(LO- 1, LO- 2, LO- 4)

Cricket is a sport which I love to play and watch. One of the major reason is that I am a batter myself and I love idealizing some of the great batters and their game. Therefore in my CAS experience, I looked to enhance my batting skills. Throughout the experience, I wanted to develop new skills such as having the ability to hit big shots at my will because that would provide a lot more flexibility to my game. Perhaps, it was one of my goals that I wanted to achieve through this CAS experience. As a result, I was practicing some new shots which I don’t usually play, such as lofting the ball a lot more and playing some unorthodox shots as well.

As a batter, One of my biggest strength is my playing technique. I like to be a good, solid and a compact player. Therefore, it is necessary for me to have a strong technique. By technique I mean that my defense is very strong. Once you start trusting your defense, it becomes your strength and then automatically you have the confidence to play the big shots. Therefore, having a strong and solid defense has always been my strength. However, I also possess a weakness which is not having the ability to play the turn properly. Perhaps, I do not prefer playing spin bowling. Instead, I like pace coming onto the bat. This is another area that I had to work upon in my game except for playing those big shots at will.

Moving forward, Being aware of my strengths gave me a lot of security and it helped me boost my confidence. Since I have a very strong defense, I have the confidence to negotiate the good balls as well and hit bad balls for boundaries. This kind of confidence comes from within when you’re on top of your game and you’re aware of your strengths. Speaking of which, it doesn’t mean that being aware of your weaknesses doesn’t make you a bad player. Being aware of your weaknesses means that you understand your own game pretty well and are looking to improve every time. Therefore, being aware of my weaknesses made me feel self-aware.

In this CAS experience, I did not only look to try different things and learn new skills but also had work on my weaknesses or the areas of improvement. Therefore, I was playing more spin bowling than usual and was looking to play the ball on it’s merit.

In trying to develop new skills ( new shots ) the most challenging part was to generate that much required power from your shoulders. Since I am a stroke-player I am someone who only relies on the timing of my shot to make it to the boundary. But when it comes to hitting those big shots, along with the timing, you’ve got to generate the power from your shoulders to hit the ball over the ropes. Additionally, to generate that much power, the bat speed has to be very fast. Hence, I had to work on increasing my bat speed to have the ability to hit big shots at my will.

To overcome this challenge, as I mentioned before, I worked on my bat speed to generate the required power to play the big shots. On the other hand, to overcome the challenge of playing the spin bowling, I had to make that mental adjustment of looking to play for the turn and not the line ( always ). Perhaps, playing for the turn, and not always getting my body behind the line of the ball because that would make me play across my front pad ( sometimes ).

Having undertaken these challenges and successfully overcoming the same makes me feel very confident about myself and my game. I feel I’m heading in the right direction as I’m always looking to learn new things and improve as a player. Overall, I am in a pretty good mental space as a player. Well it is very important for me to undertake new challenges not only as a player but as a person too. Looking at it from my life’s perspective, at any stage of my life, I have to be ready to undertake new challenges as it would not only make me mentally strong but also teach me life lessons and shape my career.

Furthermore, throughout the CAS experience, just like any other CAS activity I had to show perseverance and commitment towards my activity. However, In this case, time made it more difficult for me to show commitment towards my activity given that I am an IBDP student perhaps, the academic workload is quite heavy and difficult to manage. Therefore, it was a pretty tricky phase and it made me feel mentally drained ( sometimes ). Talking about showing commitment, in this activity I had to regularly practice my new skills that I had learned through this CAS experience and also carry own with the batting drills and other training routines ( at least thrice in a week ) to keep my body active. Basically, in this CAS experience, it was a race against time.

To be honest, being an IBDP student, I have to very smart in my self management skills and time management skills given there are so many works and assignments going on simultaneously. Therefore, it is very difficult to commit to things and as a result manlier times something or the other is left to complete at the end of the day. However, these kinds of small setbacks make me realize that I have to be on my toes all the time and keep pulling up my socks. Although sometimes things get difficult, I see the positive side of it – I take these experiences as a learning curve in my life and I know that going forward life will get only difficult and I have to be very versatile with my time management and self management skills. Therefore I look at it from a lens: These experiences are only making me prepare for my future and I have to deal with it anyhow.

I believe that perseverance and commitment is always necessary in every sport/game that you play, and cricket is no different. Throughout the experience, I tried to give my 100% by constantly working on my game and looking to improve as I understand the importance of showing commitment towards your goal. Without showing commitment and perseverance consistently towards your game, you cannot achieve your target.

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