By the end of June 2024, two wonderful things happened in Indian cricket. While most of us rejoiced at our men’s team winning the ICC T20 World Cup, the achievement eclipsed the achievements of our women’s cricket team which was simultaneously making the South African team bite the dust.

Let it be ‘ladies first’ for this article, and more so because many of us may not have followed the remarkable performances of Harmanpreet Kaur and company. Smriti Mandhana was undoubtedly the player of the One Day International three-match series. She scored back to back centuries in the first two ODIs and missed the same by just ten runs in the third outing. While the second ODI finished as a close one despite the Indian team having set up a mountain target of 326 runs for a South African victory, the first and third ODIs failed to see any South African challenge worth the name.

Moving from white ball to white dress cricket, the Indian team was once again on top with the opening pair of Shefali Varma and Smriti putting up a record 292 runs for the opening stand. In the process, the Indian team declared the innings at 603 for 6 wicket; the highest ever total accumulated in any women’s Test match. While Shefali scored a double hundred, Smriti scored a century, once again. However, when the Indian team won the Test by 10 wickets, it was spin bowler, Sneh Rana, who was adjudged as the Player of the Match for bagging 10 wickets. She is only the second Indian player after Jhulam Goswami to have bagged 10 wickets in a Test match.

In men’s cricket the scene was very different. It seemed more than once that the Indian team would lose its T20 encounter. The first such occasion seemed to be against Pakistan but some immaculate bowling by our bowlers coupled with some rash attitude of the Pakistani batters end up with an Indian victory. The danger appeared to be the same even in the title contest against South Africa when the opponents required just 30 runs off 30 deliveries, but just one over from Jasprit Bumrah, a great catch by Suryakumar Yadav despite being under tremendous pressure, followed by a miserly penultimate over of just four runs by Arshdeep, turned the probable result of the match upside down in India’s favour.

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Fame is the very first part of his name and he has stood by it. Yashasvi Bhupendra Kumar Jaiswal has come to stay in international cricket and it seems to be on his very own terms. The 22-year-old left-hand batter made his Test debut against the West Indies in July 2023 and joined the select band of cricketers who have scored a century on debut. It just wasn’t an ordinary century but one that went well above the 150 mark to finish at 171. In the history of Test cricket, only ten batters have scored more runs in their debut Tests and the two Indians among that list are Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma.

Knowing that the best place to get the right cricketing impetus at a young age of just twelve years, Yashasvi moved from his village residence of Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai. Life was tough; there were days when he had to go to sleep hungry but the determination in the young lad decided to overcome it all. He earned a few bucks at times through some part-time business but it was never enough to give a growing boy the nutritious diet required to gain the strength necessary to blossom into a hard-hitting batter.

Yashasvi was fortunate that coach Jwala Singh assessed the potential of the then teenager and took him under his tutelage. Thereafter, there was no looking back for Yashasvi Jaiswal. Yet to achieve his age of majority, Yashasvi scored two hundreds, one double hundred and an unbeaten half century in the Vijay Hazare Trophy.

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The year 2008 brought about a big change in my life when I moved from the Indian Air Force to the corporate world. It was a planned move in my career, but something else happened to my lifestyle which I had never planned or anticipated. I had always been notorious for being an early-to-bed person and 10 p.m. had always been the latest cut-off time for my studies even during the most crucial examination times.

The only exception was the period of study at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where the curriculum and mode of imparting knowledge have to be experienced to be believed; it just does not permit any physical or mental laxity, laziness or luxury. Needless to add, the professors are exceptional as are the case studies that one has to prepare by burning the midnight oil.

Out from the clutches of IIMA, as the General Manager of Forbes & Company Limited, I had every opportunity to revert to my old habits, which they say die hard, but one thing ensured that it was not to be: the start of the Indian Premier League. With the exception of a few matches, almost all matches continued to be decided in the last two overs of the match and starting at 8 p.m. it was not unusual for most of the matches going beyond 11.15 p.m.

Thanks to the organising skill of Lalit Modi, the IPL not only impacted my personal lifestyle but converted not only cricket but the whole sports world into a huge commercial venture which before 2008 was unforeseeable by any stretch of the imagination. Undoubtedly, Indian cricket and Indian cricketers have been the biggest gainers and the gain has not been limited to just commercial gains.

Foreign players and Boards that at one time did not refrain from misbehaving with their Indian counterparts are now judicious enough not to annoy their adversaries lest they are boycotted from participating in cricket’s most lucrative competition. At the same time, the Board of Control for Cricket in India now has a big reservoir to exhume cricketing talent in this country.

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“In sports, there’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent and that’s the aim for us tomorrow,” said Pat Cummins, Australian cricket team Captain, the day before the ICC World Cup final match held on 19 November.

And boy, did his team silence the crowd at the Narendra Modi Stadium that Sunday. The silence was deafening.

I’ve been cricket crazy for well over half of my life now. I still remember — I was home studying for my grade 11 exams, and my dad, who was the most hardcore cricket lover in the world, was watching an India-Pakistan cricket match. I walked into our living room, sank into our couch, and asked him what the fuss was about. Eight hours later, I was well and truly sucked into the cricket frenzy that grips most Indians. And the rest, as they say, is history. I went on to watch every match India played for the next few decades.

So, I was one of the ‘over a billion’ silenced spectators of that World Cup final match a few weeks ago. After the utter heartbreak at losing a match we were so confident of winning subsided, it struck me that there are several life lessons neatly tucked into this loss, which could even translate into New Year’s resolutions for 2024, if you are on the lookout for some.

I’m listing five life lessons for you to ponder on below:

1. Don’t get predictable

The Indian cricket team played sublime cricket all through the tournament. They won all ten matches in the run up to the final. You can’t help but feel for them. But when I think about it, they stuck to the same game plan in every match. The game plan worked like a charm — Rohit Sharma came in, smacked the ball around, got India off to a flying start; once he got out, Virat Kohli aggressively took over… it was a set formula that they’d perfected over ten prior matches. Which brings me to the lesson here — India became predictable.

When you are predictable it’s easy for your opponent to ably counter you. Keep your opponent guessing, have a few plans in the pipeline, change things around constantly… stay unpredictable, stay impossible to conquer.

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“Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned”, goes an age-old English proverb, but time and again this scorn has proved to be of great advantage to our country. Tulsidas is said to have been chastised by his wife all because of his infatuation for his wife, and the ridiculed lover went on to compose the Ram Charit Manas which today governs the life of more than a billion people around the world. Kicked out of the home by his wife Vidyotama for his stupidity and ignorance, Kalidas went on to become the greatest dramatist and writer that India has ever produced.

The story of Mohammed Shami has a close resemblance to that of Tulsidas and Kalidas. Accused by his wife of domestic violence to the extent of him having come close to imprisonment, Shami seems to have come back with a vengeance, and the expression of his anger seems to make the opposition batsmen suffer on the cricket field, much to the delight of all Indian cricket fans.

Born to a farmer’s family on 3 September 1990 in a village in the Uttar Pradesh district of Amroha, Shami’s career has been one of uncertainties and injuries. Paradoxically, it has been injuries to his teammates that have created the vent for Mohammed Shami to come up and prove his worth. In 2012, an injury to one of his teammates created an opportunity for Shami to play for the East Zone in the Duleep Trophy, and with an eight wicket haul, he was instrumental in his team winning the Duleep Trophy.

Having been made to sit out for four matches in the 2023 ICC ODI World Cup despite an impressive performance against the Australians just before that, an injury to Hardik Pandya left the selectors with no alternative but to rework the Indian team’s composition, and in came Shami with a big bang.

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He was one of India’s spin foursome that took the cricketing world by storm. While Bhagwat Chandrasekhar was a freak, Erapalli Anantrao Prasanna was enticing; Srinivas Vekataraghavan was the supplement to the trio where Bishan Singh Bedi was known for his accuracy.

In his international career spanning 13 years, Bedi played in 67 Tests and led the Indian team in a third of them. Although Bedi started his cricketing career quite late, he finished with 1564 first class wickets which remains an India record. While Bapu Nadkarni holds the world record for bowling 131 balls against England without conceding a run; Bedi’s 16.35 maiden overs per Test is only second best to the West Indian, Lance Gibbs whose record stands at 16.62.

In the inaugural World Cup in 1975, where the matches were of 60 overs each and each bowler could bowl a maximum of 12 overs, Bedi created a record that will perhaps never be equalled. Playing against East Africa, he claimed one wicket at the expense of just six runs as eight of his twelve overs were maiden.

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Believe it or not, sometimes a single mosquito can change the fate not only of an individual but that of an entire nation. Cricket buffs will be quick to understand what I want to drive home. Yes, India’s current ace batter, Shubman Gill, was not available for India’s inaugural match against Australia in this year’s One Day International World Cup played at Chennai, and all because of suffering from fever due to dengue, an ailment caused by an infected mosquito bite that leads to a drop in the blood platelets in the human body.

It will not be prudent to delve into further details of the dangers of the disease as this is not a medical write-up. Still, it would be sufficient to say that this year several deaths in the country have occurred due to this disease of dengue, such can be the most disastrous effects of this problem. Shubman Gill’s absence has not only depleted the strength of India’s batting but has also brought a rude interruption to the career of an individual who is currently at the prime of his career. To justify the latter statement, one has only to state that during this calendar year, with 1231 runs, Shubman to date has been the highest accumulator of runs in ODIs.

This tall and lanky cricketer has suddenly pushed names like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli into the background due to his added fast reflexes and has become an asset while fielding in the slips.

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In the November 2019 issue of The Teenager Today, many cricket fans would have been surprised at my statistical revelation that Ravindra Jadeja was India’s greatest all-rounder of all time. At that time, his all-rounder’s average (batting average divided by the bowling average) of 1.37 was the best-ever by an Indian cricketer and the sixth best in the world. Since then, Jadeja has fared even better to take that average to 1.51 and displace South Africa’s Shaun Pollock at the all-time fifth place in the world.

On the other hand, since then Ravichandran Ashwin’s all-rounder’s average has slipped by a fraction from 1.16 to 1.13. However, rising up the Test arena is now a third all-rounder for India in the shape of Axar Rajeshbhai Patel, and what may surprise every reader is that in a short Test career of just 11 Tests, Axar has an all-rounder’s average of 2.07 which is far better than any of the best-known in the world; Gary Sobers (1.70), Jacques Kallis (1.65), Imran Khan (1.65) and Keith Miller (1.61).

What is more remarkable about Axar’s achievement is that after the end of eight Test matches in which he represented India, his all-rounder’s average stood at 1.58. However, Axar’s phenomenal rise has come in the last three Test matches against Australia in which he played till the time of this article going to the press. In fact, in the third Test match of the series where most of the Indian batsmen fell cheaply to the Australian spinners, Axar showed the batting technique required to tackle the Australian attack; mixing defence with aggression, he kept the Australian spinner at bay to remain unconquered.

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In 2007, when the inaugural ICC T20 World Cup tournament was to be played, India had hardly any credentials worth the name in the shortest version of the game. So a team under Mahendra Singh Dhoni was dispatched in which many star names were conspicuous by their absence. So no one would have grumbled even if the Indian team had returned without winning any of its matches. However, what followed is now history.

Matters have changed since those yesteryears and now the Indian men’s team is ranked among the best T20 teams in the world. In contrast, the Indian women’s cricket team has yet to inscribe its name on any of the ICC World Cups. The closest that it came to doing so was when under Mithali Raj the Indian team entered the final of the WODI but lost rather badly to the same English team that it had beaten a few days earlier.

The Under-19 inaugural T20 World Cup for the girls was to be played in South Africa in January 2023 and the timing of the tournament could not have been any better for the Indian girls. Although Virat Kohli gave the Indian team a motivational talk before the team’s departure, there were two major factors that turned out to be favourable for the Indian contingent.

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While our men’s cricket team could not win the last Asia Cup, our women beat Sri Lanka to emerge as the Asian Champions. No wonder the Board of Control for Cricket in India had to rethink about the remuneration being extended to the ladies and bring it at par with their male counterparts. Under a changed leadership at the BCCI from Saurav Ganguly to Roger Binny, and in the women’s team from Mithali Raj to Harmanpreet Kaur, our women’s cricket team is destined to attain new heights.

The above statement is in no way meant to demean the forerunners. In fact, the age of Mithali Raj’s leadership did see the Indian women achieve what they had never achieved before while Saurav’s Board took a radical decision to set the ball rolling for a women’s IPL. However, the leadership of the Indian team will now have a different colour under Harmanpreet; Mithali was always a cool customer where the emotions were never as demonstrative as one can expect from the new leader. The softer side of Harmanpreet Kaur, however, could be seen in her tears when Jhulan Goswami played her last match for India.

Born at Moga in Punjab on 8 March 1989 to Harmandar Singh Bhullar and Satwinder Kaur, Harmanpreet Kaur Bhullar marched into the Indian team a day before turning twenty, on 7 March 2009, in a One Day International against Pakistan, and then made her T20 debut two months later against England.

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