Rudi Valentine Webster (born 10 June 1939) is a Barbadian

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er, medical doctor, sports psychologist and diplomat.

Cricket career

Webster was born in

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, Saint Philip, Barbados. Between 1961 and 1968 he appeared in 70

first-class matches First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

as a right-handed batsman and right-arm fast-medium bowler, representing Scotland, Warwickshire and

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. He played his first first-class match for Scotland in 1961, while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Playing against the Marylebone Cricket Club, he took 11 wickets in the match, including a wicket with the first ball he bowled in each innings. In 1963, playing for Warwickshire after his medical studies finished for the year, Webster took 77 wickets in 17 matches in the County Championship at an average of 17.44, forming the fieriest opening attack in the competition with another student, Roger Edmonds. In his first Championship match in 1964, after completing his medical studies, he took 7 for 6 and 5 for 52 in Warwickshire's victory over Yorkshire. In late 1966 Webster moved to New Zealand, taking up a two-year appointment in the radiology department at Dunedin Hospital. He played two seasons of Plunket Shield cricket for Otago, taking 23 wickets in seven first-class matches at an average of 24.00. He played no further first-class cricket.

Later career

Webster managed the West Indian team that played World Series Cricket between 1977 and 1979. From the late 1970s to the mid-1980s he was a successful team motivator with the premiership teams

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and

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in the Victorian Football League. He later worked with international cricket teams as a sports psychologist. He has written two books on the subject: ''Winning Ways: In Search of Your Best Performance'' (1985) and ''Think Like a Champion'' (2013). He served as Barbados's

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from 1991 to 1995. In March 2012, the Indian Premier League franchise Kolkata Knight Riders appointed Webster as their mental skills coach for the fifth season of the IPL. They won the tournament.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Webster, Rudi 1939 births Living people Cricketers from Saint Philip, Barbados Barbadian cricketers Warwickshire cricketers Otago cricketers Scotland cricketers Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Medical School Sports psychologists Ambassadors of Barbados to the United States