A career in professional sport is like climbing a ladder with no zenith. You have to keep moving upward, not only to achieve your desired height but also to ensure that you remain a rung higher than your opponents, who are climbing the same ladder.
It is this very knowledge and understanding that has led Ajinkya Rahane to adopt an innovative training method in a bid to enhance his mental awareness on the cricket field. It was Rahane’s coach and former India all-rounder, Pravin Amre, who came up with the idea of adopting a training method used in football, modified to fit the requirements of cricket.
Rahane had a few sessions with Amre in Mumbai before flying to Zimbabwe for his first assignment as India’s captain. In a chat with bcci.tv, the batsman explained the method in detail and elucidated how it has helped him improve at various aspects of his game.
“I was training with Pravin Amre sir and he said that when we train, we more often work on the technical aspect of the game. But training the mind is equally important. So, he came up with this technique where the objective was to make me more mentally aware while batting and train my mind for quick decision making,” Rahane said.
The method works like this. Amre would place different coloured cones at various fielding positions as Rahane batted. As Amre would deliver the ball, he would call out a colour and Rahane would have to hit the ball towards the cone of that colour.
“The later he called the colour, my mind had to adjust that much more quickly,” Rahane said. “At times he would also call out the colour that didn’t exist and when that happened, I had to defend. If I hit the ball on the right cone, I would get 10 points and for hitting it near the cone, it would be five points.”
The objective of this exercise is multifold. It makes the batsman more aware of his surroundings and at the same time trains him to watch the ball till the end with a blank mind before making a split-second decision of where and how to hit it.
“We started this process mainly for the mental awareness aspect but I found that it helped me technically as well,” Rahane said. “Since sir waited until the last moment to call the colour, I had to watch the ball closely till the end and determine my body position and shot-selection within the fraction of a second. It also helped me play the ball as late as possible, hence giving me more time to execute the right shot for that delivery.
“It made me more nimble on feet and agile as well because I wasn’t necessarily playing all the deliveries from the crease. At times I had to step out to play a particular shot that would take the ball to a specific cone and for that I had to have quick and precise footwork,” Rahane said.
Since the ultimate goal here is to accurately hit the desired spot, Rahane realized it would benefit him especially when batting in the middle-order when often the need of the hour is to pierce the gaps in the field. With the accurate exact of where the fielders are, finding the gaps would get easier.
“When you’re batting under pressure in the middle-order, you know you have to find the gaps and rotate the strike. Sometimes your mind gets fixated on the gap and you are distracted from the ball coming at you. Here I have to focus completely on the ball that is being delivered and keep my mind blank until the very last moment before playing it,” he explained.
To make Rahane more alert, Amre also mixed things up a bit. “I had to remember which colour cone was in which position in order to react quickly to sir’s call. Also, he would change the sequence of the cones everyday due to which I had to feed the entire data in my mind again and remember the new positions of the cones.
“Initially it was difficult. If on the first day the orange cone was at mid-on, on the second day it would be at covers. And if sir called out ‘orange’, I would instinctively hit it towards mid-on. Gradually, as I practised more, I got the hang of it.”
The exercise was extended a bit more in order to encompass another very important aspect of batting – running between the wickets.
“Another part was that after every three balls, I had to run about 20 yards – just like running between the wickets – towards the point where sir had placed five more cones in a line. I had to bend down to touch my bat as you would at the end of a run. While I bent, sir called out a colour from among those five cones which I had to touch and run back towards my batting crease.
“That was to improve my concentration as I had to pay close attention to sir’s voice while I ran and bent and immediately touch the cone he called out the colour of. At times while running between the wickets you fail to hear your partner’s call because you’re distracted by the noise in the stadium or your mind is preoccupied. This part of the exercise will make me more attentive to my partner’s call.”
The benefits of this exercise are not limited only to batting, as Rahane discovered. “Apart from batting, it helps in fielding as well,” he said. “There again you have to watch the ball, anticipate its direction and quickly decide which way you have to move to get to it. And you don’t have much reaction time to do all that. This exercise surely does help in that regards.”
While Rahane has already started to see the positive impact of his new training method, he has only seen the tip of the iceberg after four sessions. And what he has seen and experienced is enough to make him want to continue with it when he returns home from Zimbabwe.
“It will take time to perfect it because I only had a few days on my hand before this tour. We plan to continue with it when I get back and I am sure it will benefit me a lot more as I practise more,” he said. “I really believe it is helping me in many ways. We will also discuss on how we can innovate it further and make it more challenging.”
Rahane knows he has to keep moving up the ladder continuously, and he believes this exercise will give him a push ahead.
“To succeed at the international level you always have to be two steps ahead of the opponents and continue to raise the bar. I am always finding the ways to improve my game and I keep asking myself what more I can do to become the best batsman in the world. I don’t have a long-term target for myself. I just want to keep doing the small things that will help me get a little better everyday. When you reach a certain level, you realise how these small things helped you get there.”
