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Showing posts from December, 2017

Alastair Cook: The Indefatigable, Undefeated, Gentleman Cricketer

The mental side of sports has always fascinated me. Earlier, I thought Cricket to be the most demanding of mental game but then every sports, be it Tennis, Golf, Motor sports etc. has got it's share of mental gumption. But Test Cricket is gotta be at the top of this list. You play 6 hrs of Cricket for full five days in front of a sizeable crowd. You gotta be at the top of the game at all times. You cannot slug out there and if you have a reputation to fight for and are an ageing star, currently struggling with form and facing an almighty bowling attack in a foreign land, in front of a hostile crowd who loves to hate you, you just cannot stop fighting. This deadly combination will devour you day in and day out. And that's exactly what happened to Alastair Cook in the first three Magellan Ashes Test Matches. He went 10 innings without a fifty and for a cricketer who is a veteran of 150 Test matches with more than 11000+ test runs, that's as much a dreaded nightmare as one cou