperament, emotional make-up, thinking ability and even prejudices.” Frank Tyson once wrote.

Sometimes we use shorthand and call this ‘character’ or ‘attitude’.  I like to think of it as the way you see the world, at least in cricketing terms.

Cricket club selection meetings always bring up controversy.

In every club that puts out more than one team, there is bound to be the fringe player who splits the committee. In my club this is especially true of young players looking to break into the first XI.

I’ve sat on selection committee all this season and one of the qualifiers for whether a player is given a chance or not is if he ‘looks like a first team player’.

This is a guest article from Laurie Ward

In modern cricket-speak, losing captains are quick to say “we will take the positives from this game” when they have been played off the park.

But do they really? Or is it just fluff for the media?

In reality the team and coach will look at what went wrong in the cold light of day and then work hard to put things right.