Two days back, Yashasvi Jaiswal, after his very measured innings of 87, turned up for the press conference. It was a knock where, for a brief moment, he had shelved his wide array of strokes when the English bowlers were bowling tight lines. When they couldn’t sustain the pressure, Jaiswal would be back to his attacking self. As the last question of the press conference, the young opener was asked to explain the complexity of changing gears and how his limbs listen to the mind.
“How do you know when to defend, when to pull the trigger?” asked a reporter. Jaiswal smiled. It had been a long day, the topic was worthy of a book. Jaiswal struggled for words but did come up with a short and simple answer: “I don’t know … it is just a feeling. I think I practiced too much, too hard. So when I am batting, I know what is the better option and I try doing that”.
The ‘feeling’ that the frightfully consistent 23-year-old with unreal numbers – 20 Tests, 5 hundreds, 2 double tons, 10 fifties – talks about is a state of mind that is the destination of most sporting stars but only the geniuses reach there often. This certainly has to do with meditative focus on match days but it is more to do with the hours sweating out under the sun on non-match days. Good batsmen train hard to develop muscle memory to automate their shot-selection. The best in the business train harder, they are at a higher plane, for them decision-making is a call of the subconscious.
Listening to that inner voice isn’t easy, since on most days the body doesn’t listen to the subconscious. Outside voices and pressures drown that voice. At times trying too hard can also be a hurdle on the path to achieve that Zen mode.
That’s the problem Shubman Gill was dealing with before the England tour. After his historic 269 he spoke about it. “I felt my batting was going well. I was scoring 30-35-40 runs consistently in Test matches. But at some point, I was missing that peak concentration time. A lot of people say that when you focus too much, you sometimes miss your peak time,” he said. So how did he deal with this fragile and complicated frame of mind? “So, in this series, I tried to go back to my basics. I tried to bat like I used to in my childhood.”
From the age of eight till Gill turned 14, he would train for six or seven hours a day. (AP)
In other words Shubman found his ‘feeling’, he went back to the time when his young impressionable mind had recorded the ‘right stuff’ that helped him to be a child prodigy that scored a hundred in every other inning. His hobby would become a habit and when to defend or attack became his second nature. Run-making would get taken over by his subconscious mind.
Years back the oracle of batting, Sachin Tendulkar had spoken on the issue. Unlike Jaiswal he wasn’t at a press conference, he wasn’t in a rush. He was at home, he spoke slowly to make mortals understand the mystical. “You surrender yourself to the subconscious mind … That’s the secret. So you are picking what the bowler’s doing, what side of the ball has he held, which side is the shine, is it a split-finger grip etc, is he winding up as for bouncers they are winding up a bit more, for out-swingers they are closing the front arm that little bit — all these you note, absorb from your conscious mind,” he said. “What is happening at my striker’s end is that the subconscious mind takes over at this moment. When your subconscious mind is not taking over, and your active conscious ego is still on, that is when you are in trouble.”
Story continues below this ad
So can one reach that level or get that feeling? Too much, too hard training, according to Jaiswal. He and Shubman are the batsmen who train the most in this team. The Indian team, these days, make the match eve training optional. But Jaiswal and Shubman do turn up and bat for long hours. Before the Edgbaston Test, the Indian captain after the press conference spent a lot of time next to the pitch – first inspecting it and later having a lengthy discussion with the coach and selector but that didn’t come in the way of his extensive batting training. It is a routine he has followed since he was young.
From the age of eight till he turned 14, he would train for six or seven hours a day — three hours in the morning, a break for patty and chole kulcha – and three more hours. On days it could even be 8 hours. “I want my body to take control of my mind. Not my mind taking control, seeding in self-doubt or getting carried away,” he had said a few years back.
Jaiswal too has followed the same schedule till date. Within days of finishing his domestic cricket duties, he moves away from the distractions of Mumbai to be at Rajasthan Royals’ almost spartan training facility at Talegoan in Nagpur. Close to 500 throwdowns a day, get challenged by 150 kmph deliveries on a cement pitch, facing bowlers on red-soil and black-soil pitches. Those in the know say that it is difficult to drag Jaiswal out of the nets.
Same was true for Tendulkar. Even towards the end of his career, the master’s appetite for batting didn’t dip. The then coach Gary Kirsten would tire and give him throw downs but Tendulkar wouldn’t stop. This was after he had spent hours at the nets. Top batsmen make batting looks easy, they say. But to get that ‘feeling’ and to be dictated by the subconscious, not conscious self is a life-long pursuit.
