NO EDEN FOR ME

After winning against the Aussies, a picture that we all found on our Whatsapp messages was this:

So confident were we that not only did we dance but we made caricatures of Windies dancing and saying, Now we will lose to India…Oye Hoye!! But that fateful day, India lost. Here are some lessons we could have learnt from Sholay, a movie possibly every Indian including our cricketers have seen many times over.

1.       The Coin Matters: Jai had a coin which would always spin Heads and he always had his way. Jai was the thinking type, the calm one like our MSD but the only difference was Captain Cool forgot to get a coin with Head etched on both sides….Heads I Win, Tails You Lose as the saying goes did not happen that fateful day. All through the Championship, we were good at chasing or should I say Virat was good at it. We knew how much to score, plan it and then execute the chase clinically. Against the Windies, losing the toss and setting a target was our one big misfortune. Almost all the living Indians brilliantly said,…we should have scored at least 225 runs batting first on this pitch. Next time possibly we can ask our dashing Banking ka Boss, Raghuram Rajan to have some special coins minted to suit our cricketing champions.

2.       Goli & Kohli Matters: Although both Amitabh and Dharam Paaji were equal in stature and were both superstars, all our sympathies and devotion were to Jai. He died fighting till the last bullet. Possibly if he had more bullets as ammunition, he would have single-handedly vanquished the gang of dacoits who came from outside the village and plundered it often. Windies, similarly, came from half way across the globe, and may have lost had Kohli got more balls to play. Having scored 89 runs off 47 balls, think if our Virat had another 15-20 balls to play. We would have surely reached 225 runs and won the semis. While playing with Rahane who was playing well but maybe he could have rotated the strike to give the Number One Batsman more strike as could have Veeru ,who too was good at fighting, but ,maybe, he should have saved on his ammunition and given it to Jai.

3.       The Foot Matters: In the last scene of the magnum opus Sholay, Thakur was seen fighting Gabbar just with his feet. He even spurts out an immortal dialogue, “tere liye to mere paon hi kaafi hain.” In short, I can win against you just with my feet. Inspired by this movie, our cricketers forgot that in the Field of Wankhede, hands ought to have taken precedence over the feet. Look at the no balls bowled by Pandya. Not to be outdone our Spin Raja Ashwin also went over the line.  Forget the bowlers, our Sir Ravinder Jadeja while catching the ball on the boundary line touched the rope with his feet giving the West Indies a sixer and a life line. Our Captain Cool had shown during the Bangladesh match that he could out sprint the batsman Mustafizur Rahman even though he had a long bat in hand. Surely Dhoni would have also remarked, “tere liye to mere paon hi kaafi hain.”The learning from Sholay is, What worked then,Will not work now; what brought you into the semis will not take you to the finals.

4.       Gabbar Mattered Then & Now: Can you imagine Sholay without Gabbar….no way. He was bigger than the heroes and everyone else in the movie, even though he was a baddie. Ramesh Sippy tried achieving similar success by creating Shakaal in his next movie Shaan but the movie bombed. And so it was with our Indian Men in Blue. Shikhar Dhawan, who is also known as Gabbar, was dropped from the team. No doubt he too was playing a Baddie and like Gabbar was not scoring runs but you don’t change a winning combination. Had he played, possibly, he would have as usual got out early and Kohli would have walked out with his Excalibur and slaughtered the Windies with extra balls to play. Remember how many of us insisted on wearing the same set of clothes to the exams which were worn the day the exams went off well? Many a times we insisted on even wearing the same set of undergarments….Never change a winning combination.

5.       Everyone Can Be a Hero: Who knew Ramlal, Sambha and Kalia before Sholay became a hit…almost no one other than their parents and children. After the movie, they became heroes overnight. Touch your hearts and tell me for certain how many people can name the West Indies Team beyond Galye, Bravo and Sammy. Yet almost a good many will still remember the names of the all-conquering Windies of the 70s and 80s even today. But after that fateful day, Simmons, Russel, Badree, Braithwaite, Benn and others have all become big names. Hopefully we shall see them in many more movies in Indian Bollywood called IPL .The lesson learnt is one movie and one match can change fortunes.

6.       Russian Roulette is Dangerous: “Kitney aadmi thay?” remember how Gabbar questions the 3 men who came back empty handed after losing a fight to Jai and Veeru. “Sarkaar hamne aapka namak Khaya hai.””Ab goli khao!” Gabbar fires off three bullets in the air to ensure there are three bullets left in the pistol and then he rotates the magazine. “Ab hamey nahin pata kaunse khane mein goli hai aur kaun se mein nahin. Dekhen kiske hissey mein zindagi likhi hai aur kiskey mein maut.” With three bullets in the pistol Gabbar fires the first three shots all of which are blank and all three of the dacoits survive. They start laughing aloud that they have survived, they feel they have won the survival battle quite alike what the Indian Team felt after having survived Gayle and Samuels, the best batsmen in the West Indies team. But then they started celebrating and got complacent of the next minnows who were to follow. Although in Sholay, Gabbar was unfair to have fired after the first three shots had gone blank, the fact is that Russian Roulette is a dangerous game. The next 3 bullets West Indies fired were Simmons, Charles and Russel and it was enough for them to wrap up the match in style.

7.       You can Win Without Playing Actively: In the movie Sholay, Thakur is a smart chap. All he does is to hire two goons who beat the hell out of the Gabbar and his Gang. Did he fight anyone?No.  Did he run around anywhere?No. Darren Sammy has won five of his last six matches and if someone were to check what he did in the six matches is hardly worth mentioning. He has not scored more than 10 runs and taken wickets worth mentioning and yet he, like Thakur of old, won. The management lesson is that get yourself some good guys in your team and tell them, “Mujhe Gabbar Chahiye aur woh bhi zindda!” I am sure one day our famed institutions like IIMs will some day run a leadership course named Hakunamatata…Don’t Worry, Be Happy by Sammy.

To end, must write an ode for the billion die-hard Indians fans and our cricketing heroes.

I shall not go to Eden tomorrow

I shall burn my tickets tonight

Maybe give it to any beggar on the street

Give him my India shirt as well

Shall observe Earth Hours tomorrow

By shutting all lights and television sets

My heart will be with Dhoni and his boys

Lying in bed

Watching Sholay

singing...

Jab tak hai Jaan

Jaaney Jahan

Main Khelunga Main Khelunga….

SS