Phil Tufnell, Phil Edmonds, Ravi Shastri, Maninder Singh, Mark Richardson, Simon Kerrigan, Fred Swarbrook, Chris Jordan are all reputed professional cricketers from different nations. However, they are all connected by one element of the sport. Each of them have had suffered from a condition called yips.
Yips is a bowler-exclusive condition. In medicine, the formal term for this condition is called focal dystonia. It is characterized by a spasm of the wrist that arises due to psychological and neurological reasons. In cricket, wrist spinners and pace bowlers are most commonly affected.
Yips are often confused with the term choking. These are two entirely different conditions. Choking is when a team or its players (as a group or individually) underperform not because of any medical condition, but simply because of being overwhelmed by the situation. Yips is due to loss of control over muscles that are involved in fine motor abilities like gripping and releasing the cork ball.
Yips are usually identified during the match. A bowler is said to suffer from it when they constantly bowl wayward lines resulting in the batting side getting a lot of runs. Additionally, yips might be felt by the players themselves if they feel discomfort while releasing the ball in their routine bowling action.
Research on yips among cricketers has revealed that one of the foremost measures to help a player with yips is by not making a mockery of their bowling action. Mental therapies and physiotherapy exercises have helped players in the past. Experts also suggest these bowlers to try a different grip pattern or action. Some other mental coaches suggest that bowlers can practice in the nets by first against familiar batters and then progress by bowling to unfamiliar batters as a psychological training method. The use of pharmacological drugs to cure this condition is usually a last resort.
In some cases (like that of Chris Jordan), the yips were cured in the match itself. In some others, yips can be career-threatening (Simon Kerrigan). This, yips in cricket is a condition that needs to be addressed immediately upon diagnosis.
