The Sehwag syndrome

"I try to hum songs, bhajans, Sai Baba bhajans, Kishore Kumar songs, especially those pictured on Amitabh Bachchan, till the bowler is about to deliver. I try to sing songs as perfectly as possible in order to keep my mind completely uncluttered."

...and thats how its done! Sehwag makes it sound so deceptively simple, and yet it couldnt be that simple. After 80-odd centuries, a Tendulkar still gets nervous in the 90s, and a Dravid who has 10,000 runs still finds it tough to break a poor run of form. Perhaps therein lies the problem and the solution. Adam Gilchrist once said that a sportsperson should just trust his/her instincts and not get too intellectual about the game. The likes of Dravid & Tendulkar tend to do just that, and this I believe limits their game. For instance, Sachin premeditates a single when hes on 99, every single time... and as often happens, he is caught in two minds if he gets a boundary ball. Also, the fact that one is close to a milestone, distracts, and that little bit of loss of focus is sometimes enough to bring about one's downfall.

On the other hand, the Inzamams, Gilchrists and Sehwags have rarely let milestones or game situations bother them enough to alter their natural game. For a cricketer, the next delivery is everything; of course, some amount of strategy is necessary, to gather an inkling of the bowler's gameplan for instance, but that is part of a sportsman's instinct which one automatically acquires with experience. That being a given, he might be better served by letting his natural instincts take over...

Cricket in particular, seems to be a sport which lends itself to a lot of intellectual indulgence... the assorted coaches - batting, bowling, fielding, mental conditioning, the managers, the commentary teams with elaborate pre/in/post match analyses, the resident media experts, statisticians who make careers out of knowing obscure historical facts, fancy terms such as "mental disintegration" & "reverse swing"... it is easy for a cricketer to get distracted and lose sight of the reality - It is just a game and a cricketer is just an entertainer, not a soldier defending his country's honor, nor creating a piece of history for posterity.

And humming Kishore Kumar songs seems to be a good way to keep the mind uncluttered, and let the instincts unfettered to go forth and entertain! After all, you cant argue with two triple hundreds... As for the likes of Tendulkar/Dravid, a humble suggestion - learn some Himesh numbers; most are already mind-numbing, so thats half the job done !