Ottis Gibson draws on ‘MLK’, Nelson Mandela and Michael Jordan to motivate his Yorkshire players

The victory at Nottinghamshire was a long time coming and ended a run of nine defeats in 12 games dating back to last August, one in which idle thoughts of dispatching misfiring players might conceivably have crossed the mind of the former West Indies fast bowler.

Gibson preached the same message after the eight-run triumph at Trent Bridge in the T20 Blast “because we needed to understand why we won that game”.

In a nutshell, it was because Yorkshire batted, bowled and fielded better than their opponents or, as the coaches like to say, “executed their plans” superiorly.

Far from entertaining notions of eliminating underperforming individuals, however, during what had developed into an on-field crisis that had rather crept up on the club such has been the dominant nature of the off-field disturbances, Gibson has been getting into their minds with inspirational words from well-known figures, both sporting and political.

As Yorkshire prepared to face Lancashire in the first Roses match of the season at Headingley on Thursday, when his team will receive an immediate test of their new-found confidence against a particularly strong side featuring many internationals, Gibson said he had been drawing on inspirational quotes from such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Michael Jordan, the American basketball legend.

“I research different things,” said Gibson in a window into his modus operandi. “I looked at Michael Jordan and a lot of his quotes. A couple came out in the dugout (at Trent Bridge) about having a positive mindset and so on, and the amount of shots that he took and how he’d miss more than he’d score but he kept going because he knew that people were relying on him.

“He’s probably the greatest sportsman of all-time as far as I’m concerned. What he’s done in the game, how he transcended the game, how he changed the game; he’s been retired for 30 years and he’s still being talked about, and I’ve just watched the new movie about him, Air, which is fantastic.”

For the record, what Jordan said was this: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Gibson continued: “I’m old now, so I have to find different ways to motivate the lads. Sometimes I go and look at different quotes from different people, whether it be Martin Luther King or whether it be Nelson Mandela, or whoever - people that motivated me. I go and look at quotes from them. I might say 10 things and only one makes a difference, but that’s all it takes.”

What do the players make of it all?

“The players laugh! I start off and then they think, ‘Where is he going now?’ I pause for a minute and I look around at them and (Matty) Revis, especially, is the first one that laughs. And then I say, ‘Michael Jordan said…’, or whatever.

“We have a WhatsApp group and I’ll put some quote from (basketball player) Kobe Bryant on the WhatsApp group, or something like that, and I'll just try and keep spirits high in the team.”

The tactic worked at Trent Bridge where Yorkshire showed what they are capable of against a traditionally strong T20 side. It has been a rough time lately not only for the Yorkshire players but also for Gibson himself.

“I’m a never-too-high, never-too-low guy,” he said. “Of course, that win means a lot to me, it means a lot to the players, and I’m sure that our fans who turned up would have enjoyed it, too, but it’s gone now and we’ve got to think about the Lancashire game.”

Pressed on the impact that the winless run has had on him personally, Gibson said: “It is hard for the coach, but the coach is long-lived, he’s got a lot of experience of winning and losing, and he knows not to take it too personally and he turns up everyday and works as hard as possible to try to build confidence.

“Then, when you go home, you just sit in your house and you have a very strong rum…

“But, look, it’s been a difficult period; there’s no two ways about that, but how many times have I said, ‘We're not far away, we’re actually not playing badly’? If we were playing badly, I’d say so, but when we’re losing games - one ball here, one ball there, it’s different.

“The lads were fantastic on Tuesday and that, hopefully, will be the catalyst, the injection that we need going forward, so we look forward to Lancashire now and if we can put in more performances like that, we’ll win more games.”