Are modern cricketers more open to experimentation?

V Ramnarayan in Cricinfo


It was a cool December evening in the early 1980s. Flute maestro Hariprasad Chourasia was about to enter the iconic Kalakshetra auditorium in Chennai to perform in a concert when a young enthusiast asked him, "Will you please play the raga Hemant for me?" His reply was quick - and surprising, coming as it did from a leading classical musician of several years' standing. He said, "Sorry, I haven't learnt the raga yet." Some years later, I had a similar conversation with TV Vasan, a percussionist who played the mridangam, a south Indian drum. He spoke about a conversation he once had with the doyen of Carnatic music, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar. Vasan, who had watched Iyengar practise a particular song some 500 times during the month, was eager to hear it in concert on the morrow. That was not to be. "I haven't mastered it," said the singer.

More recently I read about another old master's advice to young musicians. Semmangudi Srinivasier, grand old patriarch of Carnatic music, said to his disciples: "Practise every song at least a thousand times before you take it to the concert platform." MS Subbulakshmi, perhaps the best known south Indian voice, was famous for doing just that. She knew every lyric of every song backwards, regardless of language or complexity, and still had butterflies in her stomach before every concert. The rigour extended even to studio recordings, where she could well have resorted to external aids with nobody the wiser for it.

The situation is different today. Without criticising or condemning modern musicians, it can be said truthfully of most that they do not match the older generation in their preparation for performances. Many look into their iPads or cell phones while performing on stage, possibly because their song repertoires are far larger than those of their gurus were. It is not unusual for a song learnt in the morning to debut in the evening.

What has all this to do with cricket? It is that I find some parallels between the two. For instance, I remember watching Erapalli Prasanna, during his last Ranji Trophy match, I think, bowl in the nets a delivery that looked similar to the doosra of a later era. Bowling in an adjacent net, and fascinated by the new variation, I asked him how come I never saw the delivery in a match. "Haven't mastered it," was his reply.

In my experience, experiments were frowned upon in matches. You were sure to get a tongue-lashing from your seniors if you tried something novel in a game. Mumtaz Hussain, a successful left-arm spinner in first-class cricket, might have been even more successful if he had continued to bowl the chinaman and the googly as he had done in his university days, instead of turning into an orthodox spinner and serving his side in a risk-free manner. Though Bhagwath Chandrasekhar and Anil Kumble were unorthodox wrist spinners, much quicker than the norm, neither added variations - like a slower ball - to his armoury before he was well into his career. Similarly, most international bowlers were reluctant to try reverse swing until long after the Pakistanis unfurled it.

The second decade of this century has been a watershed in this regard, with both bowlers and batsmen increasingly ready to take risks. To the reverse sweep has been added the switch hit, and the likes of offspinner R Ashwin (among those whose actions have not been questioned) have been attempting numerous variations, including the legbreak, whose destructive potential is as yet unknown.

I shudder to think what choice French my captain might have resorted to had I resorted to such experimentation in my day. As a result of such a mindset - which most of my contemporaries shared - I was so cautious that once, after hitting Tamil Nadu batsman P Mukund's off stump in a Ranji Trophy match (by sheer fluke) with a delivery I bowled from round the wicket, gripping the ball with my palm, I never tried the variation in all 15 years of cricket that followed. However, lest I be misunderstood to be an advocate of the current trend of launching untested or insufficiently tested products, let me stress that I am indeed an admirer of the perfectionism of the old guard.

What is talent in sport?

Is it just natural ability or the consistency that comes from perseverance?

Harsha Bhogle

June 17, 2011




My father believed - as was the norm with respectable middle-class families in the years gone by - it was important that his children were good at mathematics. If your child was good at mathematics, you had imparted the right education and fulfilled one of your primary duties as a parent.

He often quoted to us what his friend, a respected professor of the subject, used to say: "There should be no problem that you encounter in an examination for the first time." It meant you had to work so hard that you had, conceivably, attempted and vanquished every situation that could find its way into an exam paper. It begs the question: if you did achieve 150 out of 150 in an exam (which my wife very nearly did once, much to my awe), was it because you were extraordinarily intuitive or because you had worked harder than the others, so that you didn't "encounter any problem in an exam" for the first time?

In other words, is getting a "centum" (a peculiarly Tam Bram expression) a matter of genius or a matter of perseverance? It is an issue that many intelligent authors around the world have been debating for a while, and one that is at the heart of sport. Would anybody who solved a certain number of sums get full marks? Would two people, each of whom put in 10,000 hours (Malcolm Gladwell's threshold for achievement) produce identical results? Or are some people innately gifted, allowing them to cross that threshold sooner?

We pose that question a great deal in cricket when we argue about talent. Players who play certain shots - the perfectly balanced on-drive for example - are labelled "talented" and put into a separate category. They acquire a halo, and in a near-equal situation they tend to get picked first. "Talent" becomes this key they flash to gain entry. And yet it is worth asking what talent really is.

Is it the ability to play the on-drive or, more critically, the ability to play that on-drive consistently? It is a critical difference. Consistency brings in an element of perseverance that you do not normally bracket with talent.

Let me explain. I have often, while watching Rohit Sharma bat, said "wow" out loud. I probably said it because I saw him play a shot I did not expect him to. Or maybe it was a shot very few players were able to play. Just as often, I find myself going "ugh" with frustration at him. It is probably because, having had the opportunity to go "wow", I now expected him to play the same shot again. And so, without explicitly stating it, I am invoking the assumption of consistency to assess talent. The old professor of mathematics would have said, "Play the shot so often that it is no longer a new shot when you play it."

It is while I was debating this in my mind that I became aware of why Sachin Tendulkar paid such high compliments to Gary Kirsten for throwing him balls. Tendulkar wanted to perfect a shot and needed someone to throw him enough balls to attain that perfection, so that when he attempted it in a match he wasn't doing it for the first time. And in a recent conversation he said he was at his best when he was in the "subconscious", not distracted by the "conscious", and able to play by instinct - which he had perfected through practice.

Now we often call Tendulkar a genius, and yet, as we see, the talent that we believe comes dazzling through is, in essence, the product of many hours of perseverance. Is Tendulkar, then, the supreme example of my father's friend's theory of doing well at maths? And assuming for a moment that is true, shouldn't we be honouring perseverance because that is what it seems "talent" really is?

And so it follows that when we complain that all talented players don't get to where they should, we are in effect saying that they didn't practise hard enough to be consistent. Maybe it means we should all use the word "talent" more sparingly; not bestow it on a player until ability has been married to hard work long enough to achieve consistency.

This is also the starting premise of a new book I hope to continue reading - Bounce by the former table tennis champion Mathew Syed. I am delighted by its opening pages, one of which said "talent is overrated". It is something I have long believed.

Shadow-practise, dream, wait

 

 

The final nets are over, there are about 18 hours to the start of the Test. How do cricketers spend that time?

 

Aakash Chopra

September 24, 2009

 

	Matthew Hayden liked to be left alone with the pitch he had to play on the following day © AFP
Related Links Players/Officials: Aakash Chopra | Rahul Dravid | Matthew Hayden | Sachin Tendulkar

You may have wondered why Matthew Hayden sits on the pitch on the eve of a match. Does he meditate sitting there? Or why Rahul Dravid shadow-practises shots at both ends? Hasn't he played enough in the nets? Chris Gayle also does the same thing, albeit in the middle of the pitch. What are these guys up to?

All of them use an extremely important tool for preparation, visualisation. Hayden visualised everything, good and bad, that could happen in a match, so as not to be surprised during the match. All of us, knowing or unknowingly, do it.

I had my formal introduction to this technique just before the first Test against Australia in Brisbane in 2003. John Bell, an Australian coach I had met in Holland, told me about its application and importance. He told me to walk out from the dressing room on the eve of the match assuming that I was walking out to bat on the first morning of the game.

 

I had to psyche myself into seeing the packed stadium, the Australian team waiting in the middle along with the two umpires. I also had to imagine my partner, Virender Sehwag, was walking alongside me. Then I did my ritual, running a couple of mock runs, before settling in to take strike. To avoid looking completely insane, I skipped the part where I asked the imaginary umpire for a leg-stump guard. Apart from that, I did everything I would in the real match. I mentally drew a line just outside the off stump, to use as a marker for letting balls go. Anything pitched outside that line would be allowed to go through to the keeper and the rest were to be played. Then I'd stand in my stance and visualise all the Australian bowlers running in and bowling in different areas. It is a routine I've followed ever since.

 

Ground reality

Every ground and track has a different feel and the earlier you get used to it the better. Batsmen identify certain shots for certain tracks. For example, on slow and low tracks you realise the need to get onto the front foot as much as possible and play with a straight bat. Similarly, on tracks with more bounce and pace, you prepare yourself to stay on the back foot and play horizontal bat shots. That's exactly why players shadow-practise while standing in the middle. Bowlers also identify the areas they'll be expected to bowl in, and do mock run-ups to get a feel of the approach to the stumps.

 

Individual approach

Batting and bowling in the nets on the eve of the match is strictly according to each individual's liking. No one tells you to bat in the nets if you aren't comfortable, and the support staff does everything to help you get into the groove. Rohan Gavaskar wouldn't play a single ball in the nets, while Viru likes a long hit. Similarly Gautam Gambhir needs his throw-downs before every match, while Sachin Tendulkar's batting in the nets depends purely on how he's feeling about his game at that point of time. While Sachin didn't bat too often in the nets during the 2003-04 series, when he did, he made someone bowl at him from 15 yards most of the time.

There was one extraordinary instance of Dravid and Viru missing the practice session and watching a movie instead. It was before the memorable Adelaide Test in 2003. Sometimes, simply unwinding is the need of the hour.

	You often find cricketers sitting together till very late on the eve of a match. That's to ensure that the moment they walk into their rooms they fall asleep. There's also the tendency to get up a few times during the night to check if you have slept through the alarm, only to find that dawn is still a few hours away

At the end of the practice session, most batsmen take their match bats with them to the hotel. Some batsmen shadow-practise religiously in their rooms. Others just want the bat handy in case they feel like doing so.

 

Sleepless nights

Sachin didn't sleep well for 15 days leading up to the match against Pakistan in the 2003 World Cup. He would stay awake planning how to handle each bowler. He admits that he played the entire innings in his head way before it happened on the field. Gautam couldn't sleep the night before the 2007 Twenty20 World Cup final.

You often find cricketers sitting together till very late on the eve of a match. That's to ensure that the moment they walk into their rooms they fall asleep. The anxiety doesn't let your mind rest, and that makes it very difficult to sleep. There's also the tendency to get up a few times during the night to check if you have slept through the alarm, only to find that dawn is still a few hours away.

 

A common dream for batsmen is that a wicket has fallen and you're slated to go in next. But you haven't put on the leg-guards and panic sets in. You try your best to get ready but something or the other always goes wrong. In reality, gearing up is a two-minute exercise that has been done a million times, but dreams seldom follow a logical pattern.

 

The morning of the match

Every player has his own routine on the morning of a game. Some, like Dravid, wake up well in advance, read newspapers and have breakfast before boarding the bus. Others sleep till the last possible minute and rush to the bus, grabbing a muffin on the way. Then there are those who indulge in incessant chatter all the way to the ground - and often occupy the last rows of the bus. Still others, like Sachin, listen to music. These routines depend a lot on temperament: some can't handle the anxiety and hence rush through everything, while others want everything in peace.

 

After reaching the ground

Almost everyone rushes to the square immediately after getting to the field. Although nothing dramatic can happen, since you've seen the track the previous day, you need to be certain. It's like going through your notes one last time before an exam. You want to be 100% certain that you didn't misread the pitch.

 

Then there's the eternal wait for the toss. While one part of you wants it to be delayed for another couple of hours so you can hit a few more balls against throw-downs, the other part wants to be done with the suspense. Openers and fast bowlers watch the toss with great interest, and depending on the result of the toss, either prepare or relax.

 

Instead of warming up with cricket, most teams prefer playing a different, non-contact sport, like volleyball, just before the game. It lightens the atmosphere and helps you ease into the match day. Contact sports like football and touch rugby are generally avoided because the chances of getting injured are higher.

	Gary Kirsten gives Sachin Tendulkar throw-downs after a net session © Getty Images

 

Batting first

The environment in the dressing room becomes a lot quieter if your team is batting. Even though the bowlers slip into a relaxing mode, they avoid making unnecessary noise. Both the openers and the batsman at No. 3 are left alone. Everyone wishes the openers luck as they go through their last little routines before stepping onto the field. But there are some batsmen who don't like to be wished before walking out to bat. One such was Sunil Gavaskar.

 

Some batsmen will watch every single ball being bowled, as they wait their turn, either on TV or from the balcony, and then there are others who'd read newspapers and magazines (Mohammad Azharuddin) or sleep (Sir Vivian Richards) while waiting for their turn to bat. VVS Laxman likes to listen to music, while Yuvraj Singh prefers chatting.

 

I can't stop myself from watching. Thank god I'm an opener.

 

Bowling first

While batsmen relax, the bowlers are required to be on the field 10 minutes before the start of the game to warm up. But bowlers have the luxury of easing into the match, as they're not absolutely required to be at their very best right from the beginning. One mistake doesn't mean the end of the innings for them; an advantage that gets evened out with the heavy workload they have to bear. Their planning and plotting happens more on the field and during the match.

The opening batsmen start their preparation again when the opposition loses its eighth or ninth wicket. You see them standing in their stance and looking down the pitch every now and then. They also tend to go quieter in the field after the loss of the ninth wicket.

 

My endeavour through this three-part mini-series on preparation was to tell my readers what goes into the making of a good ball, a marvellous catch, an unsparing shot, a great cricketer. I hope that from now on every time you see a batsman fail or a bowler bowl a half volley, you remember that lack of performance is not necessarily because of lack of preparation. It's just that, in the game of cricket, like in any other walk of life, it's only human to err.

 

Former India opener Aakash Chopra is the author of Beyond the Blues, an account of the 2007-08 Ranji Trophy season. His website is here

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