February is nigh. Temperatures will rise. Streets will empty. Bugles will be sounded. It’s time for Cricket World Cup 2015. India is the defending champion. Here, cricket rules.
Published only a month before the greatest sporting event for cricket enthusiasts, Ashwath Aiyappa’s When God Bowls a Googly offers a cosmic perspective on the pursuit of sports, wrenching it away from the narrow confines of commerce and competition. The author was a young cricketer who started his career with Karnataka state under-16 team. He was a Ranji probable and played first-class cricket for several clubs in Bangalore and Bombay. Though Ashwath could never break into the big cricketing league, his involvement with the game, his ruminations on the psychology of victory and defeat, the life-lessons he learnt on and off the field, made his approach to sports akin to a spiritual practice.
At a time when young sports aspirants are getting increasingly mired in the web of soul-stifling competition, Ashwath’s holistic approach to sports, evident in this work, is an invaluable guide to mindful living. This book is clearly a labour of love and honest confessions.
Divided into 18 chapters, the book charts the emotional and internal journey of Ashwath as a sportsman. His life-story will resonate with a whole generation of young sportspersons; promising talent, passionate obsessions, drive to succeed, fear of failure, confusions, depression, hubris—the whole spectrum of emotions that comprise a sportsperson’s life. Written in an easy, anecdotal style, Ashwath charms the reader with his honesty and depth of vision. Ashwath says “...I must clarify that this book is fundamentally a happy story. It is as much about triumph as it is about defeat, but mostly it is about freedom from obsession.”
Ashwath talks about his early involvement with cricket—his obsession with success, his inability to deal with disappointment, his struggle to keep his affection for the game alive. His despair led him to an eclectic body of sources for explanations and answers. His readings on human psychology, philosophy, autobiographies of great men, his conversations with teachers and other celebrated sportspersons had a profound transformative effect on his emotional and professional attitudes. Through years of reading, meditation and reflection, Ashwath discovers a philosophy of life that more than anything else made him a complete person and hence a real sportsman.
In the book, Ashwath repeatedly emphasises the need for personal growth, introspection, developing a calm, philosophically detached attitude towards victory and loss, and above all to live in the present. The role of a teacher, spiritual practices such as yoga and meditation and a constant exploration of the self, he believes, are crucial in training as a sportsman. This trajectory is refreshingly different from the culture of aggressive competition and self-seeking individualism that dominates sports in contemporary times.
The most impressive aspect of Ashwath as a young man is that he did not allow his passion for cricket to override his other interests. Ashwath was a successful entrepreneur, the co-founder of a very successful software company. Ashwath never made it big as a cricketer. For him, the game, above all, was about love, and cricket, a metaphor for life.
Ashwath died last April before the book’s launch while trying to save his brother Akhil from drowning. Both didn’t survive the tragic accident. He left the world a hero. And for countless young people, parents, coaches, trainers and readers, he left an inspiring message about the true meaning of sports.