In a post-match interview with Ravi Shastri, Sehwag once said that he decided to hit bad balls but then some of his teammates said that they were good balls though he thought they were bad balls. Now that’s a tough one because the definition of what is to be considered a good ball got a whole new meaning. When future editions of Wisden magazine come out, they will define a good length ball and then put an asterisk down below that says, “Does not apply to Sehwag.”
What sums up Viru is a line Anil Kumble once said, “Most people first settle down and then hit a six, but Sehwag first hits a six and then settles down.”
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In The Zone With Rahul Dravid
“I need you to give me some attention.”
I’m sure, like me, most men have heard this line a million times from their wives or girlfriends. Being someone with an attention deficit greater than our country’s fiscal deficit, I suffered immensely because of this. It’s not easy to give something which you do not possess. Though I was never clinically diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) I still suffer from it and am unable to focus on any task for more than 3 minutes.
My student days are a blur, thanks to my concentration or rather the lack of it! How that phase flew by, I have no idea whatsoever. My trauma can be gauged from the fact that even after 14 years since my last exam as a student, I still have nightmares that I have a Chemistry exam pending from my first year BSc and if I don’t clear it I will have to be reborn as a tripod or Bunsen burner in my next life.
When you scored not-so-respectable marks as a kid everyone around you would insist that you needed to focus and concentrate harder on your studies. At that age one had no idea what “concentration” was because no one explained this concept to us. So what did concentration mean and could it be developed? Was it staring at your book a little longer? Most kids in India were unable to interpret it right. They thought concentrating was another word for memorising and therefore the kid who memorised geometry theorems the best was considered the brightest in class. Interestingly this process was called “by-hearting” or “learning by heart”. The fact that India is the cardiac capital of the world is perhaps not because of our love for samosas and aloo tikki but possibly because of the years we spent “by-hearting” which ought to have added immense pressure on the heart.
Over the years I have come to realise that the ability to focus on a particular task one moment at a time is the only philosophy worth following in life, though the toughest to execute. Most relationships fail because one can’t focus on the finer aspects. If men were to give the same quantum of attention while shopping with their wives or praising their looks as they did when watching Sachin bat, they would never get into trouble. Unfortunately most men are busy worrying about EBITDA margins instead of concentrating on dinner conversations with their wives and that’s where the problem arises.
During my youth, I was always enamoured by the women I’d see at discotheques though it’s a different story that I invariably went home alone. The reason, I later figured out was my inability to take a call on which girl to focus on. Even during my corporate job I realised that guys who could engage longer in negotiations were the ones who came out trumps and that was a direct result of their ability to concentrate. I, on the other hand, was more interested in quickly finishing the task at hand and knocking it off my checklist, which to me was more enjoyable than doing my job. With the proliferation of technology, concentration levels are at an all-time low, which is visible in any meeting where most people are mentally never in the meeting as they are busy with their devices.
“Why don’t you try meditation?,” was the most common advice I received. But the problem is that everytime I close my eyes, I feel sleepy. I even tried out Art of Living classes but got distracted by the heavy breathing of the beautiful women around. In places like Bandra and Juhu, some of these classes can be expensive and to pay that kind of money to learn how to breathe which I had been doing for free all my life, just wasn’t in tune with my middle-class Maharashtrian upbringing. If I were to trace the reason of my mediocrity as a batsman, I guess it would boil down to the inability of my mind to focus and that resulted in throwing my wicket away after having scored 30 odd runs.
In all my experiences watching cricket I have realised that great batsmen have a tremendous ability to be “in the moment”. In sporting parlance it is also called “The Zone” and is best described as one in which your mind is in a state of harmony and where every stroke is played out as one would imagine. While every batsman aspires to try and enter this zone, these gates are not open all the time.
Of all the batsmen that I have watched, the one who possibly spent a considerable amount of his life in this zone was Rahul Dravid. He epitomised the theory of one ball at a time. This was amply demonstrated on the cricket field especially on that disastrous tour of England in 2011. On a tour where nothing was going right, he pushed his concentration to the limits defying a top rated English bowling side, scoring three back to back hundreds against the likes of Broad, Bresnan, Finn and Anderson. That is why when I saw Trott and Swann leave the 2013 Ashes midway I was quite shocked, as in my opinion the pressure on an Indian player on an overseas tour is relatively higher than what an English player would face.
The Zen Approach
In one of the matches I analysed Rahul’s innings and realised something very significant. He was playing 4 fast bowlers on a lively wicket who between them bowled about 10 overs in an hour. Many of the deliveries were bowled outside the stumps, with a few short balls peppered in. Essentially they bowled about 5 playable overs in an entire hour. If you consider that half of them were played by the non-striker, Rahul got to play only 2-3 overs or about 15 balls in an entire hour. This meant that he had to focus for hours to survive and score. Staying on the pitch for such long periods required immense concentration, will power and the ability to resist any temptation that could cost him his wicket. Rahul always mentions that while Sachin and Viru dominated the bowlers, he bored them into submission. In a way Rahul was very much like Muhammad Ali who with his unusual “rope-a-dope” strategy would tire his opponent before knocking him out.
Today, even if one has to sit for 5 minutes without doing anything we immediately start BBM-ing or fidgeting with our phones. No wonder Rahul is not a fan of Twitter and social media. Times however are now changing. I think in the future, batsmen will carry their phones so that they can tweet while at the non-striker’s end and hope to start trending by the time they get out.
The English still love their Test cricket and a conventional approach to the game. Dravid, with his high levels of concentration fits their definition of a good, serious bloke. But while Rahul may come across as someone serious on the field, he’s just the opposite off it; always ready with a witty remark in whatever conversation we have had. I once told him that he had the same expression while batting as a math student who had failed in his final exams. He calmly replied, “I sweat a lot and a sweaty man always looks serious.” It dawned on me over many discussions that the fact that he was continuously pushing himself into that zone made him extremely wired and serious. It’s very simple, when you are focussing on something you have a serious expression on your face and not a funny one. So when Amitabh Bachchan looked into Rekha’s eyes the expression was intense and not jovial. That’s why humourous men do not win favour with the beautiful women because of the tall, dark, intense guys popularised by cinema.
My jersey number is 19 not because of any superstition but because it is the best way to remember my wife’s birthday. — Rahul Dravid
Rahul is now a total family man and his wife Vijeta has also started practising again. Medicine, not cricket. Most great batsmen have had great relationships with their wives because they have mastered the ability to give their 100 percent in every aspect of their lives. One moment at a time! Rahul and Sachin were smart because they ensured that they married doctors who took it upon themselves to manage all aspects of the family and kids, whi
ch helped them concentrate on their careers. Good concentration also results in good decisions. But as good human beings post retirement, I have heard that Rahul is helping out in the kitchen while Sachin is looking after the kids.
The clincher was when Rahul was asked about his choice of jersey number at an event. He quickly replied, “The number is 19 not because of any superstition but because it is the best way to remember my wife’s birthday.” No wonder he is such a great batsman and husband.
“The mind has the ability to focus on only one thing at a time. You have to decide whether it is the past, present or the future,” said Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of our times making a point about focus and being in the moment, in an event I was attending in Pattaya.
I was floored by her clarity of thought and instantly became her fan as she took us through her glorious tennis journey. Every middle-class Indian in the 80s hated Martina because she was the reason they had to see Chris Evert-Lloyd lose day in and day out. It’s a different issue that most men in their hearts actually wanted Gabriela Sabatini to win. My grandfather and me used to watch women’s tennis for hours without knowing the score unless it was Martina. But the Martina I saw was elegant, insightful and emotional. She said in her speech, “Chris and me are very close now and the nice thing is that we can both be happy at the same time because when we were playing it could be only one of us.”
Being a performer at the same event, I got to spend some time with her back stage. I asked her to explain to me the concept of “being in the moment” because I have had a chat on this issue with a lot of sportsmen. She said the toughest thing to achieve is the theory of one ball at a time. One has to try and master it during practice sessions and only then would you be able to achieve being in the zone in the big games. There are moments in a game when you can hear the sound of the plane go by, screaming spectators and that’s the time you know things are not going too well. It’s the ability to effectively block these out which could be the difference between victory and defeat.
There are two kinds of people, those who can concentrate on one thing at a time and those who can concentrate on various things, more or less with equal intensity. That is why I believe that women will rule the world because of their ability to multi-task. My mother can negotiate with the subjiwali with a lot of intensity and at the same time advise my sister on marital issues. In a game like cricket, only a person who can do this well can become a good captain. I have always been of the opinion that the best option is to get a non-playing female captain for the Indian cricket team so she will not only be able to handle Srinivasan but also motivate the Indian fast bowlers to bowl faster by 10 kmph.
“A captain has to be a good multi-tasker and the more organised one’s mind is, the better it is to lead a side,” said Ricky Ponting in an after-dinner interview. He went on to add that conditioning and thinking about the game needs to happen before the match begins. Therefore, he makes a checklist the night before which helps him cover all the areas he needs to think of before the game. Once he has thought through them, he is on auto-pilot on the field because if he doesn’t do that, then his mind will remain cluttered and he will not be able to focus on his batting. At the time of batting he doesn’t think of anything but the ball and the important thing is that he delivers. He says that the walk from the dressing room to the pitch is when you distill your thoughts to the point of extreme concentration while facing the ball.
Greg Chappell also mentions that you have 3 levels of concentration. The first level is when you are inside the dressing room. You are aware of what’s happening, it’s not active involvement. The second level is when you go out to bat — the walk where you think specifically about conditions, field placements, and who the bowler is. The third level is when you are facing the ball, that’s when the whole world shuts up.
Once your focus is on the bowler, you zero in on his face and try to get all the information possible. Apparently bowlers reveal a lot of infomation on their faces. Abdul Qadir carried a grin on his face when he bowled a wrong-un. Studying the bowler’s body language also helps. I have heard that Malcolm Marshall actually pulled his pants up as an indicator before bowling a snorter.
Sachin once mentioned about how he cracked Murali’s action when no one could pick the Doosra. After studying his action carefully, he went up to team members and said, “FOCUS on nothing except his thumb, if you see his thumb go down it’s the doosra, if not it’s an off-spin.” It’s amazing how such minute observations can have such a dramatic impact on the end results.
The mind has the ability to focus on only one thing at a time. You have to decide whether it is the past, present or the future. — Martina Navratilova
Another aspect of concentration which intrigues me was a batsman’s ability to actually find a gap by remembering the field settings and then playing the ball through the fielders. A ball that was thrown at him at 150 kmph! The commentators always mention how the batsmen found beautiful gaps and that irritated the hell out of me because as a mediocre cricketer I never reached a stage in my batting where I could actually place the ball in a certain direction. So I once gathered the courage to ask Ricky Ponting if batsmen really found the gaps or was it merely a matter of luck. I knew it was a brave question but what I did not expect was a life philosophy that was one of the most impactful one I have heard in a long time. He said, “Ya mate, batting is an an instinct you hone over years of practice and that enables you to reach a level of expertise where you see the field placements in your mind. A good batsman imprints the fielders in the sub-conscious, but an excellent batsman imprints the gaps. There was a time I used to do the former and hit to the fielders but the moment I started to do the latter I found the gaps.” I was stunned by this analogy. When I mentioned this philosophy to my friend Rajiv Bajaj, the MD of Bajaj Auto he immediately added his business perspective to the same and said, “Exactly! In business, if you focus on the competitors you’ll start behaving like them. But if you focus on the gaps in the market you’ll become a champion company.” That day I felt like Peter Drucker and Philip Kotler rolled into one.
The Art of Visualisation
As a part of concentration development and training of the mind one of the things that batsmen talk about is visualisation. It is based on the principle that if you can actually visualise future events in your mind, you are in a better position to face the situation when it occurs. So whether proposing to a girl or a client presentation one should make a habit of doing this. Both Ricky and Sachin have mentioned that they play the innings in their head the night before the match starts. Only when I heard this from the masters did I realise why Sachin talks about having sleepless nights before the game. It’s because of the game that is being played in the mind. Nasser Hussain once said that he could actually visualise himself on a particular ground against Australia and the ball whizzing past him. He had reached a level of expertise that he could even visualise the Australians sledging at him. Now that’s some expertise!
My inference is simple, essentially a batsman scores one century on the ground and one in the mind. So now calculate the number of centuries Sachin and Ponting have actually scored. The key to this is also the ability to translate the century in the mind into reality which is not easy for lesser mortals.
My logical question to many of the greats, including Rahul, was that while it’s easy to say that one should concentrate, how does a player actually implement it. That’s when he told me the importance of the “routine”. The things that a batsman or a player does before he takes strike, like adjusting his pads, his gold chain, helmet, his walk to the square leg position, twitching of the nose are all the actions needed to come to a moment of acute concentration which is the key to focus. It’s amazing I never knew all the imitations that I actually did for a living were part of the mental process. I wish I knew this earlier as I would have possibly done all of these before my Math paper.
The moral of the story is that, when your fa
ther wanted you to wake up at 6 am and plan your day, you wouldn’t have guessed that this was actually a mechanism to build what was called Concentration and Focus. I now understand why Ivan Lendl rubbed saw dust on his grip and bounced the ball a number of times before his service. He was mentally setting himself up for the point ahead. Likewise when Rafa Nadal, pulls his undies and bounces the hell out of a ball before his serve — they are all part of his rituals which help him focus. So no matter how uncomfortable you may feel as a viewer watching him pull out his undies, it does seem to work for him.
According to Rahul, the key to concentration is breathing. He did this between deliveries. Two or three deep breaths were all it took him to ascertain how tense he was thus helping him calm down. A deep breath’s job was to bring him back to his poised state.
A lot of batting is in the subconscious and that’s why he says the subconscious can only be trained by practice, practice and more practice. It’s the quality and not the quantity of practice that matters. There is no point practising the same thing for an hour. It’s better to practise different things in the same hour so that your subconscious gets used to the variety and can react accordingly in match situations. That’s why they tell players to play in different conditions to prepare the subconscious to replicate the experience effectively.
That made a lot of sense. Just driving randomly for 10,000 hours won’t make you an F1 driver. High quality focussed training over that period of time could make you one. That’s why he says that teaching someone to bat is very difficult. The ability to judge the line and length cannot be taught. So the simplest thing is to watch the ball all the time and that would increase the probability of picking the line and length a little early. It’s the same principle of “are you watching the bird’s eye” theory that Dronacharya propagated to Arjuna.
How Sachin Destroyed My Life: but gave me an All Access Pass to the world of Cricket Page 4