Cricket and Life

What are the positives in this cricket test series for India? Difficult to see, but the bowlers played well in the first test. Have not yet (on Day 2) produced wickets in Test 2, so we will wait and see.

But the lessons are clear. That a player cannot go on forever. But I want to extend the logic to everything in life. Barring a Dev Anand, you cannot be a romantic hero forever. Even he wasn't successful after a point. A heroine seems to have a much shorter half-life. So what to speak of lesser mortals? Our productive lives are probably short, like the reproductive lives of half the species. We should try and discover what we like to do best, and then follow the Nike philosophy- just DO it.

I know we Indians like to pontificate rather than do things. We are better talkers than doers. We dither endlessly as a culture or as a people. But as individuals, we have had doers in every sphere, from Metro Rails (Sreedharan) to milk distribution (Kurien) to directing quality films (Guru Dutt, Satyajit Ray, Basu Chatterjee, Hrishikesh Mukherjee), to entertainers (Kishore Kumar, Lata, Asha, RD Burman, etc.), to social workers (Medha Patkar, Baba Amte), institution builders (Nehru, the Tatas), Bankers (RBI saved us from many a financial crises, and deserves a thank you for it), and countless others who may not be known. It is because of them that we progress at 7% and more.

Those who can't, must accept it and move on, to give a chance to some others who may be waiting in the wings. The tendency of clinging on is a hard one to give up, admittedly, but I think we all (not just cricketers) need to learn- NOW.