The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : We haven’t got any momentum going

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We haven’t got any momentum going

There’s a sweet joy in coming back from defeats, writes Anil Kumble

Over this past week, there have been lots of things happening from the team’s perspective and it’s not been a particularly happy time.

What is far more important to say, on behalf of so many other players too, is that we are shocked and saddened by what has happened in Jaipur. Terror attacks are always senseless and cruel. They can never be justified by any logic and my heart goes out to all the victims who have suffered and the families they have left behind. Life will obviously never be the same again.

Coming back to the Royal Challengers and the happenings of the past few days, while I totally understand that everyone’s upset about the results so far, as players and professional cricketers, we are all very upset too. We all want to go out and win every game that we play. The problem? We haven’t really got any kind of momentum and something or the other has happened when we have managed to get something going. In the last game too, Misbah started brilliantly and then got out in unusual fashion. What’s important though is that at this time you need all the support and backing you can get. You need the people around you, the people who matter, to understand what sport is all about, to realise that no one goes out there to lose.

What’s unfortunate is that, invariably, everyone starts pointing fingers at the captain. So it stands all the more to reason that people within the camp then stand up and say ‘we believe in you and your team’. That’s what’s most important in this kind of situation.

People have to understand that the most important aspect of becoming a sportsman is the joy of winning and the successes you have, the successes you taste.

The whole aim of playing sport is in the challenge, in competing, in giving your all to do better than the guy who’s facing you.

At the same time, most of us will have our fair share of failures but there’s another sweet joy in coming back from those defeats, almost always much stronger.

If you look at the successes that teams playing in the IPL have had, it’s mostly been about the top three batters going on to bat the team to a big score.

That will clearly be the focus of our discussion ahead of the game scheduled for Saturday.

The Rajasthan Royals have had a fantastic run so far, they have gelled really well as a team, although at the start, not many gave them any chance of going the distance.

At this point, they’re right up there. They’ve never lost a match at their home ground and depending on prevailing circumstances allowing us to play there, it’s important for us to change that.

We’ll be giving it our best.

Hawkeye/Chivach Sport

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