Indian talisman MS Dhoni is known to remain away from the limelight, staying aloof from all the attention and speculations regarding his career.
But when Mahi speaks, it contains a matter of substance. This time around, it was during the launch of MFORE, where he spoke extensively regarding the issue of mental health.
The initiative was launched by his former India and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) teammate, Subramaniam Badrinath, in support of entrepreneur Saravana Kumar.
There, he mentioned about facing the heat while coming into bat and facing the first few deliveries.
“In India, I feel there is still a big issue of accepting that there is some weakness when it comes to the mental aspects, but we generally term it as mental illness,” Dhoni was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
“Nobody really says that, when I go to bat, the first 5 to 10 deliveries my heart rate is elevated, I feel the pressure, I feel a bit scared because that’s how everybody feels – how to cope with that?” added the world-cup winning captain.
Also, during his detailed interaction, Dhoni stressed on the importance of a mental conditioning coach who should be permanent with teams.
“This is a small problem but a lot of times we hesitate to say it to a coach and that’s why the relationship between a player and coach is very important, be it any sport,” Dhoni concluded.
Badrinath, who was one of the most titanic domestic batsmen, talked about his new project developed to promote the field of mental conditioning coaches.
“We have been working on this project for about 8-10 months. What we have is a group of 20-25 mind coaches and sports psychologists from across the world. Our idea is to get the athlete to interact with them. We can subsequently come up with specific programs. We basically create a platform which will enable the athlete to do his mind-based training on a regular basis,” Badrinath said.
