GORDON LIGHTFOOT | Sport
GOD LEVEL SELF CONTROL
Hamilton man Deepak Singh fought every instinct in his body yesterday, as he successfully held a cricket bat in his hands at Rebel Sport Te Rapa without shaping his body into the classical forward-defence batting movement.
Friend Stephen Hyde witnessed the event in person. “I’ve played cricket with Deepak all through school and we’re at the same club now, so for him to hold a bat and not instinctively block an imaginary ball with it was something to behold.
“It looked completely unnatural. To make this happen would have taken an intense amount of self discipline,” said the bewildered team mate.
“Normally you’d pass a cricket bat to someone, they’d cock their wrists into the correct grip, crouch down and face the invisible bowler steaming in towards them. None of that happened. It was freaky.”
Mr Singh explained that his unusual behaviour was part of a new, broad philosophy to be mindful of his actions and to gain masterful control over his own mind and body. “When I was holding that bat, all I could think about was playing a forward defensive shot, to block out the ghostly fast bowler I could see haunting Rebel Sport,” he said.
“My wrists were itching and the muscle memories in my forearms were firing like crazy. At that moment I decided this was a time to test my own mental strength.
“In my head I knew that every single person in that shop who saw me pick up this bat was expecting me to needlessly pretend to play a shot with it. I was determined to prove them all wrong,” said the zen-master in training.
You may be asking yourself what is wrong exactly with holding a new bat in your hands and practicing a forward defence? What possible harm could it do? We asked the defiant Singh ‘why not just practice the shot?’, to which he replied, “Because that’s exactly what they want me to do.”
More to come.
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