“I work physically very hard every day of my life. It’s got nothing to do with cricket anymore. It’s the way I live. So as long as my fitness levels are up and my mental enjoyment and sharpness is there, when you can visualise the game and see yourself running as hard, reacting fast on the ball, you know it’s fine.”
That is Virat Kohli. And thank God he scored runs before saying that.
Because if he had nicked one to slip for a duck, this philosophy would not have been printed anywhere. It would have been dismissed as a post-match consolation line. Success brings applause. Failure brings silence.
But the message matters, because it points to the stuff no one claps for.
The hours before the match. The recovery routines. The quiet mornings. The invisible discipline. None of it is dramatic, yet all of it is essential.
James Clear speaks the same language. Systems. Habits. Tiny steps. MS Dhoni did the same thing without saying anything. One process at a time. The Bhagavad Gita said it centuries ago. Act without attachment. Let the fruit take its time.
Outcomes get the spotlight. Process sits backstage and holds up the ceiling.
Virat Kohli’s words are not a motivational poster. They are a reminder of how performance is built. Not on inspiration, but on daily structure. Not on hype, but on small habits. The world celebrates the big shot. The body remembers the small drills.
Sport keeps offering examples. Look at Roger Federer.
Roger made tennis look like silk. People saw the elegance, not the repetition. They admired the one-handed backhand, not the endless balance and footwork drills that came before it. They talked about grace, not the maintenance that kept him injury-free for two decades.
Federer’s genius was simple. He took care of the stuff no one claps for. Strength work. Recovery. Rehearsal. The glamorous “effortlessness” was built on ordinary routines repeated thousands of times.
This is the part we often forget. Outcomes depend on timing, luck, conditions, moods, even the bounce of a ball. Process depends only on you.
People imagine confidence comes from results. But most confidence comes from doing the work when no one is watching. You trust yourself because yesterday’s effort is still in your bones.
That is why the stuff no one claps for ends up shaping the very things people cheer for. The unseen half carries the seen half. The quiet routines make the loud moments possible.
So here is the simple truth in all this. Stop staring at the scoreboard. Stop refreshing the result. Build the routines you can control.
Do the boring work. Do it when it is raining. Do it when you are not in the mood. Do it because it steadies you.
The applause will find its own time. The work must find yours.
It was one of those Brisbane evenings that felt neatly put together. The moon hung above the Story Bridge, the bridge glowed in red and gold, and the river below reflected it all as if it knew its role.
This is the Brisbane River. But long before it became a postcard, it was Maiwar. The river of the Turrbal people, the first caretakers of this land. They lived along its bends for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the 1820s. For them, the river was everything. Food, road, temple, and teacher.
The Meeting Place and a Cricket Fortress
The Turrbal people had names for every turn of the river. Woolloongabba meant “meeting place.” It still lives up to that name. It is now home to the famous cricket ground, The Gabba, where every few years India meets Australia to settle who really runs cricket.
It wasn’t just a win; it was a story of belief and joy. Many said the fortress had fallen. I thought otherwise. In fact, the Gabba stood taller for it. It proved again why sport matters: to host rivalries, to test effort, to stretch courage, and to honour that often-abused but still-revered phrase, the spirit of the game.
Funny how I started writing about the river and ended up at the cricket ground. But then again, the river has seen it all. Floods, bridges, and the odd boundary.
The River That Refused to Straighten
People call the river, ‘Brown Snake’. And the name fits. It winds through the city, calm and sure of itself. People jog along it, sail on it, build towers beside it and sometimes, when it floods, remember who’s really in charge.
Along its banks, the city gathers quietly.
Queensland’s Parliament House sits near one of the curves, looking calm and serious as if the river is ready with the next question. The kind that would embarrass a minister and still ask the opposition what they were doing all this while. A little further down, government offices line the shore, their glass windows catching the light. Across the water, old timber homes in Teneriffe stand beside tall new apartments, both pretending they belong together.
Kurilpa Bridge — where steel meets stillness, and the Brown Snake plays along.The Neville Bonner Bridge — Brisbane’s newest way to cross the Brown Snake, or to stop halfway and take another photo of it.
At South Bank, the Wheel of Brisbane turns slowly over the river. It’s a giant Ferris wheel that looks like it’s keeping an eye on the city. At night, its lights shimmer on the water, mixing with reflections from cafés and bridges. Downstream, near the University of Queensland, students walk and talk by the water, thinking of exams, futures, and maybe nothing at all. The Brown Snake watches them all, moving quietly past.
The Brisbane River tracing the city’s heart . A ribbon of water, movement, and memory.
Later that night I read how early European settlers once tried to make this river straight. They brought dredges and plans, confident they could tidy nature’s design. The Brown Snake was fiercely Australian. It refused and kept curving and silting as it pleased, reminding everyone that some things are meant to meander.
Bridges, Lights, and the CityCat
Sixteen bridges now cross this river. The old Victoria Bridge has been rebuilt more than once. The Story Bridge, born in the Depression years, is Brisbane’s favourite landmark. Every night it glows like a festival — blue, gold, purple — changing colour depending on what the city is celebrating or mourning.
I took the CityCat a few evenings. Long, sleek, and painted in cheerful blues and whites, it glides along the river like a quiet promise. Office workers scroll on their phones. Tourists seem to take the same photo over and over. An extended hand holding a phone and clicking a picture is a standard feature! Somewhere, a child points at the moon.
The Story Bridge. Proof that even steel can smile when the lights come on.The Brown Snake seen from above. Calm, luminous, and endlessly patient, holding Brisbane in its curve.
On one side, picture-perfect apartments lean over the water, all glass and balconies. On the other, green parks and old timber wharves stand calmly, pretending not to notice. The air smells faintly of salt and weekend plans.
The Rivers That Made Me
Somewhere between two stops, my mind wandered home. To Madurai. To the Vaigai. The river I grew up by. Once the pride of the city, now mostly a trickle between bridges that are newer than the water beneath them. Still, people cross, live, and hope. That’s what bridges are for.
And then I thought about space and wondered how many people live per square kilometer relative to spaces that I am used to.
Brisbane breathes at around 176 people per square kilometre.
Madurai hums at 8,800.
Mumbai roars at 33,000.
For ordinary people, that’s not density. That’s destiny.
Here, everyone seems to move. Running, rowing, cycling, sailing. But try getting a doctor’s appointment, and you’ll learn what patience truly means. The Brown Snake has its own pace, and so does the city.
Vaigai trickles. Maiwar flows. Mumbai surges. Each carries its own rhythm and lesson.
What Rivers Teach Us
As the CityCat slipped under the Story Bridge, the moon brightened above, and the Brisbane River — the Brown Snake — shimmered gold. The ferry hummed softly, carrying people home, and I felt the city exhale.
My mind darted back to the waters I’ve known: the restless sea in Mumbai, the fading Vaigai in Madurai, and this calm, brown river in Brisbane. Each carries its own rhythm . The sea crashes, the Vaigai sighs, the Brown Snake flows and forgives.
Mumbai teaches me motion. Madurai teaches me memory. Brisbane, perhaps, teaches me stillness and flow. Together, they remind me that home is not fixed to a pin on a map. It is a current that carries you forward, again and again, asking you to move, to meander, and to remember.
Rivers don’t just flow; they hold time. They carry stories we’ve forgotten how to tell. Stories of people, floods, bridges, and beginnings. The Brown Snake has watched Brisbane rise, falter, and rise again. It asks for nothing, but it seems to remembers everything.
Maybe that’s what rivers teach us in the end . That strength isn’t about speed or noise, but about keeping on, quietly, towards the sea.
Everything comes at a cost. Including victory. Sometimes the cost of ‘victory at all costs’ is so mind-boggling that victory loses meaning. Today Australia (and the rest of the world) woke up to ‘ #SandpaperGate ‘. Just the other day, I was wondering about the ‘cost of victory’.
On that ‘other day’, I landed up at the attic at my mom’s place. I was looking to fill gaps in memory fuelled by gaps from WhatsApp conversations.
A few old cherished medals lay in one corner of a dusty trunk. Amongst other things that kept the medals company: an assortment of parched certificates, a couple of spent manuscripts, a dog-eared atlas, and some dull question papers from a ‘quarterly exam’ that ended decades ago. Amidst these were some assorted pages from an old English textbook. Remnants of my school going years. I looked at the medals with wistfulness and the books with nostalgia. And started flipping through the Engish textbook landing at ‘If’, Kipling’s much loved work.
I stayed there for a bit. There are poems that move. And then there are poems that stay with you and get you to move. Every poem is a work of art reaching places in the mind that barely existed. ‘If’ is perhaps ‘The’ poem with the shortest title while having the farthest reach. It has been a personal favourite. And as I tossed a few things around, I realised, that it has shaped my outlook too.
Today, as I was writing this post, I discovered I had a post in 2009 on ‘IF’ . It is something.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Back to the English textbook. It is in that book that I first read that two lines from ‘If’
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same”
stare at players as they walk into Wimbledon’s Centre Court.
I remember talking to my dad about it. And he saying that there is no meaning in victory or defeat without learning the lessons of victory and defeat. His clear voice about letting victories and defeats pass by and seek each new day as a new day sought to make their presence. He would say with emphasis often that there is a cost to victory! And if the cost of victory is greater than the victory itself, there is no point to the victory.
As I wistfully examined medals that were in the trunk, I realised that the real victory was not in getting to wear them then. It has been in moving past them, cherishing the experience of winning and later consigning the medals to the attic.
Pursuits of the present day are morphed forms of medals that I had won back then. Medals that now rest in the dark confines of an old trunk in the attic. To experience and cherish every moment, to be of value to someone, to be grateful for all that has happened. These are my aspirations now.
The medal that I seek is perhaps inner quiet, peace, and lightness. That perhaps is real victory while I scurry around looking for medals and podiums. Today there is even further realisation about real victory. Real victory is beyond paper victories. And certainly beyond sandpaper ones!
Life keeps throwing balls our way. Some fast, some slow. Some expected, others completely out of nowhere.
The real question isn’t what comes our way—but how ready we are to catch it.
We don’t get to choose the speed, angle, or height of life’s throws. But we do get to choose our readiness—to react, adapt, and take every catch that matters.
Because in the end, catches win matches. And in life, being ready makes all the difference.
For a month and a half the nation has been huddled in conversation. You have noticed it. For everywhere from the office canteen, to official meetings to even your own bedroom this topic has made silent entry.
From wickets to balls. From heavy bats to bad bounce. Seam to spin ! Everything of such nature and beyond. The frenzy that accompanies newscasts, has had ready made fodder, for they have been quick to assemble an array of cricketers that once ran between the wickets to now give commentary on the ones that do!
Suddenly one Friday, your team beats Australia. The ensuing Wednesday they beat Pakistan. The following Sunday Sri Lanka is downed. Suddenly, the nation is crowned World Champions.
It’s a moment in cricketing history that must not escape the pages of this blog and hence must be written about.
The last several months have seen several scams. Parliament was held to ransom. A government that seems inept. A parents accused of murdering their own daughter. A overlaying general apathy that seems to have progressed as terminal cancer across the breadth of the population. The list is incomplete, incongruous, progressively more gross. Heaping many permutations of ‘oh-what-will-get-inflicted-on-us-today’ kind of a feeling. Everyday.
This was a divided country. Thick lines of religion interlaced with politics and served with an overarching base ingredient of corruption and moral degradation, over very many years added to continuous woe and misery.
Well, all of the above remain. Infact, nothing has changed. Not the cases that have been filed. The corrupt judges have not had a change of heart. The colourful politicians and their ever so creative means to greater means perhaps has only got new boosts.
Yet, for a few brief hours, the nation suspends its despondence and celebrates. On a sultry Saturday night every square in the country resembles the Tahrir square of Egypt. The nation today erupts in unanimity.
As the composed eyes of the captain scans the stadia to know of the six that is hit indeed clears the ropes, the slum dwellers clap and hoot. The rich pump their scotch drenched viens with little of the refinement that they usually swear by. Hindus hug muslims. Buddhists pump their fists with energy.
Soon, cars, scooters, bikes all pour into the road. Waving the Indian flag and shouting Vande Mataram.
The old reminisce 1983 even as the young don’t care anymore. They have a new story to tell. Men jump as though they have been injected with fresh bouts of testosterone.Women hug and hoot with frenzy that would befit little girls in school. The twitter feed is continuous.
Politicians are going slow in their campaigning. Airplanes have gone empty. Governments declare holidays. SMS messages pour in. “We have won” is the overriding theme, as though the victory is a result of the dint of hard labour of every single Indian.
But then, perhaps. That’s not too far from the truth.
This victory perhaps belongs to the faceless Indian cricket fan. Yes, the one that stands in queue to endure lathis and collect just one of the measly 4000 tickets on sale. The faceless fan that will wear the same T-shirt just so that we win !
Oh don’t forget those Non Resident Indians who beat the time zones and zone into You Tube, Facebook, twitter and whatever they could get shreds of information from ! And the abundance of others that borrow money to travel and cheer the team ! The fan puts all else, far below the pecking order that has only one entity up there : The Indian cricket team !
Today a billion people watched. For a moment the despondence disappears. People hug each other and laugh their hearts out. The tireless efforts to divide us all usually succeeds. This time there is some respite ! Our problems awaits us. The cases. The politicians. The judges. The corrupt and the corrupted. The vain and the vanity prone.
Yes. But that’s tomorrow. For today, we have won. We are world champions. As the fledgling hands of my almost four year old nephew struggling to hold a plastic bat, shows the strain, a loud screech escapes his lips : ‘I have never seen such a match in my life”. All of almost four years. Mind it !
Standing as tall as the TV stand, just as his dad claps and his mom hoots. Tomorrow, reality will drift back into our consciousness. But today, we are world champions.
This is cricket season. Everyone is glued to the TV sets. Tweeting simultaneously. Commenting on how squalid Ravi Shastri’s commentary is or how queer the pitch is and how this game could be a ‘cracker of the game’.
Ofcourse, expert comments come from people ranging from the next door aunty to the ex-gully cricketer who now spouts a belly and has a ton of stories from ‘my playing days’.
The eloquence that is waxed on players and their performance, is a perpetually swinging pendulum that swings from creative abuses that will shame the insipid listlessness of a laggard bowler and extend all the way to the elevation to a GODly status when a personal milestone is cracked !
Before you label me with definitively pronounced adjectives like ‘unpatriotic’, ‘unfit to be Indian’, let me hasten to add that I follow the game too. Not quite with the same intensity that people put on display in restaurants and public places. And boy who can forget twitter. Tweeting fervently, exhorting others to sit where they are or hold on to their pee until another man scores a century ! ( No, am certainly not making this up).
Am not necessarily an ignorant small towner. My own growing up years saw many a summer day that slipped by in battling bowlers from the next building with utter disrespect for the Sun and searing heat. To hit, to run, to roll arms over irrespective of where the sun was in the sky, as long as he was out there in the sky! Ah, it’s a lovely game. Yeah. G-A-M-E !
Much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Age takes a good catch, always. The hair on my head is receding and whatever is left of it is as stark as the black & white photograph. Cricket is well, different. The frenzy is several time more pronounced. Outlets to wear it on your sleeve, is multi pronged. TV channels are a famished lot without the game. The result: everybody is an expert. Vocally so !
Truth be told, I can never get myself to sit before the TV for many hours on end and confine my exercise to jumping to conclusions, stretching the statistical truth and pushing the country’s luck (exhorting people to stay still and hold their pee)!
I harbor no ill-will against the people that are more passionate. The world is made of all kinds. For long, several well meaning people have popped the obvious question at me : Why ? Why don’t you follow the game as closely ?
For an equally long time, I have either maintained a stoic silence. A silence that could outdo a hermit in deep penance. Or have hidden behind a decorated façade of ‘a game is meant to be sweated out’ argument. Now its time for a confession. The real reason is Statistics !
Yes. Really. Statistics.
The sheer magnitude of statistical trivia that International cricket can spew ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, perpetually pushing the boundaries of both the sublime and the ridiculous! Quite obviously what is sublime to one has another searching for words that amplify ‘ridiculous’.
‘Dilshan is the seventh batsman to face Abdul Razzak when he is bowling from the Khetaramma end in the Premadasa stadium’.
Well, well. That could well be a rather tame concocted example.
The more informed amongst my friends rattle of statistics that could perk the ears of an encyclopedia maker and could go like “This is the third highest, seventh wicket partnership between Kenya & Zimbabwe, the second highest in in a one day game in Nagpur and is also the seventh highest in all world cups and 293rd in the history of one day internationals “.
Even as my mouth opens in awe, experience has taught me not to be surprised if someone else strikes a degage pose and throw a rejoinder that could go like “It actually is the 294th. The 167th got mired in a controversy because of a thunderstorm which sometimes is not counted…”.
Such powerful stuff is pregnant with poignant potential of sending the partially interested into perpetual coma!
Small huddles of people stand on the pavement. Peering into phone stores. Restaurants. Offices. Pubs. Et el. At the same time. At pre-appointed hours.
Peering into a restaurant having glass for walls, can be unsettling. Especially for those that eat inside! But they dont seem to care ! And the crowd outside only swells. A foreign eye can mistake this for anything. Including a food deprived nation that gratiates itself by looking at others eat.
The answer however, lies in the TV that’s on. In a corner of the restaurant , phone store et al. No. Wrong again. The interest is not in the TV but on the cricket match that’s on ! The Indian Premier League is on.
And animated conversation floats in the air. Will Chennai beat Kolkatta? Will Bangalore overrun Hyderabad? Will Mumbai win ? How can he sip beer in the middle of a match ? It is all rigged. Dont you thinks so…etc !
Answers and perspectives on this, will of course bring a paradigm shift to our lives and makes such a big difference to our daily living. But, this is cricket ! And as some cliched pundit astutely puts it…this is religion. OK?
A religion.
Where the same chap, is riled or feted for the same shot he played. Depending on whether the team won or lost.
Where funny coloured costumes, strange team names, wonderful astute commentary from the likes of a certain Ms.Bedi are centre stage
where an 4 year old acquaintance commented on a match, ‘ i haven’t seen this kind of a match in my entire lifetime’. And yes. All of a four year life time.
Where the dance of the cheer leaders is only matched by the beer belly of a certain Mr. Mallya,
where ‘square leg‘ has got nothing to do with anatomy or geometrical shapes. And ‘third man’ does not point to political machinations of cabinet formation.
Where the requirements of winning the cup ( with the history of the two tournaments thus far) are restricted to having an Australian captain pulled out from retirement and the team labeled ‘underdog’!
where the sulk of a certain Mr. Khan is best matched by bringing of the blog world more fame
huh !
What a waste of time. Thankfully, its over. The finals. As they say. And this circus top will fold up. And there are talks of one more season coming your way soon. Thankfully its all coming to an end.
And those soap operas on TV can resume again. Tomorrow strange family issues that would resurface. Stuff that was talked about just before the opening ceremony… And from tomorrow onwards, when the boss asks how was last night, remember he is talking about the meeting and not the match.
Our lives return to ‘normal’ status from tomorrow. Thank God this is all getting over. What madness. Huh.
By the way, did you see how Mathew Hayden batted ! Phew it was worth the Orange cap with a strike rate of 144. And i guess the purple cap will stay with RP. Singh. And if Chennai with +0.94 run rate are any way a better team. And man this Manish Pandey has been a discovery…
Any idea if the dates for the next series has been decided ? Just asking..
