Manish Kumar Joshi
When Sunil Gavaskar had retired, it was said that the player should say goodbye to the game when he is at his top. On his retirement, people would request him to return. This is the case when a player must withdraw from the game. This statement was made by Gavaskar when cricket was not a professional. Today cricketers play till the age of 40.
Gavaskar was a tennis professional when he made this statement. Then players like Martina Navratilova were winning Grand Slams even after the age of 35. Jan McEnroe and Evan Lendl were also becoming more successful with age. Chris Evert Lloyd’s game was getting better with increasing age. Then no tennis player was ready to hang his racket on the peg. For this reason, Gavaskar’s words do not apply to professional sports, but Australian Ashleigh Barty, the world’s number one tennis player, has announced her retirement. His age is 25 years.
Ashleigh Barty could have won all four Grand Slams now. She has won the French Open in 2019, Wimbledon in 2021 and the Australian Open in 2022. She has won 15 singles and 12 doubles titles in her short career spanning 11 years. In this way their potential can be estimated. She is the second tennis player from her country to become the world’s number one player. Barty has a different mindset. She is the like-minded player of Justin Henin who said goodbye to her game while at the top. Justin Henin also retired at the age of 25.
Barty said that she has achieved everything she wanted in tennis. Now she wants to do something new in her life. Ashley didn’t shy away from the game for the first time. Even before this, she had parted ways from the game in 2015. He started playing cricket in 2015. Soon she was selected for a team of Big Besh, the biggest league in Australia’s cricket.
She also scored a century while playing women’s cricket. In 2016, she returned to tennis when her name started running for Australian women’s cricket. He won his first WTA title. After that, there was a flurry of titles. She plays fast paced tennis and has a strong hold on the game. He was considered by tennis experts as a long race horse. In such a situation, he gave the decision not to play further.
Barty felt that after winning Grand Slam events and becoming number one, there was nothing to achieve and that she had enough time to do more. But she is not the first player that she has said goodbye to the game at a young age. Earlier, Justin Henin and many other players also said goodbye to the game after success at a young age.
In fact, in professional sports, where success is seen to shine, there is also pressure on the player. The player also has to face mental stress. Many players even take the services of a motivation professional to deal with mental stress. During the Corona period, there was additional pressure on tennis players. Barty spent 90 percent of his time in Biobubble in 2021. They went straight from the hotel to the court and from the court to the hotel. Due to this, the player had to face the stress of being away from home and living in the biobubble. Amidst this tension, he won the Australian Open title.
For a player who wants to be independent, it is not easy to deal with stress. Apart from playing cricket, Barty is crazy about a lot. She knows how to make a lot professionally. She has become a qualified barista for this. Apart from sports, he takes pleasure in this work. We should recognize that in tennis and other sports, the player has to face stress. The biggest reason for withdrawing from sports is the stress and restrictions created by competition in sports.
Sports administrators need to pay attention in this regard. Efforts should also be made to remove the causes arising out of competition in sports. The game should always remain a source of laughter and pleasure for the player. Sports should be a means of relieving stress. Ashleigh Barty needs a stress-free job that brings joy. This should happen in the game as well.