For me personally, it was a tremendous opportunity last summer to be asked to work with the England cricket captain Michael Vaughan on a one-to-one basis.

A keen golfer himself, we had the chance to develop some ideas that he felt were of benefit to him in achieving what seemed the impossible, regaining the Ashes that had been in the hands of the Australians for the best part of twenty years.

Just as in the game of golf, so much of the time when you are playing cricket, you are not actually playing cricket!

After each ball bowled there is a considerable period of downtime or as I like to call it the 'In Between' time.

The concentration required involves being able to switch off and then switch back on again as a new ball is bowled.

For a top-class player, it is not so much switching on concentration that is the issue, but the sublime skill of being able to switch off.

Picture if you will an egg timer full of concentration as you go out to play. Unfortunately the egg timer only contains about two hours of intense focus and concentration. Poor decisions and elementary mistakes take place when the egg timer is drained. In golf and cricket our technique suffers when the timer is empty.

We spend so much of our time on the golf course (and in life) inside of our heads thinking.

Thinking, thinking, thinking we have become thinking machines! !

If you can imagine that your brain has three modes or switches, the THINKING MODE, the DOING MODE and the EMOTIONAL MODE. It is absolutely imperative in cricket when a ball is being hurled at you at speeds in excess of 90mph that you are in the DOING mode, which is instinctive, and your THINKING mind is quiet.

How many of you are ruining your game by being too much into the thinking mode by being overly analytical? Then you turn to the emotional mode when things don't turn out as planned and you blow your stack!

Vaughan worked on some specific techniques to switch off both on the field and after the game was over. Just consider how this skill, if developed, could help you in your golf and perhaps more importantly in your life in general.

Next time you play, just imagine that during the 85 per cent of the time that you are not playing golf you are going to pay particular attention to your actual experience.

What do you do in this time? How do you walk? Where are you looking? What are you thinking about?

Do you notice the scenery? The company that you are with? How do you react after a poor shot?

Many of the players that I work with are filmed and then later shown what they are up to on the golf course when they are not actually hitting shots. Most people are appalled at what they see and their standard response is, "I am not usually like that!"

When you become aware of what you are actually doing then you have the opportunity to change and if you do you might not win the Ashes but your whole golfing experience could be completely different.