Can you today, in one day influence the world
around you? Can you change your country, your city?
Leave it be, your profession at least?
Javed Miandad, he of our growing up times, with
one low, self-confident swing of the bat in the late eighties, did, and that
too, in much less than a day. In one inspired moment of ‘can do’, he seemed to
have inflicted a deep and mortal wound into the psyche of the Indian cricket team.
The team thereafter just could not beat Pakistan it seemed. At least, not in
Sharjah. Whatever score they put up, it appeared would be hunted down by the
Pakistani batsmen. And between the Indian batsmen and any small target, seemed
to arise a fearsome Aaqib Javed out of nowhere, conjuring up magical hat-tricks
at will; and fantastically, only against the Indians it appeared. The air of defeat
seemed to cloying and suffocating, and perennially hanging around, and the self
belief that a bunch of fabulous cricketers had, seemed to be locked away safely
back home in India.
It was in the mind. Most of it at least, if not
all.
Be careful what you think, for your thoughts
become your words.
Be careful what you say, for your words become your actions.
Be careful what you do, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful what becomes habitual, for your habits become your destiny.
Be careful what you say, for your words become your actions.
Be careful what you do, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful what becomes habitual, for your habits become your destiny.
Google surprisingly,
did not definitively attribute the above to someone. Maybe I didn’t search hard
enough, but beyond doubt, the insight could not come, but from a wise one.
How many milliseconds separated Usha and an Olympic
medal in 1984? How many individual Olympic medals did India win in all of the twentieth
century? How many overseas test victories notched up by the India cricket team
before the Y2K bug?
Said the famous tagline for a shoe brand, you don’t
win silver; you lose gold.
Sport at the rarified levels of the elite and
professionals, is all about striving for that little extra. That, millisecond
which separates a medal winner from, literally, an also ran. Those little bits
of fish fin simulating swimsuits; those carved out squash balls inside gloves;
those reduced grams in a tennis racquet. Those invisible back-room boys analyzing
patterns, and rhythms and swings and such other minutiae, hoping to give their
boys, that bit of advantage.
That said, separating the winners from the
also-rans is also another little thing. Self belief. That little thing which
makes a sportsperson believe in himself or herself, when all seems hopeless and
lost, and ignominy is a ton of bricks just around the corner. That imperceptible little thing which digs
deep, hard and strong, through the bloody eyed pain. That thing which deep
within, says quietly first and then with a roar : This day is yours. No one can
take it away from you. Your destiny is yours. Just. Once. More. Now GET UP AND GET OUT THERE ! AND SEIZE
THIS DAYYYY AND MAKE IT YOURS!
281, Kolkata. In hindsight, I believe it was
not about a solitary and fabled victory at all. Far from it.
In hindsight, that knock defined a decade of cricket
in India. Indeed, probably of sport in India itself?
How many overseas test victories did India win from
2001 to 2010? England, South Africa, Australia, the object of cricketing wet
dreams? How many Olympic medals did India win in just 2008 and 2012? Six medals
in 2012 alone ! Who would have ever thought? How little, or how much that knock
of Laxman's had to do with it, who knows?
For sure it would be foolish and naive to
believe that this is all the fruit of that One Day, the Fabled one; and all the
doing of that one man. Beyond doubt, hundreds, even thousands perhaps have
sweated collective blood, sweat and tears, so to speak, to have these results
achieved. But did not the effort of Vangipurappu Venkata Sai Laxman on That Day
not have anything to do with it at all? Nothing?
Did one gentle and seemingly soft human being,
in the course of a day, not teach us as a sporting country, to wipe away the
blood from our nose, sweat from our brow, and then say ‘Okay buster, now bring
it on then; let’s see what you got’.
