Naas Botha is certain he'd have little trouble picking between his best kickers in the side.
It's not the recently-appointed head coach of the Indian rugby teams talking smug. With a double tap on the table we're seated at in the KIIT hostel in Bhubaneswar, the former Springbok legend tells us it's faith in the science of genetic brain profiling. It's the reason he doesn't imagine himself facing the usual coach conundrums. Beyond rugby, this deep-dive into how the mind is structured fascinates him.
"If you know how each player in your team is made up," Botha explains, "which position on the field suits their dominant functionalities, whether they thrive under pressure or implode or whether they like being spoken to or left alone, it makes it easier for you to get the best results out of them."
Before the sub-continent coach job happened, the mission of taking this message to untapped territories turned Botha into a willing ambassador, bringing him to India two years ago. Today, schools, corporate organisations and athletes form Edu-Profile's clientele with assessments beginning as early as age three.
The assessment isn't based on DNA swabs looking into chromosomal abnormalities. Instead, a 20-minute online questionnaire tests a person's five dominant modalities -- brain hemisphere, eye, ear, hand and foot. It explains which foot you'd use to test how cold the water is in a pool, which hand you'd use to throw a ball or why you prefer reading magazines from back to front.
Botha works closely with Pretoria-based Dr. Annette Lotter, who set out in this field three decades ago, while still a lecturer, after receiving skewed psychometric results of learners in rural South Africa. It moved her to explore non-biased testing without language barriers. Apart from cricket, she has also been working with South African rugby teams, golfers like Ernie Els and Charl Schwartzel, and is also running an academic program which assists students, parents and teachers with subject selection, study methods as well as career guidance.
"A 20-minute online questionnaire tests a person's five dominant modalities -- brain hemisphere, eye, ear, hand and foot. It explains which foot you'd use to test how cold the water is in a pool, which hand you'd use to throw a ball or why you prefer reading magazines from back to front."
Over a decade ago, Lotter worked with South African cricketer Wayne Parnell and his teammates while they were still part of the Under-19 developmental squad in 2008. She recalls the South African left-arm pacer's genetic profiles vividly - "left brain, left eye, left hand, right ear and right foot," and helpfully breaks it down for us. "A left-brain person likes predictability, structure and a good game plan and prefers sticking to it. Also, in his case, the cross dominance of hand and foot offers greater balance," she says, "On a normal day when he's relaxed, he has access to both sides of the brain (since the hand and eye work from right brain and the ear and foot work from the left) but under stress, the non-dominant right brain hemisphere was likely to switch off and affect hand-eye coordination." The inference then was that Parnell would fare better as a batsman if he's not sent in the end overs.
With 18 wickets from six matches, Parnell went on to finish at the top of the bowlers heap at that World Cup and batting twice at number six, and at three occasions on number seven, he stacked 134 runs in five innings, the fourth-highest for South Africa. Less than a year later, Parnell made his ODI debut against Australia in January 2009.
There are, it is understood, 32 different combinations of dominances between the left and right brain and ear, eye, hand and foot in existence with each having implications on the way a person is likely to react under stress. Lotter, an educationalist and occupational specialist, helps in anticipating these "blockages" that a person could suffer as a result and work on the emotional barriers.
Movement is one way used to deal with hemispheric dominance and stress. Moving both sides of the body in rhythmic fashion helps the body cross the mid-line (ability to cross over an imaginary line running down the center of the body, with arms and legs crossing over to the opposite side. Think: The children's game of "Simon says" which uses instructions and movements like "touch your right knee with your left hand" or "put your left hand on your right shoulder". In tennis, backhand and forehand swings or the overhead serve are good examples) and activates and integrates both brain hemispheres. The more often it's done, the stronger the links between both halves of the brain become, says Lotter. "I'd put a kid on a wiggly chair, but an athlete needs to be on the move constantly, jiggling, dribbling and just not standing still. That's why cricket is such a wonderful sport because when you bat you automatically cross the mid-line and access the other side of the brain."
" A left-ear person, we call them "Mother Teresa ears", is sensitive to how people sound. Negative verbal feedback can rattle them. So it's very important for coaches to know who the left-ear players on the team are because they can be very sensitive to how you speak to them." Dr. Annette Lotter
Take a sport like rugby. Every position is different and can indirectly dictate the ideal genetic profile. A hooker, for instance should ideally be right hand-left foot dominant for greater balance so that he can press straight into the scrum. But if he's left-dominant in both parts, he will end up pushing harder to the left and swing the scrum instead. While in cricket, a dominant left foot can make an agile fielder since it allows greater advantage in quick change of direction while a left-handed batsman has the gift of elegance and unpredictability. "A right-hand batsman," Lotter says, "can be more predictable in his shots. It's what we call "structured hands". While someone like Jonty Rhodes is an excellent example of what left-foot dominance can do for a fielder."
The basic idea is to comprehend how the body can react under adverse or stressful scenarios and how involuntary reactions of non-dominant parts can be minimised. "So someone with a left ear and left eye will probably have a terrible game if his wife's glum face in the crowd was last thing he sees before running into the field. A left-ear person, we call them "Mother Teresa ears," is sensitive to how people sound. I often give them earplugs before get on the field so they can't hear what the crowd is screaming. Negative verbal feedback can rattle them. So it's very important for coaches to know who the left-ear players on the team are because they can be very sensitive to how you speak to them," Lotter adds.
You can spot a left-ear early. They're often ones who fill their walls with posters, use lots of study nooks, are reluctant to raise their hand in class and would not be suited for a tackle-oriented role in sport. "If a coach is yelling instructions at a left-ear dominant player, he'd probably hear the noise but not process the words," Botha tells us, "I'm a right-ear person so the crowds can shout, scream, boo, call me names but it doesn't really affect me. I think that's helped me in my career."
It's why Botha plans to get all players on the Indian rugby teams profiled following the Asian Championships in June. He vouches that he's found results in doing so within his own family. "Both my girls play field hockey and earlier I'd be standing by the field and yelling if they botched up a pass or dribble. Now that I have them profiled, I know what doesn't work. I just make eye contact or maybe throw a short whistle and they know what I mean."
Botha has been taking this program to schools in New Delhi and Mumbai for two years now. In one such school he visited, out of 1800 profiles tested, only seven kids had similar dominances. "How many Kohlis' would you reckon we'd get out of those?" he queries, "Even one would be an overstatement. Sport is stress, lasting right until the final whistle, or like in the IPL, the very final ball of the final over. Some guys are brilliant, some can fall apart."
With India boasting of nearly as many smartphones users as the U.S., Botha believes a mobile app which packages and delivers this concept, together with the assessment module in an easy, downloadable format, could be a game-changer. They're still building it for users. "It's not just sport," says Botha, "just knowing yourself better, changes the way you look at the world."