Inside the mind of a champion athlete

What goes into making champion sportspersons? Is it just talent or the way they train or the mindset they possess?

Teeming with close to 100,000 spectators last Sunday, the Melbourne Cricket Ground was a cauldron of extreme emotions. It was a situation where mere mortals would have quaked in their boots and gone weak in the knees. But then, Virat Kohli is no mere mortal. If the MCG resembled a Greek Coliseum on the day, he was the gladiator ready to fight a battle befitting his stature. Bigger and better T20I innings have been played over the years than Kohli’s unbeaten 82 in India’s T20 World Cup opener, but few knocks have been produced in such trying circumstances.

Consider this. The opponents are Pakistan, against whom losing is not an option. Expectations ride heavy from those inside the venue and a billion more outside, but the chase has gone awry with arguably the best pace attack in business breathing fire. As the man of cliches, Ravi Shastri, back behind the mic in all his pomp, exclaimed at the end of the chase, it was indeed “cometh the hour, cometh the man.”

Kohli pulled off a Houdini act, taking India across the line with an innings that you would love to narrate to your grandchildren. Three years ago, perhaps, this wouldn’t have evoked as much surprise, for Kohli chasing down improbable-looking targets was as routine as Usain Bolt completing a sprint at his prime. The Kohli of now was coming on the back of a prolonged struggle and only recently had strung together some meaningful innings. Encouraging but far from the batsman people had got accustomed to. Just when it appeared as if Pakistan would twist the knife in India’s faltering chase and end the game, Kohli decided to script a different climax. Though there was no “Kohli-esque” authority, the impact was no less. With that innings, if proof was ever needed, he showed that he was a champion made of a different fibre.

It’s quite possible that we might never get to witness the Kohli avatar of between 2014 and 2019 when he stacked up ridiculous amounts of runs across formats. But the champion in him will often resurface to excite and entertain, just like Rafael Nadal does every now and then. The Spaniard’s epic comeback against Daniil Medvedev of Russia, after losing the first two sets, in this year’s Australian Open final was a testament to his resilience.

So, what does it take to convert a mere player into a champion? Is it just the talent? Is it only the hard work? Is it the mindset?

“Talent is important, (but) there is one thing that is the difference-maker for champions… it is their ‘mindset’,” writes renowned mental game coach, Patrick Cohn, based out of Orlando in Florida, in one of his blogs on peaksports.com. “A ‘mindset’ is attitudes, confidence, and focus that an athlete has developed, which shape how he approaches a situation. Call it ‘mental toughness’… Though the fruits of an athlete’s mindset are seen in a competition, it is cultivated in training sessions, practices, and how an athlete responds to mistakes. In essence, an athlete’s mindset follows them everywhere he or she goes and, in turn, affects everything he or she does.”

Notwithstanding the talent and hard work put in, it’s the mindset that becomes crucial in challenging situations.

Ask VVS Laxman, the owner of India’s greatest Test innings ever, and he vouches for it. But the former India batter is quick to add that athletes develop such a mindset only with uncompromising preparation.

“It all boils down to preparation, both mentally and physically. There’s no substitute for it,” Laxman begins. “That said, preparation is one part of it and then there is something called visualisation. You visualise various scenarios and situations and prepare for them both physically and mentally. I am not saying you will succeed all the time when you encounter them on the field of play, but by doing so you would have given yourself the best chance to succeed in such situations. One thing is, the best athletes in business always prepare for the worst scenarios. So, you are mentally tuned in when you are under pressure.”

So, was he prepared when he scored 281 against Australia (in the 2001 series) in the Kolkata Test?

“Yes... In my case, I was well prepared for that moment in the sense that Rahul (Dravid) and I had a 300-plus runs partnership against West Zone (in a Duleep Trophy match) just a month before that Test. Yes, I know we were 274 runs behind following on... At that time, I shut all the noise out of my mind. I slipped into a zone where I was only thinking about batting as long as possible. You insulate yourself from all outside pressure. How do you do that? It’s preparation again.

“Around 2000, I learnt a neuro-linguistic programme that helped me strategise my game according to the challenge. I would visualise what challenges a Shane Warne or a Glenn McGrath would pose and work my game towards that.”

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a psychological approach that involves analysing strategies used by successful individuals and applying them to reach a personal goal. It relates thoughts, language, and patterns of behaviour learned through experience to specific outcomes.

It’s not that other players don’t put in the hard yards. Every athlete worth his/her salt trains hard and goes through his/her preparation but not every player becomes a champion. Why? Because a champion athlete is ready to go the extra mile in order to raise the level of their game. Tendulkar practiced in the “nets” longer than his team-mates. Kohli’s training regimen is much more punishing than his peers. Novak Djokovic, easily one of the fittest athletes in the world, is more disciplined with his diet than many of his rivals.

Tendulkar’s preparation to tackle Warne in the 1998 series against Australia best illustrates the mindset of a champion player.

The Mumbai maestro may not have learnt NLP but his preparations bordered on this method. Ahead of the Chennai Test against Australia in 1998, Tendulkar wanted advice on tackling Warne if the leg-spin legend came round the wicket to bowl. He approached Shastri, who asked him to find an effective way to attack him so that it discouraged the bowler from coming round the wicket.

Tendulkar then had former India leg-spinner L Sivaramakrishnan bowling round the wicket into the footmarks. The right-hander went through this process for four days in the “nets” with a spot outside leg stump scuffed. When Warne came round the wicket during the course of the match on the fourth day, Tendulkar hit him for a couple of sixes and fours through midwicket region and Warne moved back to bowling over the wicket.

It’s these kinds of preparations, it’s this pursuit of excellence, that sets champions apart from average players.

For all of one’s preparation, Laxman feels, the team environment also matters a lot. "The people around you, they create an environment that complements your performance. In our case, (then captain) Sourav (Ganguly) and (coach) John (Wright) did that for us."

Pullela Gopichand, only the second Indian to win All England badminton Championships, also underscores the significance of a right ecosystem to produce a champion in his acclaimed book, Shuttler's Flick. The Hyderabadi says even somebody stopping you from eating food that's not healthy and someone providing nutritious food can play an important role in making a champion.