The Hyderabad Literary Festival 2016 - Workshop for School Children on 'Lessons from Cricket'

There is an old tree in the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet,under which this workshop was scheduled. Young cricketers from Silver Oaks School and Sadhu Vaswani School were waiting at the venue patiently. Two boys from HPS Begumpet joined in. We waited till 11 am and began.

First lesson was on discipline and they congratulated themselves on being before time. I told them of the famous quote 'If you're on time you're late; if you're ten minutes early you are on time. If you are late, then go home.' The boys were glad they started on the right note.

We then spoke about the many lessons that cricket teaches us. We discussed Courage - and how batsmen face fast bowlers by getting into the line of the ball. Similarly we could, as cricketers handle tricky situations by not running away from problems and facing them head on.

We discussed the art of doing things more efficiently by using less effort - as in timing. The boys shared their experiences with timing and how one achieves that. The art of waiting for the ball and treating it well yields far better results than by beating it up. Works in life too.

Then we got down to the crux of the matter. What is our main concern with our cricketing careers? The boys looked pensive. Will I perform? Will I succeed?

In other words, am I good enough?

I spoke about the process on becoming 'good enough' to them. How one must start with a clear goal and not some vague goal and hope things happen. Break down the big goal with timelines right down to the immediate goal. It must be clear and objective - X runs or Y wickets in this tournament. Now that we have an immediate goal, we need to prepare.

How?

Practice said the boys. We spoke about it and finally decided that a coach's guidance would help improve performance by making us practice right. Perfect practice makes perfect - we agreed. To do this however, we also decided on the route or approach to take.

We discussed the mindsets. Fixed and Learning mindsets. How in our desire to cover up our mistakes  or by trying to look smart, we fail to ask and address the main issue which could be a simple correction. By not asking about how to improve, we set ourselves up for failure, and then we blame everyone else. In the learning mindset one is free of any restrictions as one is only interested in learning and taking up new challenges. If their preparation is good, they will certainly perform.

There is no luck. Only preparation, we decided.

The way to perform is to prepare on skill, physical and mental. The boys agreed that by asking questions about the areas they do not know well, and not acting like they know everything when they do not, they will certainly improve. With right practice and more hours, they will improve performance.

We also discussed that good players do 10% more at preparation and 10% more at the end. Watch the ball early - and then - into your hand. The 80% in between is good but the extra 20% in the beginning and the end separates the top and the rest.

There were some questions and we packed up.