The Human Mind is a tricky Thing - To Watch or not to Watch!

The Human mind is a tricky thing. It makes us believe what we want to and what we believe becomes a fact and later a theory and finally a stereotype.

This in marketing is referred to as the trinity of Selective Attention, Selective Retention, and Selective Absorption. Let me illustrate.

I always believed that watching a sports match live or even a live telecast is bad luck for the team that I support. I remember Sachin scoring 186 at Rajiv Gandhi's Cricket Stadium in 1999. Dr.C.R.K Reddy and I had tickets but I refused to see Sachin in blood as I believed that my attending the match would give him bad luck.

I am not alone in this belief. Anand Mahindra of Mahendra and Mahendra and Amitabh Bachchan also believe the same. It is said that Amitabh would sit in the adjacent room and Jaya or Abhishek would relay the score.

Now with the internet, we sometimes sneak in the score surreptitiously but let me assure you with a guilty mind. To cut a long story short, Sachin scored a magnificent 186 and CRK Reddy was thrilled to watch it live. I was delighted too. I felt that It was my not seeing that allowed Sachin to score 186. If I had attended the live match he would have scored a zero (I sincerely believed that).

So I refuse to see any match where there is a lot of stress, Which means that when India is facing difficult times I would switch off. The same is the case with SRH matches or any other teams that I support. I prefer watching the highlights. The tension of close matches is too much to bear.

But things don't work out the same way as we want. Recently I had inspite of my apprehensions watched the European Championship semifinals first leg match between Real Madrid and Manchester City (I am a big fan of Manchester City). To my delight, Man City won the first leg 4-3.

The second leg was slated at 1230 hours midnight and I gave it a miss, citing to myself the famous excise "If I watch they would lose".

The next day morning the news was very disappointing. Man City lost and that too in a very dramatic fashion. They lost in a cranage that lasted just 3 minutes in the end. Real Madrid pumped in 3 goals from the 89th minute to the 92nd minute.

I was disappointed and my theory is not proving to be correct always. I even consoled myself by saying that the team lost during the regular time itself. That is in the injury time. That I declared was "pure bad luck".

But when I watched the highlights today on Sony LIV, I was taken back. At the end of the regulation time, the teams were tied 5-5. Extra 30 minutes were given and Real Madrid scored in the 2nd minute of the 30-minute extra time. So the loss was not as dramatic as I imagined. Manchester City has 28 minutes to claw themselves back into the contest but could not. So the better team won, Better luck next time Manchester City. And me, I am confused, "to watch, or not to watch"!

Mahendra Singh Dhoni Retires - Right time to Retire - Fading into the Sunset

 

Just thinking aloud! it is very difficult for sports legends to fade off into the sunset gracefully.

Either they have to be dumped or have to be removed forcefully. For a very long time Virendra Shewag persisted to play and hoped for a recall and Harbhajan still has not retired!

At the end of their careers Kapil Dev and Sachin more or less played for records. 434 wickets for Kapil and 100 test centuries for Sachin. It was quite painful to see them continue.

Players like Dravid and VVS Laxman had an inglorious retirement. The guy to retire in a flash was Adam Gilchrist who retired the minute he missed what he considered a regulation catch (in his view).

The Indian I admire who timed his retirement to a perfection is Sunil Gavaskar. He played a gem of an inning, 97 not out, almost guided India to a win against arch rivals Pakistan in 1987! He retired when he was at his peak! He retired when people were thirsting to see him bat on and on. But Gavaskar knew when to call it a day!

This is what Vijay Hazare once said about retirement, "retire when people ask why? Not when people ask why not?" How very thought provoking!!!

Why this monologue? I am quite perplexed at the negative publicity Dhoni is getting online. Ofcourse most of it is from Twitter which is known for blowing things out of proportion, but it is a medium that many swear-by and follow.

This is the same Dhoni that entire cricket world waited with bated breath to return. Pages and pages and many GBs of space was spent on him and within 4 days of IPL starting he has become the topic for heated discussion.

Do we want to remember Dhoni for all his exploits and his services to Indian cricket from 2004 to 2019 or do we want to remember Dhoni as he is portrayed in the dog-eat-dog world of social media! Choice is ours!

Sportsperson of the Decade – King Kohli.

An advance happy new year to all my friends, As we draw close to a terrific year and an interesting and turbulent decade, I was pondering on what to write. As usual, sports was the first thing that came to my mind and I thought who is the person who influenced our thought process the most in this decade? The answer was easy - King Virat Kohli.

I penned a 642-word letter and shot it off to The Hans India. Luckily for me, they obliged and published it in the letters column today (30-12-2019). Yes, they trimmed it! The letter is down to 426 words but no regrets. I am also posting the original letter for readers who want to read the letter as it is without any edits!

When Sachin Tendulkar retired on 16th November 2013, a sense of loss and nostalgia swept the country. Cricket lovers who swore by Sachin’s name made resolutions not to watch cricket any longer. It was as if the light had gone out of their life!

Emerging out of the shadows of the god of cricket was his prodigy, Virat King Kohli. For all his records and achievements, Sachin was not a leader. His record in test cricket speaks for itself, 4 wins in 25 tests as a captain.

As we draw to a close on a very eventful decade, Virat Kohli proved that he is a worthy successor. His work ethic, professionalism, his foresight, hunger for runs and success, ability to think beyond for the team and India, Aggression (sometimes he does go overbroad with his brand of machismo), his down to earth persona and his delightful marriage with Anushka Sharma has won him fans throughout the world. 

Under Sunil Gavaskar’s captaincy, India played well and looked at drawing test matches. It was Sourav Ganguly who gave Indian cricket the self-belief and the first glimpses of the swagger that would become pronounced under the captaincy of Virat Kohli. India now is the team that everybody wants to beat. They are the latest bullies in world cricket - the tag worn by West Indies in the eighties and which was later the domain of the Aussies.

India now has great batsmen, and in a country that was known for its spin wizards has the best fast bowlers in the world. Amazing the way Kohli has moulded this team into a bunch of world-beaters with a self-belief that is so endearing and charming! The only anomaly that Kohl wants to correct is India’s recent inability to win in ICC championships and world cups. I am sure that in the next decade even that anomaly would be rectified.

Some of the amazing world records that Kohli has amassed over the years are interesting to recap. In ODIs, Kohli has the second-highest number of centuries and the highest number of centuries in run chases. He holds the world record for being the fastest batsman to 10,000 and 11,000 runs in ODI cricket, reaching the milestones in 205 and 222 innings respectively.

His batting average in successful run cases in ODIs is a mild boggling 98.93. He almost averages 100 when India wins while batting second!

Virat Kohli is the only cricketer to have an average of 50 plus in all the formats, Tests, ODIs and T20I. That is terrific consistency. He now has 33 wins out of 53 as a test captain and trails Clive Lloyd, 36 wins out of 74, Steve Waugh, 41wins out of 57, Ricky Ponting, 48 wins out of 77 and Graeme Smith, 53 wins out of 109.

Virat Kohli has so far played 401 international matches (Tests, ODIs and T20I) and has scored a mammoth 21,444 runs and is at 8th place among all the players who have played this great game. He has scored 70 centuries and 101 half-centuries and has a staggering average of 57.13 across the formats. And he is only 31 years old and god willing he could play for another 7 to 8 years.

Indeed, Virat Kohli is the king! All others including Steve Smith, Kane Williamson, Joe Root and Babar Azam are only pretenders! King Kohli sits on the throne and does not look like relinquishing it to anyone in the near future.

What is on the bucket list of the king? Getting to a 100 centuries, as early as possible, win the world championship of test cricket and winning the world cup in the ODIs and T20I. That would be the crowning glory to an illustrious cricketer who has sacrificed a lot and has become a worthy successor to the god of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar. 

2nd article published in HANS INDIA - 'Buck Up Corporate India'

My 2nd article published in HANS INDIA (12th May 2014). The URL for HANS INDIA is epaper.thehansindia.com. Go to YOUNG HANS (Archives) section and my article is in Page III. I tried uploading the PDF of the article but Facebook is not accepting PDF uploading. And the JPEG of the article gets blurred on zooming!