you're reading...

Dhak Dhak Dhoni

Every person goes through moments in life where totally unrelated events,facts or occurrences form a sudden pattern in one’s mind revealing a totally new idea or concept.

I was reading Blink by Malcom Gladwell recently and something he outlined in his book suddenly gave me a totally different perspective. According to Malcom Gladwell’s research,when the heart rate of a person is between 115 beats and 145 beats even during stressful situations performance is optimal; beyond that your mind goes into overdrive and become mind-blind to reach a state of autism.This leads to “rush of blood” and foolish decisions.That is the reason why people are asked to take deep breaths during stressful situations as breathing in reduces heart rate and helps you think straight.

Okay,so now I have explained one fact. How is this relevant to the title of this article? “Dhak” is the Hindi word used to refer to heartbeat and Dhoni is the name of one of the most iconic Indian cricketers of all time.

Dhoni or MSD as he is otherwise referred to is known for his ice cool demeanor in crunch situations. After one more nail-biting run chase,he discussed his strategy to “get the heart rate down first” to then increase it near the finish line. After I read Blink,I understood the significance of what he said;when you remain calm and then up the ante suddenly, your opponent (particularly inexperienced players) is likely to lose composure and make mistakes which Dhoni could then capitalize on.

I am pretty sure that Dhoni would not have known the science behind the controlling of heart rate but nevertheless his razor sharp cricketing brain could see the connection.A valid reference point from this is that when one faces a dilemma of sorts in a pressure situation always strive to keep your heart rate down (by breathing in) to maintain mental clarity.




About Jose Gauravselvam Kagoo



No comments yet.

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s


%d bloggers like this: