Paddy Upton is a Head Coach in Professional T20 cricket, Mental Coach to professional athletes, Executive Coach and Professor of Practice at Deakin University. Changing careers, following a second master’s degree in Business Coaching from Middlesex University (2003), and along with Gary Kirsten as Head Coach, Paddy was appointed Mental Conditioning and Strategic Leadership Coach of the Indian National team in 2008. Under Kirsten and Upton, the team attained ICC top test team ranking for the first time (2009) and went on to win the ICC World Cup in 2011. Following this success, Paddy was appointed Performance Director of the South Africa Cricket Team from 2011-2014 during which they became the first team to simultaneously hold the Offical ICC World Number 1 ranking in all three formats of the international game. Between 2012-2018, Upton has been Head Coach in 12 professional T20 Cricket seasons for five different teams across three tournaments including the Indian Premier League, Australian Big Bash League and the Pakistan Super League.

He recently published the book – The Barefoot Coach (Published by Westland Publications Pvt Ltd), which distils the key insights from working with some of the world’s leading cricketers. In this conversations we speak about how Paddy has thought about his journey, his perspectives on how the world of coaching is evolving over time, views on excellence, need for personal mastery along with professional mastery, why mental toughness is over-rated and more.

Published in September 2019.