Virat Kohli’s recent form has attracted lots of criticism from fans, former players, and commentators. Having said this, there has been an out pouring of support for arguably one of the greatest players of the modern era.
This article isn’t to support or criticise. It’s purely to shed some light because like you, I am a fan of the game of cricket and of Virat Kohli but more importantly, I believe that when we look at the research or science, it allows us to be a little more empathetic to the players in concern, not to mention, put in place healthy coping strategies.
Slumps in performance in any sport are a part and parcel of the game. However, some slumps can be predicted, and whilst I was pretty sure this one was coming, I have no evidence to stake claim to this. The more important question though is, what was I looking at that allowed me to make this somewhat calculated assumption?
Virat Kolhi sits amongst an illustrious group of atheltes who have experienced this exact same phenomena. Tiger Woods won 13 Majors on or before 2007 and only two post. Roger Federer won 15 Grand Slams on or before 2009 and only 5 post. Kobe Bryant won three NBA Championship on or before 2003 and two post. In almost every case, the time gap between their last Slam, Major or Championship and the next was between two to five years. If you exclude the single outlier data point in Federer’s case, the majority of the post date achievements in question occured in the later part of the timeline in reference.
So what exactly happened at these pivotal points in their career?
The evidence is not well documented and this isn’t a trend with every athlete but what happened in these cases is called Postpartum Slumps — a slump in performance following the birth of their first child or children. In fact, postpartum anxiety in males is reported to be 1 in 10 which means that 1 cricketer in every team is statistically likely to experience this. The reason why we don’t notice this phenomena is because the likelihood of the one player experiencing postpartum anxiety being the most valuable player in the team is marginal, if anything. The others who experience this are simply dropped from the team following a slew of poor performances, often marking it off as form related and rarely ever questioning the reason behind it. To add to this narrative, about 50–60% of players in a male sports team would be single or married without children, making the margin of this occurrence even smaller.
I have spent more than fifteen years studying and understanding the psychology of peak performance. In particular, the relationship between personality, mood and the ability to perform under pressure. This is the interesting thing about athletes. Roughly speaking, from the age of 8–10 years, they are the sole focus of their ecosystem’s attention. You could probably find a direct correlation between the success of an athlete in the early / middle of their career vs the attention given to them from early adolescence. (This is a calculated presumption because there is no data to test this, not objectively that is). The reason why this postpartum anxiety is present and so pivotal has to do with the fact that after the birth of their first child, for the first time in almost twenty years, the attention shifts drastically, meaning that they are not the most important person in their immediate ecosystem anymore (in their minds). With the wheel of this subconscious psychological shift turning, their career and leadership responsibilities still remain intact. Postpartum male anxiety should be present in almost every work ecosystem but we lack the data to support it. The samples are biased towards females.
Understanding the psychological make-up of an athlete / leader is critical. Our personality is moulded from our environment, going back to our earliest years. One’s ability to lead with confidence is also directly proportional to this environment. Research has shown that children who come from financially affluent backgrounds are bigger risk takers in business. This is just a sample of how our ontological conditioning impacts our psychological makeup. Virat Kohli and other such GOAT’s are no different. They are moulded to absorb pressure and deliver in a certain skills set, but the birth of a their first child changes the modus operandi they have come to know and trust for success.
I have found strong correlations between personality markers, strength markers and mood markers with respect to an athletes response to stress. Which means these situations are avoidable! Not just for the Virat’s of the world but for any leader in a high performance environment (an environment where the margin for error is minuscule and the penalty for failure high). Every psychological markers responds to stress in a different manner and using the correct data sets we can predict the two things:
- The amount of time required for a person to acquire a certain skill set to succeed at the highest level. This approach turns the traditional talent identification model on its head, from looking at performance statistics, dna and technique to focusing on a timeline and probability of psychological maturation with respect to coping with stress. This means, we can now tell how long it would take an athlete to be able to succeed at the highest levels with standard deviations based on a psychological anomaly.
- The impact of these anomalies also shows up in our physiology prior to a performance slump. You can safely predict it and create healthy coping mechanisms that allow an athlete to manage both stresses — on and off the field.
Ever since the Rio Olympics in 2016, mental health in athletes has been on the forefront. Some issues like coping with pressure and training, anxiety and depression are dominating the head lines which makes the subtle nuances around mental health even harder to diagnose.
I have seen the impact of postpartum anxiety and depression in many leaders and athletes. Postpartum anxiety is real but the masculinity ego combined with the fact that no one wants to blame their new born for a drop in performance, a very difficult condition to diagnose and treat in time and respectfully without drawing too much attention.
Email: shayamal.vallabhjee@gmail.com
