Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

I am happy to report that I was part of the team winning the intra-PUMA tourney PSL T20 for the 3rd straight time. It was a fantastic team effort. Our bowling was the trump card, strong all through the 4 games , conceding at the most 149, and not having any weak link. Our batting backed it up well, and I played a good hand as opener with two unbeaten fifties and a twenty. I evolved through the 3 tournaments and within the4 games of the tournament. This played out the concept of 'Infinite game' as expounded by Robert Carse in his seminal book, 'Finite and Infinite Games', or the concept of stoicism as expounded in the Zen buddhism fable of the farmer's reaction to swinging fortunes (link). Robert Carse depicts life as antithesis of sport, since sport has a clear answer at the end of every 90 minutes of 40 overs. However, I will not take such affronts to sport lightly. My experience here shows that sport, too, is an infinite game. The first tournament in 2023 I was the strike opening bowler and played a critical part. I came 9 down in batting. Our best batter of the time, BB, told me to make better use of my batting next time. Thanks to my and other bowler's efforts, we defended a paltry total of 90 odd. However, my lethal bowling was also lethal to my shoulder, and I sustained a small tear in the supraspinatus, a muscle that's part of the rotator cuff. So in the second tournament in 2024, I became a 3-down batter. While I made some useful 30s in our run to the final, I was living dangerously. However The red Vicky tennis ball we play with, bounces a lot. I made my runs pressing on to the front foot, a mode of play from my leather ball playing days. Front foot play is not the easiest with the high bouncing Vicky ball: it often reaches the batter above waist level after pitching, and also due to how it bounces off the bat aerially, makes classic front foot shots such as drives, risky . My commeuppance was in the final : Facing a slow short ball on the body , I played a nothing shot : an attempted flick for a single. Edged squirmed to keeper- Golden duck. That slow short ball should have been deposited to midwicket for six. However, we won the final again thanks to our bowling, and this tale stuck in my mind. Come PSL 2026, I got myself promoted to opener. My trigger movement was to stay back. Over the course of the tournament, I hit 5 huge sixes on the pull shot, exactly to the ball that got me for the golden duck. All through the innings, I had a high control percentage for I was able to tame the high bouncing Vicky ball. The two times I was dismissed in the 4 games? Playing forcing front foot shots off full tosses- old habits haunting me: the ball pinged off the bat aerially, straight to close in fielders. However, I mostly stayed back, and ended as my team's highest run-getter. We ended each tournament winning, thus seemingly 'ending' the game. However, I had a different fate in each tourney: shoulder injury, wrong technique in batting, and improvement in batting control. Each game set the stage for the evolution: the Infinite game! Coming to the infinite in an even more finite scope: within the tournament. First game- we were chasing 80 odd against a weak bowling. I batter better than my wildest expectations, scoring an unbeated 55 in 29 balls. Next game, against a decent bowling attack, I got carried away: first ball 4, second ball out driven straight to cover. Third game, I displayed patience, albeit a bit too much. I played a somewhat slow 27 (24). Net contribution was better than the numbers indicate, for, being a left hander, I draw quite a few Wides by bowlers used to bowling to righties. Finally, I got the balance between attack and defense right in the final: making unbeaten 55 of 45 odd balls, in a chase of 125 odd. Thus, even upon reducing the scope of the canvas, one tournament instead of many tournaments, the concept still played out: the game was not over even after I was out!

Labels: Esprit de sports