It's all about Judging the flight of the ball

Why Real Madrid threw the dice with 100 million pounds for Ronaldo? How David Beckham earns a staggering 17million pounds a year? Why is Tiger Woods a 'Tiger'? Why Fedex is Unstoppable? And why Sachin is GOD? The answer is quite simple, and it is so simple that you may not accept it as the answer.

"They all judge the flight of the ball better than most"

When we look at all the intricacies of sports, people talk about class, flair, quality, and so on..One fundamental skill that is necessary and ,if I go further, sufficient to be a top top sport person is to judge the damn round one in its flight and strike it.

I find this skill common to most of the sports involving a ball, be it cricket, football, hockey, tennis, golf, TT, badminton, volleyball etc, it is down to how skillfully one hits the ball. Furthermore, how skillfully one judges its flight and gets into a perfect position to hit it.

This concept is close to the "hand-eye-coordination" often used by experts. However, hand-eye-coordination comes after the "BALL FLIGHT JUDGMENT" because it is after judging where the ball "might be", one starts to swing the object used to hit the ball (hand or leg or bat) and tries to meet it at the previously judged position.

We see sports stars good at not just one sport but also at many others. How often we find players trained, playing others sports. For eg, Indian cricket team often involves in Football and Volleyball sessions as a routine warm-up. I have seen Roger Federer hitting the cricket ball as exquisitely as any other cricketer when he was at the nets at MCG during his tour to Australian Open. Jonty Rhodes had been a member of the South African National Hockey team before he joined the National Cricket team. There are plethora of sport stars, playing multiple sports at the highest level.

All this is possible and made easy for them as they keep hitting the round one, whether it is a tennis ball, cricket ball, football etc. Once the art of judging the flight of the ball is mastered, then it narrows down to how to hit it..It can be with a bat, a hand or a leg. And the placement and power of the hit are also crucial. But these two come at a later stage and however good one is at those, it can be futile if the flight is misjudged.

It is not an innate skill that one acquires from ones ancestors. It is through practice and with an intelligent head, this skill is mastered. The complexity lies in identifying the trajectory of the ball when it is subjected to various external factors such as wind, spin on the ball, deflections etc. It is through practice and 'been there and seen that' experiences one can make calculated projections on the trajectories and meets them at the right place and at the right time, the concept popularly called "Timing".

When I was 14, I went for Clay-Court Tennis coaching for almost a year. My coach, Salem, used to insist on this concept and when I practiced it, it made wonders. It helped me perform better in other sports such as Cricket, Volleyball and Football. I must say, it had a telling impact on my catching skills, which are exceptional, especially my out field catching, and high catches were lauded by my mates. It was possible because I used to judge the flight of the ball well and would get into positions quickly that made me take some blinders with ease.

Subjective understanding of these concepts is not necessary and many who master this art are actually unaware of that fact that they have mastered it. However, understanding these concepts is useful for a novice as conscious efforts to learn can speed up the process. The skill of "ball flight judgment" is one classic example.