He has worked primarily with young cricketers at Taunton School and in Somerset’s academy, along with his former Durham team-mate – and fellow South African – David Bedingham: “It’s not something that’s necessarily bringing in chunks of money, but it’s getting me to where I want to be from a transitional point of view once I decide to leave the game.”Dickson believes that conversations he had with James Franklin, the former New Zealand allrounder who he worked with at Durham, helped to change his mindset and unlock a new gear for him as a T20 player. “[We worked] on how you see situations. He harped on a lot on having that intent to get a boundary in your first six balls, and that’s transformed my career.”I was always happy to be 10 off 10… You’re never really going to impact the game [from there]. Him saying that just freed me up a little bit, and it then got me to realise how good I am within my first six balls and how potent I can be – and also, to realise that bowlers bowl their loosest balls to you in your first six balls… It’s just having that self-belief to go out and do that.”The nice thing is being able to lean on my own experience… I can’t show that X-factor if I’m going to fear the outcome, so being able to do what I did on Saturday and then speak to my clients around having that expectation within themselves is quite nice. I can lean on that nicely… ‘This is me putting it into practice.'”Dickson top-scored for Somerset in both the semi-final and the final when they won the Blast two years ago; last year, he dragged them from 7 for 3 to a successful chase of 154 against Surrey before a duck in their defeat to Gloucestershire in the final. He has become a reliable performer on county cricket’s biggest stage, and is targeting more of the same.So what would Sean Dickson, the sports psychologist, say to help Sean Dickson, the cricketer, prepare for Saturday? “He would probably harp on [about] staying as present as you can. I’ve got loads of tools in my toolbox for situations when the pressure’s high, so [I’ll be] relying on those, and also just being true to yourself and understanding who you are in the moment.”If your intuition says you need to play a certain shot or you need to take down a certain bowler and back yourself to do something different, then trust that… You’d rather walk off the field knowing you gave it a shot than walk off knowing you didn’t even give it an attempt in the first place. The most important thing is just to stay as humble and as present as you possibly can.”It has been a “bittersweet” few days for Dickson since his match-winning innings in the quarter-final, with his imminent departure slowly sinking in. But come Saturday, his only focus will be on capping his three years at Somerset with a second Blast title: “That would be the icing on top of the cake… That’d be the best ending for me.”

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