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Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his men are in the thick of one-day action in Sri Lanka. There is a trepidation that the hosts are on a roll and pinning them down wouldn’t be easy. The visitors are freely seeking mental help to go with the technical and physical issues.
The latest and certainly the most interesting offer has come from the team’s conditioning coach, Paddy Upton.
The cerebral virtues of this South African expert are all too well-known and his new move evokes images of the methodology that was so dear to former coach Greg Chappell.
Upton’s new move is to make sure that every single member of the side reads the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. The international best-seller by Robin Sharma is essentially a tale of what could happen if one is too caught up in the rat race for material success and money.
Upton has asked every member of the Indian team to choose any one of the 11 chapters he finds valuable to his own issues and try to imbibe lessons from it.
For experienced players such as Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh, his insistence is to read pages where cherishing of relationships and developing joyful thoughts are encouraged.
Openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir find virtue in chapters where techniques to master the mind are spelt out in detail. “The heart of rose technique” and the “secret of lake technique” are finding ready acceptance between the two openers.
Both openers were taught how to cultivate the mind and use setbacks for expanding knowledge about the self.
Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina, still wet behind the ears, are trying to confront the “things they fear” and live up to “five simple methods” for attaining goals.
Matter of self-discipline
Irfan Pathan has been asked to read the chapter where value for self-discipline and respect for time is spelt out in detail. The virtues of willpower, the attainment of focus is the goal most sought out by him.
The general message to all cricketers is to live in the present.
“Now” is the eternal theme and the stress is never to sacrifice happiness for achievements. Each day must be lived as if it was his last day.
For a young team, without much of an academic background, reading books is a chore. Yuvraj freely admits that he hasn’t ever read a complete book in his life and the rest are no different.
For someone like Gambhir though the interest in the “Ferrari” book is high. Gambhir is an avowed reader of biographies and inspirational articles are right up his alley.
Dhoni frankly doesn’t have too much time for such bookish virtues. He would rather learn lessons from the everyday experiences of life. Dhoni is not openly dismissive of the reading proposal but the support hasn’t been overwhelming either.
Rick Chatfield, one of the better-known cricket book collectors of the world, is an Englishman based in Australia and recalls that among the Indian touring party, only spinner Bishen Singh Bedi used to seek him out for a set of books.
Sunil Gavaskar is another name that readily comes to mind as someone who used to engage his free time in the dressing room by diving deep inside the covers of a book.
Saba Karim, former Indian wicketkeeper, was one of those studious kinds, never without a book in his hands.
The virtues of reading may not be for the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly or for that matter VVS Laxman. Rahul Dravid is different and he is constantly reading cricket and other sports books for motivational and technical purposes.
Anil Kumble is more of an Information Technology (IT) freak while Harbhajan Singh is all brawn and little brain and there is a grave doubt if he can ever be a master of his emotions.
Upton feels the story-telling form and easy language of the Ferrari book would find ready acceptance among young Indian cricketers. He has distributed copies of relevant portions of the book to cricketers and asked for their feedback.
Upton is of the view that the long break between the present and last one-day series could induce rustiness and anxiety among cricketers and this book could help them retain their perspective.
Upton, on his part, could be embarking on a dangerous course. Indian cricketers by and large resent being told to do cerebral things.
The Indian cricket board, for all its financial muscle, frankly doesn’t want to get too harsh with its superstars.
Sacrificial lambs here, invariably, are the coaches and the members of the support staff.
Upton’s latest move to crack the whip could misfire if the team do badly in the ODI series. It can also make Upton, as well Gary Kirsten’s position, within the Indian set-up as untenable.
Kirsten is yet to win a single tournament, be it Tests or one-dayers in his tenure of six months so far, and calls for his resignation are only going to get shriller if the trend continues.
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