With the return of Indian Cricket team from the West Indies, lot of speculation and opinions abound. Questions starting with all Ws and and H is the order of the day.
But what exactly is the situation?
*Is our team that bad? or
* is it that we have lost the zeal to win?
* what does the word 'WINNING' mean by itself?
* What does it take to be a winner? and finally
* What is the expectation of a winner and from a winner???
To answer these lets look at the team selection and outlook of the players selected itself - The top three batsmen selected to represent to play for the country were on a comeback trail and the only committment they had was for themselves and their performance - not on the field but off the field (ads and sponsors) because most of the sponsors don't look at you if you are not in the pllaying 11!!! But beyond this these three guys were so focussed on themselves that the team's progress was the second priority.
Our captain is a nice Guy with the word " aggression" missing out from his vocabulary. He is focussed, dependable and technically correct - But winning is not being perfect - winning is about emotions, flamboyance, aggression, flashes of brilliance and ruthlessness - which was sadly missing in our captain.
Middle order has the master blaster and yuva of today both of whom are injury ridden and were coming out of injury. When was the last that we saw our boy wonder wearing an arm pad while batting??? Think winners fear of losing not getting hit!(Mohinder Amarnath, Krish Srikkanth, Sandip Patil to quote few examples of winners).
- Fame, exposure, adulation, money, personal satisfaction and sense of belonging - belonging with the people that is the mass who look forward to you performing and doing something which they want to do themselves!!!
Indian cricketers (most of them already have these through their advertisement sprees and endorsements.) have allthese by not playing cricket. The only belonging they have is that towards their agents and sponsors because if they dont perform or score they lose out on performance bonuses - so more pressure to keep the revenue coming than focus on the game itself.
Why should they perform on field? They are already adored by whole nation for their appearances on TV! By the products they endorse and most importantly by being unapproachable to the masses, and effectively disconnected from reality.
A winner is a person who works for a larger public cause. Indian players also work for a larger cause that is focussed on themselves and is arger than anything or anyone else inclusing the fans and well wisher,effigy burners and cricket maniacs.
A winner has immense self-esteem, self-respect, self-confidence, is highly motivated with the cause and has immense humility whereas most of our cricketers are narcissists with scant concern for the public.
Finally to be ainner you need to be in you own intense zone of focus - which is cricket - as against the focus on endorsements, sight seeing tours, dancing on the streets and giving comments that is arrogant and narcissitic.
To win India needs people who are close to reality and high focus on winning and not passengers who are there for the ride!
Rajesh
No comments:
Post a Comment