India loses again, badly. 4-1, and margins of losses are big too. Now the time to resort to nuances. To exploit the recesses in human brain which confuse 'complicated’ with ‘reason’. The tedium of analysis must be used and the claim of being “best”, still, must be defended. After all that’s what cricket loving people of India crave for. With sly the benchmarks of measurement should be switched lower, and such sub segmentations should be created where we still come out as best.
Although we claimed potential to be the best team in the world before the tour began, at the end of it people should be happy that at least we are the best version of ourselves. “This is best visiting Indian cricket team of past 15-20 years”, says Mr. Ravi Shastri. Suddenly, we are told to believe, it’s not about winning, ‘we fought better than our predecessors’ should be taken as winning argument and applauded. In typical Indian way he is claiming success by siting lower degree of failure: a success which doesn’t need achievement. “The best Indian pace attack ever”, says the cricketing oligarch. Cleverly hiding the fact that it is still not good enough to win a series abroad. Again, claiming success without achievement.
Mr Kohli scoring nearly 600 runs in the series is being made out as if the whole purpose of the tour was to redeem him from his past failure to an unblemished deity status. If commitment is the precursor to preparation, then it is clear where Mr. Kohli’s commitment lies. Kohli the player is more important than Kohli the captain, for Kohli the man. Challenges that Kohli the player faces are relatively easily manageable than the challenges that Kohli the captain faces, hence 600 runs in a series and yet team India loses the series 4-1. And that works fine for everyone. It is only when system fails that Gods can take place of prominence. Collective failure brings focus on individual achievements. Perhaps there is a meaning in the number of gods that we have, and why we create more every day. I’m sure Mr Kohli is happy being another one of them- a superstar of a defeated team. In some sense, our heroes are always a bit of tragic, for they display big capabilities but do not win.
Neither Mr Shastri nor Mr Kohli is a villain here. They are merely being one of us. We are complicit in the facade they are creating, the masterminds of our own delusion. This delusion is a system, where we do not define failure in terms of inadequacies, but in terms of misfortunes. We always end up glorifying the lost possibility by embellishing it by ever so big a misfortune. Our glory is always the lost one, never real, always so close yet missed by a whisker of misfortune. They are giving us a reason which they know we would give to ourselves. Something which expedites moving on.
See how Mr Shastri complains that good luck favoured English, not us:
“I wouldn’t say (we) failed badly. But we tried. We must give credit where it’s due. Virat and me were asked to pick the man of the series (for England) and we both picked Sam Curran. Look where Sam Curran has scored, and, that is where he hurt us. …at crucial stages in this series, he chipped in with runs and wickets. That was the difference between the two sides.”
(Ravi Shastri, Indian cricket team coach, on Sam Curran’s impact on the series, ET, Sept 15, 2018)
This is a statement of cunning. Coming from “Champion of Champions”, who has a past to claim the right of wisdom in the field of cricket, and have no doubt about it, is fully conscious of it, sounds desperate too. He knows anything else will be detrimental. Its vile lies in that it reduces the difference between victory and defeat to only a single factor. And this factor, as one can see, is more or less random, fortuitous; something that can not be anticipated and planned for. A divine intervention of sorts. I mean no one could have predicted- and therefore prepared for- that God would decide to benefit England with the miracle of Sam Curran! Everything else, of course, was taken care of in the preparation! Minus Sam Curran results would have been in our favour!
However, being aware that the gentleman speaking is the coach of the team and is trying to cover up particularly his own failure in order to save his job may help one see through the beautiful argument put forward by him. But, still, it’s a smart statement. In India you can justify any failure in the name of bad luck and bad karma. That’s how the whole business of sustained hope for victory, despite losing consistently, is maintained. When you justify every defeat as bad luck then the hope of luck turning in favour can continuously be maintained; after all it is controlled by fate, something assumed fair and unbiased. And, as more, so called, misfortune strikes you, higher the probability that soon luck would turn favourable, that, in fact, increases the eagerness to keep playing; typical gambler’s psychology.
Mr Shastri is a street smart cricketer and the kind of justification he is using is from these streets only. Here, on these streets, success always arrives as a stroke of luck. It is to no one’s credit in terms of planning, effort, and focus. His justification is derived from an argument originally concocted to defend failure, for it makes it easy to justify failure without accountability or guilt to the individual. And on these streets justification of failure is much more in demand than the recipe for success. Here success, as it is known, is not based on a method but is simply a rare absence of failure, a good luck.
We, Indian cricket team, were just unlucky that is all. Mr. Shastri is simply selling what is consumed here. Acceptance of failure without letting go of hope. Also, without any onus for future improvements; after all Sam Curran was a miracle, not a mere another cricketer- and dealing with miracles is not part of his job contract.
-Pulastya
Although we claimed potential to be the best team in the world before the tour began, at the end of it people should be happy that at least we are the best version of ourselves. “This is best visiting Indian cricket team of past 15-20 years”, says Mr. Ravi Shastri. Suddenly, we are told to believe, it’s not about winning, ‘we fought better than our predecessors’ should be taken as winning argument and applauded. In typical Indian way he is claiming success by siting lower degree of failure: a success which doesn’t need achievement. “The best Indian pace attack ever”, says the cricketing oligarch. Cleverly hiding the fact that it is still not good enough to win a series abroad. Again, claiming success without achievement.
Mr Kohli scoring nearly 600 runs in the series is being made out as if the whole purpose of the tour was to redeem him from his past failure to an unblemished deity status. If commitment is the precursor to preparation, then it is clear where Mr. Kohli’s commitment lies. Kohli the player is more important than Kohli the captain, for Kohli the man. Challenges that Kohli the player faces are relatively easily manageable than the challenges that Kohli the captain faces, hence 600 runs in a series and yet team India loses the series 4-1. And that works fine for everyone. It is only when system fails that Gods can take place of prominence. Collective failure brings focus on individual achievements. Perhaps there is a meaning in the number of gods that we have, and why we create more every day. I’m sure Mr Kohli is happy being another one of them- a superstar of a defeated team. In some sense, our heroes are always a bit of tragic, for they display big capabilities but do not win.
Neither Mr Shastri nor Mr Kohli is a villain here. They are merely being one of us. We are complicit in the facade they are creating, the masterminds of our own delusion. This delusion is a system, where we do not define failure in terms of inadequacies, but in terms of misfortunes. We always end up glorifying the lost possibility by embellishing it by ever so big a misfortune. Our glory is always the lost one, never real, always so close yet missed by a whisker of misfortune. They are giving us a reason which they know we would give to ourselves. Something which expedites moving on.
See how Mr Shastri complains that good luck favoured English, not us:
“I wouldn’t say (we) failed badly. But we tried. We must give credit where it’s due. Virat and me were asked to pick the man of the series (for England) and we both picked Sam Curran. Look where Sam Curran has scored, and, that is where he hurt us. …at crucial stages in this series, he chipped in with runs and wickets. That was the difference between the two sides.”
(Ravi Shastri, Indian cricket team coach, on Sam Curran’s impact on the series, ET, Sept 15, 2018)
This is a statement of cunning. Coming from “Champion of Champions”, who has a past to claim the right of wisdom in the field of cricket, and have no doubt about it, is fully conscious of it, sounds desperate too. He knows anything else will be detrimental. Its vile lies in that it reduces the difference between victory and defeat to only a single factor. And this factor, as one can see, is more or less random, fortuitous; something that can not be anticipated and planned for. A divine intervention of sorts. I mean no one could have predicted- and therefore prepared for- that God would decide to benefit England with the miracle of Sam Curran! Everything else, of course, was taken care of in the preparation! Minus Sam Curran results would have been in our favour!
However, being aware that the gentleman speaking is the coach of the team and is trying to cover up particularly his own failure in order to save his job may help one see through the beautiful argument put forward by him. But, still, it’s a smart statement. In India you can justify any failure in the name of bad luck and bad karma. That’s how the whole business of sustained hope for victory, despite losing consistently, is maintained. When you justify every defeat as bad luck then the hope of luck turning in favour can continuously be maintained; after all it is controlled by fate, something assumed fair and unbiased. And, as more, so called, misfortune strikes you, higher the probability that soon luck would turn favourable, that, in fact, increases the eagerness to keep playing; typical gambler’s psychology.
Mr Shastri is a street smart cricketer and the kind of justification he is using is from these streets only. Here, on these streets, success always arrives as a stroke of luck. It is to no one’s credit in terms of planning, effort, and focus. His justification is derived from an argument originally concocted to defend failure, for it makes it easy to justify failure without accountability or guilt to the individual. And on these streets justification of failure is much more in demand than the recipe for success. Here success, as it is known, is not based on a method but is simply a rare absence of failure, a good luck.
We, Indian cricket team, were just unlucky that is all. Mr. Shastri is simply selling what is consumed here. Acceptance of failure without letting go of hope. Also, without any onus for future improvements; after all Sam Curran was a miracle, not a mere another cricketer- and dealing with miracles is not part of his job contract.
-Pulastya
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