India's two time World Cup-winning hero Yuvraj Singh has said golf could have helped him score "at least 3,000 more runs" in international cricket and advised his "students" Shubman Gill and Abhishek Sharma to take up the sport for its calming influence.
Emphasising the impact of golf on a cricketing career, former India captain Kapil Dev had earlier said he would have scored "2000 runs extra in cricket" if he had taken to golf during his playing days.
"I agree with Kapil Paaji, he said 2000, I would have scored 3000 more runs," Yuvraj said in response to a question during the launch of the IGPL tour schedule here on Thursday.
"Now the rules have changed in international cricket. In cricket, you don't get another opportunity. In golf, you play a bad shot, you can still hit a good shot and come back on the hole." The 43-year-old, who played a crucial role in India's triumph at the 2007 T20 World Cup and 2011 ODI World Cup, was addressing the media as a co-owner and brand ambassador of the IGPL.
"If you get out, you're sitting in the room thinking about the next game. But if it was the second day, you would have just got out and played golf with your friends. You go to a game with a fresh mind. Sometimes it's good to go and play another sport and come back fresh," he said.
"So if suppose India is playing, and are playing one day and there's a gap of three days, and the guy goes and plays golf, the media says that they are not practising. So that mindset also has to change. The more fresh you are, the better the performance is going to be.
"I tell all the young cricketers to try and play golf, hit the ball, see how you feel. Because sometimes too much practice is also not good for you. Sometimes when you're not scoring runs, you want to practice more with golf as well. You want to hit more balls. But sometimes it's good to relax." Asked if he has told his wards -- Gill and Abhishek -- to play golf during cricket tournaments, Singh said: "I have told them to play golf and I encourage them to play. It's very hard to find time but I think, IPL is a good time for them to actually find time and hit some balls.
"It's up to them. Now they are superstars of the game and they have to decide what's going help them to be better. If golf can be something, then they have to decide that. But I encourage all the athletes to play golf. I think it's a great way to unwind and it's a great for the mind." Will it help them? "I feel that any sport that helps you relax is going to be less taxing on the body, more fruitful for the mind. If you see the culture of golf, speaking of Australia, South Africa, England. Majority of the best cricketers have played golf from a very young age.
"You see a lot of these guys actually play a lot of golf and less cricket practice during tours. You can't change something in a game in three days. But how can you recover and be mentally fresh for a game? "So I just feel it's just not cricket. For any sporting person who plays any sport in the world, should play golf because eventually it will bring out the best in them in their sport."
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