Issue 9 | 13 Jan. 2007

Where's the Will to Win?

The Indian cricketers' so-near-yet-so-far African Safari brings to mind two apt descriptions of failure. 'The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing a thing exactly right,' says one, while the other admonishes you saying, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.'

So which one would suit our boys? Is this a "damn foolish" team? Or do they end up being always "nearly right"?

After winning the first test, we had no business to lose the second test, but our batsmen let us down. The world's best batting lineup (no one uses this cliché anymore) could not bat out three sessions and we graciously (sic) opened a window of opportunity for the South Africans. In the decider, our bowlers too joined the act. In the first innings, we had South Africans on the mat, but our bowlers let them slip and get away with a healthy 380-plus runs. Batting second, our batsmen compounded the lapse by their shoddy performance and the series was as good as over before the last ball of the game was bowled.

Yes, we often get it nearly right, but not exactly right. We are good enough for a few hours, a few sessions, a few days, but not the whole game. On paper, we are good enough (are we??) but on the field, we are ordinary personified. In the last match, Dravid's boys played Chris Harris, the debutant spinner, as if he were a Shane Warne on the rampage, and Graeme Smith's men played the battle-scarred veteran Kumble as if he were a little excited debutant. The unfancied South African batsmen like Ashley Prince showed a pugnacious will to fight it out, while our much famed batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar and Dravid betrayed lack of any will. If the former took his team to a hard fought victory, the latter piled on the pressure on their team.

Defeat after crushing defeat, the beleaguered captain Rahul Dravid continues to take heart at the "positives" from the losses - the performance of our fast bowlers (Sreesanth and Zaheer Khan), youngsters (Dinesh Karthik), and Ganguly's successful comeback. True, but of what use are these if they are not going to help us win.

The Indian team is playing, not to win, but to "not win" - today we lose without a fight, tomorrow we put up a fight and lose, and the day after, we (might) win, and then it is back to Ground Zero.

So long as each and everyone in the team (and not 2 or 3 out of 11) plays to his potential and plays with a winner's mindset in most, if not all the sessions, all the days, in all the games, we will only end up being nearly right and our Men in Blue will win only once in a blue moon.