Saturday, Dec 28, 2002
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Cricket
By Nirmal Shekar
They've lost, they've lost and they've lost. It's almost as if it is the only thing the Indian cricketers are capable of in New Zealand — losing. About the only consolation is, it is never a matter of sameness. A sports team that a whole nation is obsessed with has been inventive enough to find a new way to lose each time. It was a mauling in Wellington, a rather close thing — for a short while at least — at Hamilton and a heart-stopping, soul-shattering defeat snatched from the jaws of victory at Auckland. But the bottom line is, a loss is a loss — and that's all that the team has experienced on this tour so far. Post mortems can be gut-wrenching but if lessons are to be learnt from a defeat, then the Indian cricketers have proved to be very poor learners indeed. After all, knowledge is no guarantee that you'd avoid the pitfall the second time around, or even the third time, or the fourth... Critics and expert commentators have pointed to a dozen things — or more — that are wrong with the team. Batsmen's tactical inadequacies. Lack of will to hang in there and fight. Inability to adapt to conditions far different from what they are used to in the sub-continent. All very well. But what of this: perhaps losing has simply become a habit with Sourav Ganguly's boys in New Zealand. And it is a habit which is — as they have found out — very difficult to shake off, a habit that is reflected in the body language as much as a smoker's is in his fingertips and an alcoholic's is in his breath. In sport, at all levels, but particularly at the very top, a despicable side of losing is its contagion factor. Losing begets more losing. A team/individual can be on a roll both ways, up as well as down. At the moment India is rolling the wrong way. It is often said that it is in defeat that man reveals himself. If that is true, the Indian cricketers have been an endless revelation, really. In a game celebrated for its `glorious uncertainties,' a shocking certainty is that, in alien conditions, the Indian cricketers will be found clueless. Defeat, in itself, may not be such a dishonourable thing. After all, the true test of a man's character lies in his ability to treat the two impostures — triumph and disaster — with Kiplingesque equanimity. This is particularly so in the world of sport where success and failure materialise almost at once — after all, there can be no winner without a loser, or even a bunch of losers, to leave behind. But there are many kinds of losses. And the one that is tough to accept is the loss of a side that has the potential and the class to be a winner. After all, it would be easy to dismiss the three losses in New Zealand with a shrug if India did not have the kind of talent that it possesses. Can't this team ever go for the jugular? Even when the enemy is disarmed — as was the case in the first one-day match — and is sticking his neck out for the inevitable chop, our boys turn the other way, quickly disarm themselves and surrender as a matter of habit. All this, of course, brings us to the heart of the matter. In sport, as much as in life in general, losing is like a chronic illness. The best antibiotics prescribed by the best of doctors seldom work. And if the team is not to be tainted forever as a loser, what it needs is a dramatic change in attitude. Several years ago, the great tennis coach Harry Hopman, told this writer that the only way to stop a losing streak is to pause, take a deep breath, and tell yourself that you are not a loser. "You've got to start believing that you are a winner. All the resources won't help if you lack this belief,'' Hopman said. "All great champions are believers. They start with the belief that they cannot be beaten.'' In different people, different teams, this belief is reflected in different ways. But there is one thing in common: champion teams hurt when they are beaten. And the question now is, are Ganguly's boys hurting enough after the losses? Come on boys, wake up and start believing. A country of over a billion people believes in you. Now it is time for you — the Indian team — to believe you cannot lose anymore.
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