May 24th 2014 Report

Dear Team

Most of us follow Cricket here in India, and I am sure many of us would have watched the nail-biting finish of the Saturday IPL match between MI and RR. Surely it was one of the best of thrillers I have watched, a thought occurred at almost near the end that something similar happened in our tournament match on the same Saturday where we were in the same situation to qualify ( quarter final)  we had to win with a  big margin.

 

We had lot of heated arguments exchanged between players/umpires/organizers and due to that all the players were really charged up. We lost the toss and had to bowl first and Rana lead the bowling attack superbly again and he got an ample support from other bowlers ( Athreya, Ilan, Preethish, Kiran).

 

Though Harsha opened in the first match , we decided to sent Satish to open the innings so that we can strengthen our middle order batting where Harsha can play some cameo in the later part of the innings which we missed in the first match. Fortunately both the plans worked out and Satish played an amazing innings. He provided the quick start that was required to chase the target ( 68 runs) quickly and truly deserved man of the match award! Ilan and Harsha played superb cameos and finally hats off to Athreya for hitting that crucial six which eventually pushed us to the next round and thank god he did not try his favorite switch hit(just kidding). This shows that our team has lot of potential to win matches from any position. Now we have qualified for the knock out round and the remaining matches are still there and I hope that brighter things are yet to come.

 

 One of the architects of the opposition team's batting was their captain who was apparently out as he was clearly out of the crease when the bails were dislodged and ball was still not dead. This would have ended their chance of putting up a decent total. Umpires did not give him out, nor did he walk out like a ‘Gentleman’. He stood his ground, and took their team's total to 67 runs. Though I am not much bothered about his innings I just want to share my thought with you.

When a team loses there was not much criticism on the person who was not ‘honest’, and a ‘good’ sportsman. However, we, the people, tend to react and behave differently if there would have been a success. Question is why, we treat people differently, or measure on a different yardstick based on the scale of success a person has got.

This is akin to all of us, managing to get away with petty ‘sins’, or ‘breaking the law’, when we are not in the limelight or not have become overly successful in the eyes of the public. Let us take an example – we speed on a freeway / highway, do not get penalized by the traffic cops, and we are happy. While, if the same happens to a celebrity (could be a politician, his / her family, actors, sportsperson), who are ‘successful’, then the same ‘we’ will ask the officials to take action, criticize every move of those individual.

Is it that our human nature or even cultures, creates different rules for different people, based on the success and fame we get? Maybe it is OK to behave this way?

 The lesson we learn from these situations is that when we are on our path to fame and success (in any small way, even in a small group or community), we will be watched; scrutinized, and ensured we are questioned about our behaviors…our race likes to sympathize with losers, but does not tolerate winners who cross the line – though both are humans! Maybe we expect winners to be above humans – super humans!!

What would have happened if we would have lost in the above scenario?  Opposite team batsman would have been labelled the bad boy of cricket…thankfully they did not win and we did not see any ‘noise’ against them...