After Nidahas Trophy, it was embarrassing for me: Vijay Shankar  

Mumbai, June 6:  Mind Masters by MFORE captures the various nuances of mind skills training through known sports personalities and their journey at large. This week talented cricketers Abhinav Mukund and Vijay Shankar will be hosted by S. Badrinath, where they discuss ‘Hope and Self- Motivation.

Both Mukund and Shankar have had their set of challenges, and during the episode they talk about their initial days, the evolution of the sport and building a career between injuries. Their personal anecdotes bring out the importance and need of mental strength to become a successful sportsperson

Despite hailing from a family of cricketers Vijay Shankar took a longer and difficult way to make his name. He started out as a batsman who bowled off-spin.

Talking about his experience, Vijay Shankar speaks on dealing with failure on Star Sports 1 Tamil show Mind Masters by MFORE: "I learnt two big lessons at an early stage from Badri and Bala (L Balaji). Badri said to me – ‘if you're good enough no one can stop you from playing at the highest level'. And Bala told me – ‘life is all about handling embarrassments.' While it sounded something big at that time but when I started experiencing it, I understood it really well.

"After Nidahas Trophy, it was embarrassing for me. While overcoming these embarrassments, I remembered these lessons shared by them and it helped."

On the other hand, Abhinav Mukund who also hails from a family of cricketers and came into cricket through traditional way by playing under-age state cricket and making his Ranji Trophy debut at the age of 17.

"It's a very underrated subject, we learnt a lot by watching others, the routines they are doing, mentally what all they are doing. But through a proper program for ways to train your mind, how much your subconscious mind helps and how much your conscious mind helps you – I learnt and realized all this only after playing a lot of cricket.

"Consciously how we spend time for our fitness, batting and bowling, we need to give that much time to mental training, I think over the last 10-15 years, cricketers in Tamil Nadu have rarely done that," Mukund said.