Lots of rights make one long

MUMBAI: The last week witnessed outstanding innings in Test cricket. Ricky Ponting’s 242 and Rahul Dravid’s 233 at Adelaide, Jacques Kallis’ 176 and Brian Lara’s 202 at Johannesburg.
All four displayed, apart from brilliant cricket skill, a very important quality: mental strength.
They showed that mental strength and concentration power were as important as skill for scripting epics.
"Determination, concentration and patience, along with cricketing ability. It requires a combination of all," says former India opener and coach, Anshuman Gaekwad, whose best moment (201 runs) came in 1983 against Pakistan at Jallandhar. "You need to be mentally very strong and focussed. Fitness is equally important. Otherwise you will get tired and lose concentration."
Coming to how to actually go about the job, Gaekwad says, "At the start of play you cannot say that you are going to play the full day. It goes stage by stage, session by session. You set yourself a target for each period. It also depends on the situation the team is in. If it’s in a spot, it makes you more determined. That’s how it builds up and at the end of play you don’t even realise you have batted the whole day. You are so focussed on the job that you don’t feel the tiredness unless you get back to your dressing room. Staying focussed is the key."
Another yesteryear great, Polly Umrigar, provides insight into the art of playing a long innings and uses Dravid’s 233 as example. "You cannot slacken even for one ball," Umrigar said. "Dravid’s innings was a fine illustration of this. An uppish cover-drive was the only casual stroke he played. The difference between his 233 and Laxman’s 148 was that Laxman slackened a bit before the tea interval. Just before he got out at the stroke of tea he played couple of rash strokes. Dravid, on the other hand, showed patience and started fresh after the break."
About distractions a batsman faces during long innings and periods when he needs to concentrate extra, Umrigar says, "One has to be careful at the start. Sometimes a spectator’s comment can be upsetting. It’s best to avoid getting distracted by what people say. Confidence builds with the innings, but many lose their intensity after scoring 20-30 and with it their wicket.
Similarly, at the hundred-run mark, the batsman gets the applause and congratulations. He feels happy and tends to lose his edge. That is when he needs to talk to himself, get back his focus and start from the scratch. West Indies great Everton Weekes was a great example of building up on a hundred.
Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar says. "First of all you need to have class. Then concentration, determination, stamina and a habit of playing long innings. Initially play only in the ‘V’, judge how the wicket is behaving before playing your shots. Focus on not playing a loose shot."
Chetan Chauhan, the former India opener famous for his courageous batting, said he motivated himself with the theory that "being hit was a part of the job".
"As an opener my first job was to tire out the bowlers to make things easier for the latter batsmen," says Chauhan. "For motivation, I used to tell myself to stay on and on."