Cricket and the Karmayoga: a comparative study of peak performance

This essay discusses the idea of ‘non-attached action’, a non-teleological attitude allied to peak performance within armies and sports teams. It is a way of relating to one's actions as simple, non-intended events, without consideration of their possible consequences. This attitude is related specifically to cricket through analysis of typical accounts (of the kind given by ex-player commentators) of the psychological approach of expert cricketers, and through comparison with the martial-existential philosophy taught by Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita (the ‘Song of the Lord’), a section of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. Particular attention is paid to notions of non-agentive behaviour, of playing one's ‘natural game’ and of being ‘in the zone’, and to techniques of mental preparation and mental hygiene. The essay is framed by a wider juxtaposition of cricketing activity and discourse with martial activity and discourse in the Mahabharata and in Europe