At The Death

Welcome to At The Death, a sport blog written by a chronic over-thinker with a love of cricket and football. My name is Nat. I’m a recent graduate with a skill for writing and I wanted to create something to not only showcase these skills, but also as a place to talk about my passion for sport.

The main content of the blog will be explorations of mentality with sport, focusing in football and cricket. Mentality is an important part of any sport and I find these aspects interesting. I will also be posting more personal articles talking about my own opinions on things like current events, teams or individual athletes.

 

I have had mental struggles, especially surrounding health and injury. They stopped me from getting involved in the sports I love and left me with anxiety.

I was a goalkeeper in a typical Sunday league team and suffered injuries. I broke a finger twice in the space of two years. The second time it happened, the tendon in said finger ruptured leaving me unable to bend the end of the finger.

These events really affected me mentally. I kept playing sport for a while, but I became worried about sustaining any further injuries to the point where a slight knock would cause me to mentally spiral, believing that the worst had happened.

The Covid lockdown massively affected my mental health, but it gave me a great opportunity to fix it. Through this journey of self-improvement, I have gained a greater understanding about the capabilities of the mind.  This has given me a greater appreciation and interest in the mental battles athletes go through.

 

Why the name ‘At The Death’? Taking inspiration from cricket, the limited overs formats at least, the final few overs of an innings is referred to as ‘death overs’. During this period the batting side are only concerned with scoring runs, targeting unguarded areas of the field and allowing technique to go out of the window in favour of unorthodox power batting, attempting to score as many boundaries as possible in a short space of time. Bowling during these overs requires a great deal of mental strength. The bowler must believe in their ability and stick to their plans, even if they end up conceding a lot of runs.

To cut a long explanation short, it’s a name which takes inspiration from the mental toughness on display during periods of huge pressure. Of course, other sports, such as football, have similar moments where mental strength is tested to the extreme; this was simply the example I chose to reference.

 

If any of this interests you, please feel free to get involved. Responses to articles or opinion pieces are more than welcome and if you have any questions, you can contact me via the contact form below.