Simplicity is good, but you can over-simplify and that's a barrier to your best performance.

Take the example of the advice to "just watch the ball". This gives you the freedom to stop worrying about technique and play on your instincts. It's wise words. Yet for some it can be a reduction too far because many things can go wrong and you ignore them because you are focusing just on the ball.

Naturally, nobody wants a cluttered mind while batting. On the other hand, nobody wants to be tense because the keep getting out LBW after "falling over" every game.

Cricket might be a simple game at it's heart, but it's a complex one in action. That's why it's important to know the difference between simplicity and reduction if you want to play better cricket.

Imagine a cricketer who understands her game well. She is not perfect but she knows her weaknesses and strengths across technique, mental skills and tactical-nous. She plays to her strengths and plays down her weaknesses. She has simplified her game to make it easy when out in the middle to stay focused, but the simplicity is based on a complex set of rules that only she fully understands. When she explains it to someone else it comes out as "I don't think, I just bowl".

That simplicity is born from deep complex knowledge developed over time.

Now think of another player who has heard the advice "don't think, just bowl" but has not done the same work. She can't understand why it takes 3 overs to get in rhythm and why she keeps dropping one short per over. She tries to keep it simple but the advice is not simple, it's reductive: It reduces the problem to a crude form of reality that can't be properly applied.

That simplicity is born from trying to listen to the advice of people with knowledge, and a desire to help, but no true understanding of the player.

I think you can guess which player is in a stronger position.

Which player are you: simple or reductive?