Sachin Tendulkar would make a great case study

On turning 40, American golfer Tom Kite was asked by a team of curious journalists as to how much longer he would continue to play in the Majors — after all he’d already achieved more than most and personal wealth couldn’t be an issue for him.

The Texan paused for a moment and then replied, “Heck I don’t know how many more Majors I’ll play in, or even how much longer I’ll play the sport for. But one thing I do know is that I’m sure, I gonna have some fun finding it out!”

It would be interesting to ask Sachin Tendulkar the same question — I suspect you’d hear a similar response. He might have some fun finding it out.

Tongue-in-cheek humour aside, Kite’s mindset can be explained using a prominent framework for understanding “why” older athletes continue their participation in elite sport, despite their inevitable and increasingly age-related declines in perceptual function, nerve conduction speed and various physiological capacities.

In the parlance of sport’s psychology, it is called self-determination theory, which proposes that different types of motivation can exist and that they differ by the degree to which they are self-determined.

On the high end of the self-determination continuum, athletes report intrinsic motives such as to experience stimulation, have fun and excitement by creating something or accomplishing things; on the low end, participation is
reportedly being regulated or controlled by both internal pressures such as perfectionism, guilt, identity crises, and unhealthy ambition, and external pressures such as material and financial rewards.

Of course, extrinsic reasons for aging athletes continuing to play elite sport will always exist and are not unimportant. However, this does not mean that extrinsic factors should be promoted or that they currently ‘motivate’ star players like Sachin Tendulkar.

As a national treasure, an investigation of the batting great’s choices, effort, and persistence tendencies, and their relationship to his recent performances and, in fact across his career lifespan, would make an interesting case
study.

I feel certain that his redoubtable mindset is key to everything — it always has been and it always will be.

(Perth-based Gordon is credited to have brought about a turnaround in Team India’s fortunes during their 2003 World Cup campaign in South Africa, where the team, after a disastrous start, eventually reached the final)