In Cricket
In cricket, the yips applies mostly to bowlers and seems predominantly to affect left-arm spinners. The affliction seems to involve bowlers having trouble releasing the ball at the end of their action. A notable recent example of this was Keith Medlycott, who was forced to abandon the sport, having reached the England squad. Another player, Gavin Hamilton, having played a Test as an all-rounder, largely abandoned his right-arm medium pace bowling, following the yips. He did not make another Test appearance, but has enjoyed a One Day International career for Scotland, predominantly as a specialist batsman. Collins Obuya was one of the stars of Kenya's 2003 World Cup - he gained a contract with Warwickshire on the back of it - but soon after his game fell apart when he developed the yips.
As reported in a 2011 interview in the Wellcome Trust's educational magazine Big Picture, England Cricket Team sports psychologist Dr Mark Bawden suffered from the yips himself as a teenager. He completed a PhD on the topic and has published a paper on the yips in the Journal of Sports Science.
Read more about this topic: Yips
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