Cricketers must reap the benefits of yoga

On a day when the whole world is celebrating International Yoga Day, I felt it would be worthwhile to discuss the impact of yoga on cricket. Many cricket boards around the world have introduced yoga as a fitness regimen for their players and many are reaping the benefits from it.

Most warm-up exercises that cricketers do nowadays are yoga postures. Back in the seventies and eighties, cricketers were not very conscious about their fitness. Potbellied Sri Lankan skipper Arjuna Ranatunga and Indian off spinner Erapalli Prasanna could play the game and were successful as well.

One of the fittest cricketers those days was India’s left arm spinner Bishen Singh Bedi, who was among the very few cricketers who practised yoga. His action was so relaxed and coordinated that he could bowl all day with the same rhythm and control mainly due to his dedication to yoga. In the 1971 India’s tour to England, a picture of Bedi demonstrating yoga to the amused England wicketkeeper Alan Knott was carried by many newspapers.

Yoga is said to be the reason for the success of many modern cricketers. Most of them silently practised it without announcing to the world. Sachin Tendulkar escaped a foot surgery purely due to tips from Yoga exponent BKS Iyengar, who lived till the age of 95. Tendulkar got rid of his backache also through Yoga. Rahul Dravid too practised it, and that probably was one of the factors that both these batsmen were in full control of their emotions and hardly got affected by the pressures of the game. It is a proven fact that yoga helps one gain control over the body as well as the mind.

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