England used to be notorious for taking their foot off the pedal, or rather off their opponent's throat. Going 1-0 up in a Test was the cue for their limpest cricket, viz against New Zealand at Auckland earlier this year, against Pakistan at Old Trafford in 2001, against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge in 2000. This summer, however, when they were 1-0 up against Sri Lanka, they went to Old Trafford and exhibited a quality which was new to the team, ramming home their advantage to win the series 2-0. There was a return to their old ways in the NatWest Series final at Lord's when, having made 325, they had India at 145 for 5. Beguiled perhaps by their success against a team that had failed to win their nine previous one-day finals, they were confounded by mental toughness of a different kind from Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif. It was a performance without recent parallel from India's one-day team, especially abroad. But it was England who came out stronger for the first Test at Lord's and regained their grip.

Mental toughness has been identified increasingly as the difference between winning and losing at the highest level. Everybody in international cricket is as physically fit as a flea; almost everybody has a good technique because opponents analyse videos of it; almost everybody has sufficient talent, although you might be scraping the barrel in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, and widespread experience of playing abroad. The obvious conclusion is that something inside the head makes the ultimate difference – along with the effect of great, match-winning cricketers if you are lucky enough to have one.

To discover what mental toughness precisely is, and how to create it, Dr Steve Bull undertook a survey of the 15 England cricketers considered to have been the mentally toughest over the past two decades. Bull has been the sports psychologist for the England team since 1997 in a low-profile – not a "hey, I can cure you" – way and he is also chief psychologist for the British Olympic Association. Frustrated by the lack of precision about such terms as "mental toughness", "character", "bottle" and one or two words based on "dog", which were always being bandied about dressing rooms, he decided to analyse and pin down this elixir, with the aid of funding by Sport England. Then he could recommend to the ECB how best to structure its development programmes for young cricketers.

The 15 players were selected by 20 ECB coaches and 81 accredited coaches randomly chosen at a conference. This mixture of judges helps to explain the conspicuous absence of David Gower: those who knew him were greatly outnumbered by those who did not and had seen only the TV image. In the overall opinion of these 101 judges Gower was well down the list of the mentally toughest, not even close to the elite 15. But in the opinion of those 15 Gower was one of their number. He does, after all, average more than any of them in Test cricket except Geoffrey Boycott.

Twelve of the 15 were directly interviewed and Bull, in the course of his researches which amount to 135,000 words as written up, identified four main forms of mental toughness. One is what he has called "Olympic rower's mindset", exemplified by Sir Steve Redgrave in his ability to keep on training and performing until he drops or blacks out. Bull, under his Hippocratic oath, cannot speak of current cases but, when Matthew Hoggard, Andrew Flintoff and Alex Tudor kept going at Old Trafford and dismissed Sri Lanka twice in two days on the flattest of pitches, it was probably a culmination of their training to achieve this kind of toughness.

The second sort of mental toughness which Bull identified is "the final putt mindset", the one which sinks an eight-foot putt to win the Masters or coolly scores six runs off the last over to win with a wicket to spare. It is a completely different sort of toughness from the first. Graham Gooch flogged himself in a one-day international in Port-of-Spain to score 129 not out off 126 balls in tropical heat but the winning run off the final ball came only through a leg bye which could just as easily have seen Gooch lbw. As an opening batsman Gooch was untrained in finishing off run-chases. On the other hand Michael Bevan is an arch-finisher, a classic exemplar of "final putt mindset" but not someone you would select ahead of Gooch to face the West Indian quicks of old on a dodgy pitch.

The third kind identified by Bull is "the Atherton-Donald" mindset: determination, never-say-die attitude, the willingness to confront an opponent and enjoy the battle, as these two antagonists did at Trent Bridge in 1998. Nasser Hussain enjoys the same situation; so did Robin Smith and, in a more insouciant way, Gower. But one has to wonder about Graeme Hick and Andy Caddick, notable performers absent from the elite list. And how would Mark Ramprakash have reacted? Would he have become too wound up in the confrontation?

The fourth kind is "the Schumacher mindset", the willingness to take risks in order to win. It is not required in cricket as frequently as the others: Dean Jones put his life on the line in scoring a double-hundred in Madras at its hottest, ending up in hospital and on a drip. Of the 15 on the list Darren Gough suggests himself as the most willing risk-taker: anything for glory, even the risk of likely failure.

In all these types Bull identified a strong link between mental and physical toughness. Mike Atherton, not a Mr Universe, said that he felt himself to be at his mentally toughest when he was in his best (or least worst) physical condition. Muscles do not equal mental strength but the body has to be in good enough shape for it not to impinge upon the mind, to allow it to focus on mental matters. You cannot concentrate when knackered.

The paramount importance of childhood experience and parental involvement has already been established in conventional, mainstream psychology. In cricket, Bull found, they are all the more influential. Hyping up players in the dressing room half an hour before the start (even if that were the best thing to do) is relatively insignificant; better by far to seek out players with the right background and character, as the child is the father of the man. There is no carbon copy, however. "Darren Gough and Angus Fraser come from completely different backgrounds and have completely different characters but you still want to have both of them in your team, one to bowl 10 overs and take 4 for 50, the other to bowl 10 overs and take 0 for 18," says Bull. "You need both types."

Bull and his supporting team developed a model in the shape of a pyramid with four tiers. The bottom and biggest tier, the base for a successful cricketer, is "a winning environment". Alone of the four strata it is not affected by external pressure. The components as he has identified them are parental influence (like Hussain being pushed by his father Joe); childhood background (like the sibling rivalry which drove Angus Fraser to keep up with Alistair who got all the early recognition); the need to "earn" success; opportunities to survive early setbacks; and exposure to foreign cricket at a formative stage to get out of the comfort zone. An example he gives here is Alec Stewart spending nine winters in Perth before reaching the England team. The range of experience is important too, so that the pyramid has a broad 3-D base.

The second tier of the pyramid is "a winning character". This comprises resilient confidence, independence, self-reflection (including self-awareness and the ability to analyse one's own performance) and competitiveness with oneself as well as others. At this point my mind's eye drifts to the Trelawney Estate, the best part of a hundred miles outside Harare, to a cricket net especially set up in the garden among the bungalows for the young son of the house, Graeme Hick, who seems to have everything it takes to become a great batsman. But, if we look closely, the African servants in the net are bowling to him – to him, or even for him, but certainly not at him. When he goes down the road to Banket Junior school and starts scoring his first hundreds, everything again is almost too easy. Many of the components of future success are there but not the range of experience and the "opportunities to survive early setbacks". There was no "resilient confidence" either when he was sent to board at Prince Edward's in Harare and at first was as lonely as a normal boy would be, not like an egocentric superstar obsessed with getting to the top; or when he was taken to England for the 1983 World Cup and dreaded being chosen. He played in familiar, friendly, environments in Zimbabwe, at Worcestershire and Northern Districts in New Zealand, until he went to Australia to play in the Sheffield Shield at 24, a bit late for a formative influence.

The third tier, grafted on later and subject to external pressure, consists of "winning attitude". In other words, you believe in quality preparation, making the most of your ability and setting yourself challenging targets. The top tier is "match-winning thinking". If you possess all these attributes you will think clearly, make the correct decision, honestly self-appraise, overcome self-doubt and maintain the right perspective. You might need only six off the last over to win the World Cup but to do it you will probably need more than a couple of top-edges.

The growing problem, as the treadmill becomes ever faster, is to maintain mental toughness once it has been achieved. In other sports you train to peak – for the Olympics, for the Open, for the Six Nations. If you are an England cricketer there is no such luck. This year the players who are in both teams have gone from one-day series in India and New Zealand to a Test series in New Zealand to the home Test series against Sri Lanka to the NatWest one-day tri-series to the Test series against India and so on until the World Cup in February. "Periodization" is the psycho term for training over a cycle so that you peak when required; it is not one that has entered the vocabulary of the ECB's itinerary makers. And we should probably be looking here for an explanation of the absence of great England players in the last 10 years, for why our batsmen have Test averages in the 30s not 40s and why our bowlers have Test averages in the late 20s at best.

Mental tiredness, in place of toughness, manifests itself in the short and long term. The tired player does not peak for a particular competition, or for each ball, according to Bull. He switches on a bit when he is on strike and switches off a bit when he is off strike. The crisp divisions become blurred. Herein may lie the explanation for Marcus Trescothick's diminishing returns in a series. When mentally tired, his judgement of which ball to play and which to leave becomes blurred, he plays a speculative half-drive and is caught behind. It was so much easier for amateurs of the past to switch on, for Gubby Allen to leave his desk at Debenhams for a week and bowl flat-out for England, for Douglas Jardine to switch on completely when he batted against Australia. In the 1980s people tittered at sports psychology and thought you were a sissy to touch it. More mundanely, it is a way of coping with an ever-increasing schedule.

A week before the World Cup a conference will be held in Cape Town where psychologists from the main Test-playing countries will compare the results of their researches into the leading, toughest, cricketers. We might then find out if there is something lacking in all the 15 English exemplars. As Bull says: "English culture doesn't stop you becoming the next Steve Waugh but it probably doesn't help you either"; and he cites Nick Faldo and Redgrave as sportsmen who have developed the winning toughness in spite of our system.

"As a society we are uncomfortable with triumphalism and an obsession with winning. It would be interesting to see how that influences the psyche of young sportsmen." If England are to become No. 1, ahead of Australia, it is not only our domestic cricket structure that will need reforming but also our nice, middle-class attitudes.

Scyld Berry is cricket correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph

Click here to subscribe to Wisden Cricket Monthly

The September 2002 edition of Wisden Cricket Monthly is on sale at all good newsagents in the UK and Ireland, priced £3.25

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd