The recently concluded India-Australia cricket series had a few important life lessons, not just for sportsmen but even for the rest of us. “Magic” Johnson, a U.S. basketball player, once said, “In life, winning and losing will both happen. What is never acceptable is quitting.”
Bundled out for a paltry 36 in the first Test, the captain leaving soon after, losing the best bowlers to a spate of injuries, getting hit and being battered and bruised as they went along, this Indian team, even while being bent, refused to break and instead rose like a phoenix from the ashes to vanquish Australia, a team endowed with arguably the best bowlers in the world. What was remarkable about this series victory was that it was achieved though just three or four tried-and-tested players could pitch in.
Cricket is a team sport and nowhere was this more exemplified than in the way the Indian team performed. If the second Test saw the stand-in captain lead from the front, the third saw two injured men, standing and battling pain and body blows, dogged and determined to survive and take their team ashore. The fourth Test was as much about the exuberance, talent and fearlessness of greenhorns as it was about the determination, concentration and single-mindedness of a veteran who took repeated blows on his body but refused to wilt. The message of this, I am sure, would not have been lost on the colts in the team. Nowhere was the saying “cometh the hour, cometh the man” more apt than in this series.
This series also brought home to us that success in sports as in other fields can never be unidimensional. One requires the Pants and the Gills as much as one requires the Pujaras and the Viharis. When to attack, when to defend, the situational awareness, the shot selection, the field placements, the line and length while bowling, all need to be borne in mind. In life, the attribute of adaptability is what comes closest to mind.
Success in the pursuits of life, as in cricket, has a lot to do with self-belief. How else does one explain the emergence of players like Siraj, the son of an autorickshaw driver, or Natarajan, the son of a construction labourer, from disadvantaged backgrounds who made their country proud?
Last but not the least, what these young cricketers taught us is that it does not matter what the challenges are or who one’s opponents are. All that matters is the will to put in those hard yards, work as a unit, endure all the pain and the agony en route, but never ever think of quitting.
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