'Chikat Gul' meaning 'sticky jaggery' is what I was called every time I came to bat. This is because I would stick to the wickets for long. And in those days, in my childhood, cricket was not that result-oriented. One could play for long, without scoring too many runs. Not losing wicket was valued.
The first man to run 10,000 test runs, Sunil Gavaskar is a firm believer that temperament is more important than technique. He says, "You could have the best technique in the world, but if your spirit is fragile, you won’t succeed in the long run". Entire energy gets focused on how to play or leave that one next ball. Energy takes the form of attention. It is not consumed to play big stokes, to run fast between wickets or to score more runs. The whole focus is only on the ball and the required temperament to stay grounded without losing wickets.
"You could have the best technique in the world, but if your spirit is fragile, you won’t succeed in the long run"
Energy when focused on such attention, takes one into the state of flow. As per the Hungarian-American psychologist, Csikszentmihalyi's best-known theory, Flow is the state of concentration and engagement that can be achieved when completing a task that challenges one's skills. He calls attention as psychic energy, as it determines what will and what will not appear in our consciousness and because it is also required to make any other mental states such as remembering, thinking, feeling and making decisions-happen there.
Flow is the state of concentration and engagement that can be achieved when completing a task that challenges one's skills.
Life is like Test cricket. It is a test of your resilience. It takes you through different phases, in different stages of the game. One has to wait with patience for the right ball to come and let the bad balls go. What ultimately matters is, "Are you still holding on there ?? Like a 'Chikat Gul'.
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